E os mais, a quem o mais serve e contenta...."
Camões, vii. 35.
1614.—"The Great Samorine's Deputy came aboord ... and ... earnestly persuaded vs to stay a day or two, till he might send to the Samorine, then at Crangelor, besieging a Castle of the Portugals."—Peyton, in Purchas, i. 531.
c. 1806.—"In like manner the Jews of Kranghír (Cranganore), observing the weakness of the Sámuri ... made a great many Mahomedans drink the cup of martyrdom...."—Muhabbat Khán (writing of events in 16th century), in Elliot, viii. 388.
CRANNY, s. In Bengal commonly used for a clerk writing English, and thence vulgarly applied generically to the East Indians, or half-caste class, from among whom English copyists are chiefly recruited. The original is Hind. karānī, kirānī, which Wilson derives from Skt. karan, 'a doer.' Karaṇa is also the name of one of the (so-called) mixt castes of the Hindus, sprung from a Sudra mother and Vaisya father, or (according to some) from a pure Kshatriya mother by a father of degraded Kshatriya origin. The occupation of the members of this mixt caste is that of writers and accountants; [see Risley, Tribes and Castes of Bengal, i. 424 seqq.].
The word was probably at one time applied by natives to the junior members of the Covenanted Civil Service—"Writers," as they were designated. See the quotations from the "Seir Mutaqherin" and from Hugh Boyd. And in our own remembrance the "Writers' Buildings" in Calcutta, where those young gentlemen were at one time quartered (a range of apartments which has now been transfigured into a splendid series of public offices, but, wisely, has been kept to its old name), was known to the natives as Karānī kī Bārik.
c. 1350.—"They have the custom that when a ship arrives from India or elsewhere, the slaves of the Sultan ... carry with them complete suits ... for the Rabban or skipper, and for the kirānī, who is the ship's clerk."—Ibn Batuta, ii. 198.
" "The second day after our arrival at the port of Kailūkari, the princess escorted the nakhodāh (or skipper), the kirānī, or clerk...."—Ibid. iv. 250.
c. 1590.—"The Karrání is a writer who keeps the accounts of the ship, and serves out the water to the passengers."—Āīn (Blochmann), i. 280.
c. 1610.—"Le Secretaire s'apelle carans...."—Pyrard de Laval, i. 152; [Hak. Soc. i. 214].