1860.—"... Vegetables, and especially farinaceous food, are especially to be commended. The latter is indeed rendered attractive by the unrivalled excellence of the Singhalese in the preparation of innumerable curries, each tempered by the delicate creamy juice expressed from the flesh of the cocoa-nut, after it has been reduced to a pulp."—Tennent's Ceylon, i. 77. N.B. Tennent is misled in supposing (i. 437) that chillies are mentioned in the Mahavanso. The word is maricha, which simply means "pepper," and which Turnour has translated erroneously (p. 158).
1874.—"The craving of the day is for quasi-intellectual food, not less highly peppered than the curries which gratify the faded stomach of a returned Nabob."—Blackwood's Magazine, Oct. 434.
The Dutch use the word as Kerrie or Karrie; and Kari à l'Indienne has a place in French cartes.
CURRY-STUFF, s. Onions, chillies, &c.; the usual material for preparing curry, otherwise [mussalla] (q.v.), represented in England by the preparations called curry-powder and curry-paste.
1860.—"... with plots of esculents and curry-stuffs of every variety, onions, chillies, yams, cassavas, and sweet potatoes."—Tennent's Ceylon, i. 463.
CUSBAH, s. Ar.—H. ḳaṣba, ḳaṣaba; the chief place of a [pergunnah] (q.v.).
1548.—"And the caçabe of Tanaa is rented at 4450 pardaos."—S. Botelho, Tombo, 150.
[c. 1590.—"In the fortieth year of his Majesty's reign, his dominions consisted of one hundred and five Sircars, sub-divided into two thousand seven hundred and thirty-seven kusbahs."—Ayeen, tr. Gladwin, ii. 1; Jarrett, ii. 115.]
1644.—"On the land side are the houses of the Vazador (?) or Possessor of the Casabe, which is as much as to say the town or aldea of Mombaym ([Bombay]). This town of Mombaym is a small and scattered affair."—Bocarro, MS. fol. 227.
c. 1844-45.—"In the centre of the large Cusbah of Streevygoontum exists an old mud fort, or rather wall of about 20 feet high, surrounding some 120 houses of a body of people calling themselves Kotie Vellalas,—that is 'Fort Vellalas.' Within this wall no police officer, warrant or Peon ever enters.... The females are said to be kept in a state of great degradation and ignorance. They never pass without the walls alive; when dead they are carried out by night in sacks."—Report by Mr. E. B. Thomas, Collector of Tinnevelly, quoted in Lord Stanhope's Miscellanies, 2nd Series, 1872, p. 132.