1873.—"The officers of his regiment ... subscribed to buy the young people a set of crockery, and a plated tea and coffee service (got up by dawk banghee ... at not much more than 200 per cent. in advance of the English price."—The True Reformer, i. 57.
BANJO, s. Though this is a West- and not East-Indian term, it may be worth while to introduce the following older form of the word:
1764.—
"Permit thy slaves to lead the choral dance
To the wild banshaw's melancholy sound."—Grainger, iv.
See also Davies, for example of banjore, [and N.E.D for banjer].
BANKSHALL, s. a. A warehouse. b. The office of a Harbour Master or other Port Authority. In the former sense the word is still used in S. India; in Bengal the latter is the only sense recognised, at least among Anglo-Indians; in Northern India the word is not in use. As the Calcutta office stands on the banks of the Hoogly, the name is, we believe, often accepted as having some indefinite reference to this position. And in a late work we find a positive and plausible, but entirely unfounded, explanation of this kind, which we quote below. In Java the word has a specific application to the open hall of audience, supported by wooden pillars without walls, which forms part of every princely residence. The word is used in Sea Hindustani, in the forms bansār, and bangsāl for a 'store-room' (Roebuck).
Bankshall is in fact one of the oldest of the words taken up by foreign traders in India. And its use not only by Correa (c. 1561) but by King John (1524), with the regularly-formed Portuguese plural of words in -al, shows how early it was adopted by the Portuguese. Indeed, Correa does not even explain it, as is his usual practice with Indian terms.
More than one serious etymology has been suggested:—(1). Crawfurd takes it to be the Malay word bangsal, defined by him in his Malay Dict. thus: "(J.) A shed; a storehouse; a workshop; a porch; a covered passage" (see J. Ind. Archip. iv. 182). [Mr Skeat adds that it also means in Malay 'half-husked paddy,' and 'fallen timber, of which the outer layer has rotted and only the core remains.'] But it is probable that the Malay word, though marked by Crawfurd ("J.") as Javanese in origin, is a corruption of one of the two following:
(2) Beng. baṇkaśāla, from Skt. baṇik or vaṇik, 'trade,' and śāla, 'a hall.' This is Wilson's etymology.