1823.—"Punkas, large frames of light wood covered with white cotton, and looking not unlike enormous fire-boards, hung from the ceilings of the principal apartments."—Heber, ed. 1844, i. 28.
1852.—
"Holy stones with scrubs and slaps
(Our Christmas waits!) prelude the day;
For holly and festoons of bay
Swing feeble punkas,—or perhaps
A windsail dangles in collapse."
Christmas on board a P. and O., near the Equator.
1875.—"The punkah flapped to and fro lazily overhead."—Chesney, The Dilemma, ch. xxxviii.
Mr. Busteed observes: "It is curious that in none of the lists of servants and their duties which are scattered through the old records in the last century (18th), is there any mention of the punka, nor in any narratives referring to domestic life in India then, that have come under our notice, do we remember any allusion to its use.... The swinging punka, as we see it to-day, was, as every one knows, an innovation of a later period.... This dates from an early year in the present century."—Echoes of Old Calcutta, p. 115. He does not seem, however, to have found any positive evidence of the date of its introduction. ["Hanging punkahs are said by one authority to have originated in Calcutta by accident towards the close of the last (18th) century. It is reported that a clerk in a Government office suspended the leaf of a table, which was accidentally waved to and fro by a visitor. A breath of cool air followed the movement, and suggested the idea which was worked out and resulted in the present machine" (Carey, Good Old Days of John Company, i. 81). Mr. Douglas says that punkahs were little used by Europeans in Bombay till 1810. They were not in use at Nuncomar's trial in Calcutta (1775), Bombay and W. India, ii. 253.]