c. 1780.—"'Que demandez-vous?' leur criai-je d'un ton de voix rude. 'Pourquoi restez-vous là à m'attendre? et d'où vient que ces autres femmes se sont enfuies, comme si j'étois un Péschaseh (esprit malin), ou une bête sauvage qui voulût vous devorer?'"—Haafner, ii. 287.
1801.—"They believe that such men as die accidental deaths become Pysáchi, or evil spirits, and are exceedingly troublesome by making extraordinary noises, in families, and occasioning fits and other diseases, especially in women."—F. Buchanan's Mysore, iii. 17.
1816.—"Whirlwinds ... at the end of March, and beginning of April, carry dust and light things along with them, and are called by the natives peshashes or devils."—Asiatic Journal, ii. 367.
1819.—"These demons or peisaches are the usual attendants of Shiva."—Erskine on Elephanta, in Bo. Lit. Soc. Trans. i. 219.
1827.—"As a little girl was playing round me one day with her white frock over her head, I laughingly called her Pisashee, the name which the Indians give to their white devil. The child was delighted with so fine a name, and ran about the house crying out to every one she met, I am the Pisashee, I am the Pisashee. Would she have done so, had she been wrapt in black, and called witch or devil instead? No: for, as usual, the reality was nothing, the sound and colour everthing."—J. C. Hare, in Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1st Series, ed. 1838, p. 7.
PISANG, s. This is the Malay word for [plantain] or [banana] (qq.v.). It is never used by English people, but is the usual word among the Dutch, and common also among the Germans, [Norwegians and Swedes, who probably got it through the Dutch.]
1651.—"Les Cottewaniens vendent des fruits, come du Pisang, &c."—A. Roger, La Porte Ouverte, p. 11.
c. 1785.—"Nous arrivâmes au grand village de Colla, où nous vîmes de belles allées de bananiers ou pisang...."—Haafner, ii. 85.
[1875.—"Of the pisang or plantain ... there are over thirty kinds, of which, the Pisang-mas, or golden plantain, so named from its colour, though one of the smallest, is nevertheless most deservedly prized."—Thomson, The Straits of Malacca, 8.]
PISHPASH, s. Apparently a factitious Anglo-Indian word, applied to a slop of rice-soup with small pieces of meat in it, much used in the Anglo-Indian nursery. [It is apparently P. pash-pash, 'shivered or broken in pieces'; from Pers. pashīdan.]