1825.—"We crossed over ... in a stout boat called here a bundur boat. I suppose from 'bundur' a harbour, with two masts, and two lateen sails...."—Heber, ii. 121, ed. 1844.
BUNDOBUST, s. P.—H.—band-o-bast, lit. 'tying and binding.' Any system or mode of regulation; discipline; a revenue settlement.
[1768.—"Mr. Rumbold advises us ... he proposes making a tour through that province ... and to settle the Bandobust for the ensuing year."—Letter to the Court of Directors, in Verelst, View of Bengal, App. 77.]
c. 1843.—"There must be bahut achch'hā bandobast (i.e. very good order or discipline) in your country," said an aged Khānsamā (in Hindustani) to one of the present writers. "When I have gone to the Sandheads to meet a young gentleman from Bilāyat, if I gave him a cup of tea, 'tānki tānki,' said he. Three months afterwards this was all changed; bad language, violence, no more tānki."
1880.—"There is not a more fearful wild-fowl than your travelling M.P. This unhappy creature, whose mind is a perfect blank regarding Faujdari and Bandobast...."—Ali Baba, 181.
BUNDOOK, s. H. bandūḳ, from Ar. bunduḳ. The common H. term for a musket or matchlock. The history of the word is very curious. Bunduḳ, pl. banādiḳ, was a name applied by the Arabs to filberts (as some allege) because they came from Venice (Banadiḳ, comp. German Venedig). The name was transferred to the nut-like pellets shot from cross-bows, and thence the cross-bows or arblasts were called bunduḳ, elliptically for kaus al-b., 'pellet-bow.' From cross-bows the name was transferred again to firearms, as in the parallel case of arquebus. [Al-Banduḳāni, 'the man of the pellet-bow,' was one of the names by which the Caliph Hārūn-al-Rashīd was known, and Al Zahir Baybars al-Banduḳdāri, the fourth Baharite Soldan (A.D. 1260-77) was so entitled because he had been slave to a Bandukdār, or Master of Artillery (Burton, Ar. Nights, xii. 38).]
[1875.—"Bandūqis, or orderlies of the Maharaja, carrying long guns in a loose red cloth cover."—Drew, Jummoo and Kashmir, 74.]
BUNGALOW, s. H. and Mahr. banglā. The most usual class of house occupied by Europeans in the interior of India; being on one story, and covered by a pyramidal roof, which in the normal bungalow is of thatch, but may be of tiles without impairing its title to be called a bungalow. Most of the houses of officers in Indian cantonments are of this character. In reference to the style of the house, bungalow is sometimes employed in contradistinction to the (usually more pretentious) pucka house; by which latter term is implied a masonry house with a terraced roof. A bungalow may also be a small building of the type which we have described, but of temporary material, in a garden, on a terraced roof for sleeping in, &c., &c. The word has also been adopted by the French in the East, and by Europeans generally in Ceylon, China, Japan, and the coast of Africa.
Wilson writes the word bānglā, giving it as a Bengālī word, and as probably derived from Banga, Bengal. This is fundamentally the etymology mentioned by Bp. Heber in his Journal (see below), and that etymology is corroborated by our first quotation, from a native historian, as well as by that from F. Buchanan. It is to be remembered that in Hindustan proper the adjective 'of or belonging to Bengal' is constantly pronounced as bangălā or banglā. Thus one of the eras used in E. India is distinguished as the Banglā era. The probability is that, when Europeans began to build houses of this character in Behar and Upper India, these were called Banglā or 'Bengal-fashion' houses; that the name was adopted by the Europeans themselves and their followers, and so was brought back to Bengal itself, as well as carried to other parts of India. ["In Bengal, and notably in the districts near Calcutta, native houses to this day are divided into ath-chala, chau-chala, and Bangala, or eight-roofed, four-roofed, and Bengali, or common huts. The first term does not imply that the house has eight coverings, but that the roof has four distinct sides with four more projections, so as to cover a verandah all round the house, which is square. The Bangala, or Bengali house, or bungalow has a sloping roof on two sides and two gable ends. Doubtless the term was taken up by the first settlers in Bengal from the native style of edifice, was materially improved, and was thence carried to other parts of India. It is not necessary to assume that the first bungalows were erected in Behar." (Saturday Rev., 17th April 1886, in a review of the first ed. of this book).]
A.H. 1041 = A.D. 1633.—"Under the rule of the Bengalis (darahd-i-Bangālīyān) a party of Frank merchants, who are inhabitants of Sundíp, came trading to Sátgánw. One kos above that place they occupied some ground on the banks of the estuary. Under the pretence that a building was necessary for their transactions in buying and selling, they erected several houses in the Bengálí style."—Bādshāhnāma, in Elliot, vii. 31.