Other divagations still from the original project will probably present themselves to those who turn over the pages of the work, in which we have been tempted to introduce sundry subjects which may seem hardly to come within the scope of such a glossary.
The words with which we have to do, taking the most extensive view of the field, are in fact organic remains deposited under the various currents of external influence that have washed the shores of India during twenty centuries and more. Rejecting that derivation of elephant[[8]] which would connect it with the Ophir trade of Solomon, we find no existing Western term traceable to that episode of communication; but the Greek and Roman commerce of the later centuries has left its fossils on both sides, testifying to the intercourse that once subsisted. Agallochum, carbasus, camphor, sandal, musk, nard, pepper (πέπερι, from Skt. pippali, 'long pepper'), ginger (ζιγγίβερις, see under Ginger), lac, costus, opal, malabathrum or folium indicum, beryl, sugar (σάκχαρ, from Skt. sarkara, Prak. sakkara), rice (ὄρυζα, but see s.v.), were products or names, introduced from India to the Greek and Roman world, to which may be added a few terms of a different character, such as Βραχμᾶνες, Σάρμανες (śramaṇas, or Buddhist ascetics), ζύλα σαγαλίνα καὶ σασαμίνα (logs of teak and shīsham), the σάγγαρα (rafts) of the Periplus (see Jangar in Gloss.); whilst dīnāra, dramma, perhaps kastīra ('tin,' κασσίτερος), kastūrī ('musk,' καστόριον, properly a different, though analogous animal product), and a very few more, have remained in Indian literature as testimony to the same intercourse.[[9]]
The trade and conquests of the Arabs both brought foreign words to India and picked up and carried westward, in form more or less corrupted, words of Indian origin, some of which have in one way or other become part of the heritage of all succeeding foreigners in the East. Among terms which are familiar items in the Anglo-Indian colloquial, but which had, in some shape or other, found their way at an early date into use on the shores of the Mediterranean, we may instance bazaar, cazee, hummaul, brinjaul, gingely, safflower, grab, maramut, dewaun (dogana, douane, &c.). Of others which are found in medieval literature, either West-Asiatic or European, and which still have a place in Anglo-Indian or English vocabulary, we may mention amber-gris, chank, junk, jogy, kincob, kedgeree, fanam, calay, bankshall, mudiliar, tindal, cranny.
The conquests and long occupation of the Portuguese, who by the year 1540 had established themselves in all the chief ports of India and the East, have, as might have been expected, bequeathed a large number of expressions to the European nations who have followed, and in great part superseded them. We find instances of missionaries and others at an early date who had acquired a knowledge of Indian languages, but these were exceptional.[[10]] The natives in contact with the Portuguese learned a bastard variety of the language of the latter, which became the lingua franca of intercourse, not only between European and native, but occasionally between Europeans of different nationalities. This Indo-Portuguese dialect continued to serve such purposes down to a late period in the last century, and has in some localities survived down nearly to our own day.[[11]] The number of people in India claiming to be of Portuguese descent was, in the 17th century, very large. Bernier, about 1660, says:—
"For he (Sultan Shujā', Aurangzeb's brother) much courted all those Portugal Fathers, Missionaries, that are in that Province.... And they were indeed capable to serve him, it being certain that in the kingdom of Bengale there are to be found not less than eight or nine thousand families of Franguis, Portugals, and these either Natives or Mesticks." (Bernier, E.T. of 1684, p. 27.)
A. Hamilton, whose experience belonged chiefly to the end of the same century, though his book was not published till 1727, states:—
"Along the Sea-coasts the Portuguese have left a Vestige of their Language, tho' much corrupted, yet it is the Language that most Europeans learn first to qualify them for a general Converse with one another, as well as with the different inhabitants of India." (Preface, p. xii.)
Lockyer, who published 16 years before Hamilton, also says:—
"This they (the Portugueze) may justly boast, they have established a kind of Lingua Franca in all the Sea Ports in India, of great use to other Europeans, who would find it difficult in many places to be well understood without it." (An Account of the Trade in India, 1711, p. 286.)
The early Lutheran Missionaries in the South, who went out for the S.P.C.K., all seem to have begun by learning Portuguese, and in their diaries speak of preaching occasionally in Portuguese.[[12]] The foundation of this lingua franca was the Portuguese of the beginning of the 16th century; but it must have soon degenerated, for by the beginning of the last century it had lost nearly all trace of inflexion.[[13]]