1826.—"He said that according to some accounts, he had heard the Company was an old Englishwoman ... then again he told me that some of the Topee wallas say 'John Company,' and he knew that John was a man's name, for his master was called John Brice, but he could not say to a certainty whether 'Company' was a man's or a woman's name."—Pandurang Hari, 60; [ed. 1873, i. 83, in a note to which the phrase is said to be a corruption of Joint Company].
1836.—"The jargon that the English speak to the natives is most absurd. I call it 'John Company's English,' which rather affronts Mrs. Staunton."—Letters from Madras, 42.
1852.—"John Company, whatever may be his faults, is infinitely better than Downing Street. If India were made over to the Colonial Office, I should not think it worth three years' purchase."—Mem. Col. Mountain, 293.
1888.—"It fares with them as with the sceptics once mentioned by a South-Indian villager to a Government official. Some men had been now and then known, he said, to express doubt if there were any such person as John Company; but of such it was observed that something bad soon happened to them."—Sat. Review, Feb. 14, p. 220.
JOMPON, s. Hind. jānpān, japān, [which are not to be found in Platt's Dict.]. A kind of sedan, or portable chair used chiefly by the ladies at the Hill Sanitaria of Upper India. It is carried by two pairs of men (who are called Jomponnies, i.e. jānpānī or japānī), each pair bearing on their shoulders a short bar from which the shafts of the chair are slung. There is some perplexity as to the origin of the word. For we find in Crawfurd's Malay Dict. "Jampana (Jav. Jampona), a kind of litter." Also the Javanese Dict. of P. Jansz (1876) gives: "Djempånå—dragstoel (i.e. portable chair), or sedan of a person of rank." [Klinkert has jempana, djempana, sempana as a State sedan-chair, and he connects sempana with Skt. sam-panna, 'that which has turned out well, fortunate.' Wilkinson has: "jempana, Skt.? a kind of State carriage or sedan for ladies of the court.">[ The word cannot, however, have been introduced into India by the officers who served in Java (1811-15), for its use is much older in the Himālaya, as may be seen from the quotation from P. Desideri.
It seems just possible that the name may indicate the thing to have been borrowed from Japan. But the fact that dpyāṅ means 'hang' in Tibetan may indicate another origin.
Wilson, however, has the following: "Jhámpán, Bengali. A stage on which snake-catchers and other juggling vagabonds exhibit; a kind of sedan used by travellers in the Himalaya, written Jámpaun (?)." [Both Platts and Fallon give the word jhappān as Hind.; the former does not attempt a derivation; the latter gives Hind. jhānp, 'a cover,' and this on the whole seems to be the most probable etymology. It may have been originally in India, as it is now in the Straits, a closed litter for ladies of rank, and the word may have become appropriated to the open conveyance in which European ladies are carried.]
1716.—"The roads are nowhere practicable for a horseman, or for a Jampan, a sort of palankin."—Letter of P. Ipolito Desideri, dated April 10, in Lettres Edif. xv. 184.
1783.—(After a description) "... by these central poles the litter, or as it is here called, the Sampan, is supported on the shoulders of four men."—Forster's Journey, ed. 1808, ii. 3.
[1822.—"The Chumpaun, or as it is more frequently called, the Chumpala, is the usual vehicle in which persons of distinction, especially females, are carried...."—Lloyd, Gerard, Narr. i. 105.