1876.—"To persons not familiar with the East such an architectural object as a bowlee may seem a strange perversion of ingenuity, but the grateful coolness of all subterranean apartments, especially when accompanied by water, and the quiet gloom of these recesses, fully compensate in the eyes of the Hindu for the more attractive magnificence of the ghâts. Consequently the descending flights of which we are now speaking, have often been more elaborate and expensive pieces of architecture than any of the buildings above-ground found in their vicinity."—Fergusson, Indian and Eastern Architecture, 486.
BOXWALLAH, s. Hybrid H. Bakas- (i.e. box) wālā. A native itinerant pedlar, or packman, as he would be called in Scotland by an analogous term. The Boxwālā sells cutlery, cheap nick-nacks, and small wares of all kinds, chiefly European. In former days he was a welcome visitor to small stations and solitary bungalows. The Borā of Bombay is often a boxwālā, and the boxwālā in that region is commonly called Borā. (See [BORA].)
a. A servant. In Southern India and in China a native personal servant is so termed, and is habitually summoned with the vocative 'Boy!' The same was formerly common in Jamaica and other W. I. Islands. Similar uses are familiar of puer (e.g. in the Vulgate Dixit Giezi puer Viri Dei. II Kings v. 20), Ar. walad, παιδάριον, garçon, knave (Germ. Knabe); and this same word is used for a camp-servant in Shakespeare, where Fluelen says: "Kill the Poys and the luggage! 'tis expressly against the laws of arms."—See also Grose's Mil. Antiquities, i. 183, and Latin quotation from Xavier under [Conicopoly]. The word, however, came to be especially used for 'Slave-boy,' and applied to slaves of any age. The Portuguese used moço in the same way. In 'Pigeon English' also 'servant' is Boy, whilst 'boy' in our ordinary sense is discriminated as 'smallo-boy!'
b. A Palankin-bearer. From the name of the caste, Telug. and Malayāl. bōyi, Tam. bōvi, &c. Wilson gives bhoi as H. and Mahr. also. The word is in use northward at least to the Nerbudda R. In the Konkan, people of this class are called Kahār bhūī (see Ind. Ant. ii. 154, iii. 77). P. Paolino is therefore in error, as he often is, when he says that the word boy as applied by the English and other Europeans to the coolies or facchini who carry the dooly, "has nothing to do with any Indian language." In the first and third quotations (under b), the use is more like a, but any connection with English at the dates seems impossible.
a.—
1609.—"I bought of them a Portugall Boy (which the Hollanders had given unto the King) ... hee cost mee fortie-five Dollers."—Keeling, in Purchas, i. 196.
" "My Boy Stephen Grovenor."—Hawkins, in Purchas, 211. See also 267, 296.
1681.—"We had a black boy my Father brought from Porto Nova to attend upon him, who seeing his Master to be a Prisoner in the hands of the People of his own Complexion, would not now obey his Command."—Knox, 124.
1696.—"Being informed where the Chief man of the Choultry lived, he (Dr. Brown) took his sword and pistol, and being followed by his boy with another pistol, and his horse keeper...."—In Wheeler, i. 300.