1854.—"These animals, called Tanghan, are wonderfully strong and enduring; they are never shod, and the hoof often cracks.... The Tibetans give the foals of value messes of pig's blood and raw liver, which they devour greedily, and it is said to strengthen them wonderfully; the custom is, I believe, general in Central Asia."—Hooker, Himalayan Journals, 1st ed. ii. 131.

TANJORE, n.p. A city and District of S. India; properly Tañjāvūr ('Low Town'?), so written in the inscription on the great Tanjore Pagoda (11th century). [The Madras Manual gives two derivations: "Tañjāvūr, familiarly called Tañjai by the natives. It is more fully given as Tañjai-mānagaram, Tañjan's great city, after its founder. Tañjam means 'refuge, shelter'" (ii. 216). The Gloss. gives Tañjāvūr, Tam. tañjam, 'asylum,' ūr, 'village.']

[1816.—"The Tanjore Pill, it is said, is made use of with great success in India against the bite of mad dogs, and that of the most venemous serpents."—Asiatic Journal, ii. 381.]

TANK, s. A reservoir, an artificial pond or lake, made either by excavation or by damming. This is one of those perplexing words which seem to have a double origin, in this case one Indian, the other European.

As regards what appears to be the Indian word, Shakespear gives: "Tānk'h (in Guzerat), an underground reservoir for water." [And so Platts.] Wilson gives: "Ṭánkeṇ or ṭákeṇ, Mahr. ... Tánkh (said to be Guzeráthí). A reservoir of water, an artificial pond, commonly known to Europeans in India as a Tank. Ṭánki, Guz. A reservoir of water; a small well." R. Drummond, in his Illustrations of Guzerattee, &c., gives: "Tanka (Mah.) and Tankoo (Guz.) Reservoirs, constructed of stone or brick or lime, of larger and lesser size, generally inside houses.... They are almost entirely covered at top, having but a small aperture to let a pot or bucket down."... "In the towns of Bikaner," says Tod, "most families have large cisterns or reservoirs called Tankas, filled by the rains" (Rajputana, ii. 202). Again, speaking of towns in the desert of Márwár, he says: "they collect the rain water in reservoirs called Tanka, which they are obliged to use sparingly, as it is said to produce night blindness" (ii. 300). Again, Dr. Spilsbury (J.A.S.B. ix. pt. 2, 891), describing a journey in the Nerbudda Basin, cites the word, and notes: "I first heard this word used by a native in the Betool district; on asking him if at the top of Bowergurh there was any spring, he said No, but there was a Tanka or place made of pukka (stone and cement) for holding water." Once more, in an Appendix to the Report of the Survey of India for 1881-1882, Mr. G. A. MacGill, speaking of the rain cisterns in the driest part of Rajputana, says: "These cisterns or wells are called by the people tánkás" (App. p. 12). See also quotation below from a Report by Major Strahan. It is not easy to doubt the genuineness of the word, which may possibly be from Skt. taḍaga, taṭāga, taṭāka, 'a pond, pool, or tank.'

Fr. Paolino, on the other hand, says the word tanque used by the Portuguese in India was Portoghesa corrotta, which is vague. But in fact tanque is a word which appears in all Portuguese dictionaries, and which is used by authors so early after the opening of communication with India (we do not know if there is an instance actually earlier) that we can hardly conceive it to have been borrowed from an Indian language, nor indeed could it have been borrowed from Guzerat and Rajpūtāna, to which the quotations above ascribe the vernacular word. This Portuguese word best suits, and accounts for that application of tank to large sheets of water which is habitual in India. The indigenous Guzerati and Mahratti word seems to belong rather to what we now call a tank in England; i.e. a small reservoir for a house or ship. Indeed the Port. tanque is no doubt a form of the Lat. stagnum, which gives It. stagno, Fr. old estang and estan, mod. étang, Sp. estanque, a word which we have also in old English and in Lowland Scotch, thus:

1589.—"They had in them stanges or pondes of water full of fish of sundrie sortes."—Parkes's Mendoza, Hak. Soc. ii. 46.

c. 1785.—

"I never drank the Muses' stank,

Castalia's burn and a' that;