Delightful!"
W. Marsden, in Memoirs, 14.
1784.—"A lad at one of these entertainments, asked another his opinion of a gaddees who was then dancing. 'If she were plated with gold,' replied he, 'I would not take her for my concubine, much less for my wife.'"—Marsden's H. of Sumatra, 2nd ed., 230.
GODOWN, s. A warehouse for goods and stores; an outbuilding used for stores; a store-room. The word is in constant use in the Chinese ports as well as in India. The H. and Beng. gudām is apparently an adoption of the Anglo-Indian word, not its original. The word appears to have passed to the continent of India from the eastern settlements, where the Malay word gadong is used in the same sense of 'store-room,' but also in that of 'a house built of brick or stone.' Still the word appears to have come primarily from the South of India, where in Telugu giḍaṅgi, giḍḍangi, in Tamil kiḍaṅgu, signify 'a place where goods lie,' from kiḍu, 'to lie.' It appears in Singhalese also as gudāma. It is a fact that many common Malay and Javanese words are Tamil, or only to be explained by Tamil. Free intercourse between the Coromandel Coast and the Archipelago is very ancient, and when the Portuguese first appeared at Malacca they found there numerous settlers from S. India (see s.v. [KLING]). Bluteau gives the word as palavra da India, and explains it as a "logea quasi debaixo de chão" ("almost under ground"), but this is seldom the case.
[1513.—"... in which all his rice and a Gudam full of mace was burned."—Letter of F. P. Andrade to Albuquerque, Feb. 22, India Office, MSS. Corpo Chronologico, vol. I.
[1552.—"At night secretly they cleared their Gudams, which are rooms almost under ground, for fear of fire."—Barros, Dec. II. Bk. vi. ch. 3.]
1552.—"... and ordered them to plunder many godowns (gudoes) in which there was such abundance of clove, nutmeg, mace, and sandal wood, that our people could not transport it all till they had called in the people of Malacca to complete its removal."—Castanheda, iii. 276-7.
1561.—"... Godowns (Gudões), which are strong houses of stone, having the lower part built with lime."—Correa, II. i. 236. (The last two quotations refer to events in 1511.)
1570.—"... but the merchants have all one house or Magazon, which house they call Godon, which is made of brickes."—Caesar Frederike, in Hakl.
1585.—"In the Palace of the King (at Pegu) are many magazines both of gold and of silver.... Sandalwood, and lign-aloes, and all such things, have their gottons (gottoni), which is as much as to say separate chambers."—Gasparo Balbi, f. 111.