1726.—"Bandares or Adassing are those who are at the Court as Dukes, Counts, or even Princes of the Royal House."—Valentijn (Ceylon), Names of Officers, &c., 8.
1810.—"After the Raja had amused himself with their speaking, and was tired of it ... the bintara with the green eyes (for it is the custom that the eldest bintara should have green shades before his eyes, that he may not be dazzled by the greatness of the Raja, and forget his duty) brought the books and packets, and delivered them to the bintara with the black baju, from whose hands the Raja received them, one by one, in order to present them to the youths."—A Malay's account of a visit to Govt. House, Calcutta, transl. by Dr. Leyden in Maria Graham, p. 202.
1883.—"In most of the States the reigning prince has regular officers under him, chief among whom ... the Bandahara or treasurer, who is the first minister...."—Miss Bird, The Golden Chersonese, 26.
BENDY, BINDY, s.: also [BANDICOY] (q.v.), the form in S. India; H. bhinḍī, [bhenḍī], Dakh. bhenḍī, Mahr. bhenḍā; also in H. rāmturἀī; the fruit of the plant Abelmoschus esculentus, also Hibiscus esc. It is called in Arab. bāmiyah (Lane, Mod. Egypt, ed. 1837, i. 199: [5th ed. i. 184: Burton, Ar. Nights, xi. 57]), whence the modern Greek μπάμια. In Italy the vegetable is called corni de' Greci. The Latin name Abelmoschus is from the Ar. ḥabb-ul-mushk, 'grain of musk' (Dozy).
1810.—"The bendy, called in the West Indies okree, is a pretty plant resembling a hollyhock; the fruit is about the length and thickness of one's finger ... when boiled it is soft and mucilaginous."—Maria Graham, 24.
1813.—"The banda (Hibiscus esculentus) is a nutritious oriental vegetable."—Forbes, Or. Mem. i. 32; [2nd ed. i. 22].
1880.—"I recollect the West Indian Ookroo ... being some years ago recommended for introduction in India. The seed was largely advertised, and sold at about 8s. the ounce to eager horticulturists, who ... found that it came up nothing other than the familiar bendy, the seed of which sells at Bombay for 1d. the ounce. Yet ... ookroo seed continued to be advertised and sold at 8s. the ounce...."—Note by Sir G. Birdwood.
BENDY-TREE, s. This, according to Sir G. Birdwood, is the Thespesia populnea, Lam. [Watt, Econ. Dict. vi. pt. iv. 45 seqq.], and gives a name to the 'Bendy Bazar' in Bombay. (See [PORTIA].)
BENGAL, n.p. The region of the Ganges Delta and the districts immediately above it; but often in English use with a wide application to the whole territory garrisoned by the Bengal army. This name does not appear, so far as we have been able to learn, in any Mahommedan or Western writing before the latter part of the 13th century. In the earlier part of that century the Mahommedan writers generally call the province Lakhnaotī, after the chief city, but we have also the old form Bang, from the indigenous Vaṅga. Already, however, in the 11th century we have it as Vaṅgālam on the Inscription of the great Tanjore Pagoda. This is the oldest occurrence that we can cite.
The alleged City of Bengala of the Portuguese which has greatly perplexed geographers, probably originated with the Arab custom of giving an important foreign city or seaport the name of the country in which it lay (compare the city of Solmandala, under [COROMANDEL]). It long kept a place in maps. The last occurrence that we know of is in a chart of 1743, in Dalrymple's Collection, which identifies it with Chittagong, and it may be considered certain that Chittagong was the place intended by the older writers (see Varthema and Ovington). The former, as regards his visiting Banghella, deals in fiction—a thing clear from internal evidence, and expressly alleged, by the judicious Garcia de Orta: "As to what you say of Ludovico Vartomano, I have spoken, both here and in Portugal, with men who knew him here in India, and they told me that he went about here in the garb of a Moor, and then reverted to us, doing penance for his sins; and that the man never went further than Calecut and Cochin."—Colloquios, f. 30.