[1769.—"Yet they made no estimation of the currents without the Babs"; (note), "This is the common sailors' phrase for the Straits of Babelmandel."—Bruce, Travels to discover the Source of the Nile, ed. 1790, Bk. i. cap. ii.]
BABER, BHABUR, s. H. bābar, bhābar. A name given to those districts of the N.W. Provinces which lie immediately under the Himālaya to the dry forest belt on the talus of the hills, at the lower edge of which the moisture comes to the surface and forms the wet forest belt called Tarāī. (See [TERAI].) The following extract from the report of a lecture on Indian Forests is rather a happy example of the danger of "a little learning" to a reporter:
1877.—"Beyond that (the Tarāī) lay another district of about the same breadth, called in the native dialect the Bahadar. That in fact was a great filter-bed of sand and vegetation."—London Morning Paper of 26th May.
BABI-ROUSSA, s. Malay babi[[30]] ('hog') rūsa ('stag'). The 'Stag-hog,' a remarkable animal of the swine genus (Sus babirussa, L.; Babirussa alfurus, F. Cuvier), found in the island of Bourou, and some others of the I. Archipelago, but nowhere on continental Asia. Yet it seems difficult to apply the description of Pliny below, or the name and drawing given by Cosmas, to any other animal. The 4-horned swine of Aelian is more probably the African Wart-hog, called accordingly by F. Cuvier Phacochoerus Aeliani.
c. A.D. 70.—"The wild bores of India have two bowing fangs or tuskes of a cubit length, growing out of their mouth, and as many out of their foreheads like calves hornes."—Pliny, viii. 52 (Holland's Tr. i. 231).
c. 250. "Λέγει δὲ Δίνων ἐν Αἰθιωπίᾳ γίνεσθαι ... ὕς τετράκερως."—Aelian, De Nat. Anim. xvii. 10.
c. 545.—"The Choirelaphus ('Hog-stag') I have both seen and eaten."—Cosmas Indicopleustes, in Cathay, &c., p. clxxv.
1555.—"There are hogs also with hornes, and parats which prattle much which they call noris ([Lory])."—Galvano, Discoveries of the World, Hak. Soc. 120.
1658.—"Quadrupes hoc inusitatatae figurae monstrosis bestiis ascribunt Indi quod adversae speciei animalibus, Porco scilicet et Cervo, pronatum putent ... ita ut primo intuitu quatuor cornibus juxta se positis videatur armatum hoc animal Baby-Roussa."—Piso, App. to Bontius, p. 61.
[1869.—"The wild pig seems to be of a species peculiar to the island (Celebes); but a much more curious animal of this family is the Babirusa or Pig-deer, so named by the Malays from its long and slender legs, and curved tusks resembling horns. This extraordinary creature resembles a pig in general appearance, but it does not dig with its snout, as it feeds on fallen fruits.... Here again we have a resemblance to the Wart-hogs of Africa, whose upper canines grow outwards and curve up so as to form a transition from the usual mode of growth to that of the Babirusa. In other respects there seems no affinity between these animals, and the Babirusa stands completely isolated, having no resemblance to the pigs of any other part of the world."—Wallace, Malay Archip. (ed. 1890), p. 211, seqq.]