[c. 1809.—"(Dinajpoor) Sepaya, a wooden stand for a lamp or candle with three feet."—Buchanan, Eastern India, ii. 945.]
1844.—"'Well, to be sure, it does seem odd—very odd;'—and the old gentleman chuckled,—'most odd to find a person who don't know what a tepoy is.... Well, then, a tepoy or tinpoy is a thing with three feet, used in India to denote a little table, such as that just at your right.'
"'Why, that table has four legs,' cried Peregrine.
"'It's a tepoy all the same,' said Mr. Havethelacks."—Peregrine Pulteney, i. 112.
TEAK, s. The tree, and timber of the tree, known to botanists as Tectona grandis, L., N.O. Verbenaceae. The word is Malayāl. tekka, Tam. tekku. No doubt this name was adopted owing to the fact that Europeans first became acquainted with the wood in Malabar, which is still one of the two great sources of supply; Pegu being the other. The Skt. name of the tree is śāka, whence the modern Hind. name sāgwān or sāgūn and the Mahr. śāg. From this last probably was taken sāj, the name of teak in Arabic and Persian. And we have doubtless the same word in the σαγαλίνα of the Periplus, one of the exports from Western India, a form which may be illustrated by the Mahr. adj. sāgalī, 'made of the teak, belonging to teak.' The last fact shows, in some degree, how old the export of teak is from India. Teak beams, still undecayed, exist in the walls of the great palace of the Sassanid Kings at Seleucia or Ctesiphon, dating from the middle of the 6th century. [See Birdwood, First Letter Book, Intro. XXIX.] Teak has continued to recent times to be imported into Egypt. See Forskal, quoted by Royle (Hindu Medicine, 128). The gopher-wood of Genesis is translated sāj in the Arabic version of the Pentateuch (Royle). [It was probably cedar (see Encycl. Bibl. s.v.)]
Teak seems to have been hardly known in Gangetic India in former days. We can find no mention of it in Baber (which however is indexless), and the only mention we can find in the Āīn, is in a list of the weights of a cubic yard of 72 kinds of wood, where the name "Ságaun" has not been recognised as teak by the learned translator (see Blochmann's E.T. i. p. 228).
c. A.D. 80.—"In the innermost part of this Gulf (the Persian) is the Port of Apologos, lying near Pasine Charax and the river Euphrates.
"Sailing past the mouth of the Gulf, after a course of 6 days you reach another port of Persia called Omana. Thither they are wont to despatch from Barygaza, to both these ports of Persia, great vessels with brass, and timbers and beams of teak (ζύλων σαγαλίνων καὶ δοκῶν), and horns and spars of shisham (see [SISSOO]) (σασαμίνων), and of ebony...."—Peripl. Maris Erythr. § 35-36.
c. 800.—(under Hārūn al Rashīd) "Faẓl continued his story '... I heard loud wailing from the house of Abdallah ... they told me he had been struck with the judām, that his body was swollen and all black.... I went to Rashīd to tell him, but I had not finished when they came to say Abdallah was dead. Going out at once I ordered them to hasten the obsequies.... I myself said the funeral prayer. As they let down the bier a slip took place, and the bier and earth fell in together; an intolerable stench arose ... a second slip took place. I then called for planks of teak (sāj)...."—Quotation in Maṣ'ūdī, Prairies d'Or, vi. 298-299.
c. 880.—"From Kol to Sindān, where they collect teak-wood (sāj) and cane, 18 farsakhs."—Ibn Khurdādba, in J. As. S. VI. tom. v. 284.