CARRAWAY, s. This word for the seed of Carum carui, L., is (probably through Sp. alcaravea) from the Arabic karawiyā. It is curious that the English form is thus closer to the Arabic than either the Spanish, or the French and Italian carvi, which last has passed into Scotch as carvy. But the Arabic itself is a corruption [not immediately, N.E.D.] of Lat. careum, or Gr. κάρον (Dozy).
CARTMEEL, s. This is, at least in the Punjab, the ordinary form that 'mail-cart' takes among the natives. Such inversions are not uncommon. Thus Sir David Ochterlony was always called by the Sepoys Loni-okhtar. In our memory an officer named Holroyd was always called by the Sepoys Roydāl, [and Brownlow, Lobrūn. By another curious corruption Mackintosh becomes Makkhanī-tosh, 'buttered toast'!]
CARTOOCE, s. A cartridge; kārtūs, Sepoy H.; [comp. TOSTDAUN].
CARYOTA, s. This is the botanical name (Caryota urens, L.) of a magnificent palm growing in the moister forest regions, as in the Western Ghauts and in Eastern Bengal, in Ceylon, and in Burma. A conspicuous character is presented by its enormous bipinnate leaves, somewhat resembling colossal bracken-fronds, 15 to 25 feet long, 10 to 12 in width; also by the huge pendent clusters of its inflorescence and seeds, the latter like masses of rosaries 10 feet long and upwards. It affords much Toddy (q.v.) made into spirit and sugar, and is the tree chiefly affording these products in Ceylon, where it is called Kitul. It also affords a kind of sago, and a woolly substance found at the foot of the leaf-stalks is sometimes used for caulking, and forms a good tinder. The sp. name urens is derived from the acrid, burning taste of the fruit. It is called, according to Brandis, the Mhār-palm in Western India. We know of no Hindustani or familiar Anglo-Indian name. [Watt, (Econ. Dict. ii. 206) says that it is known in Bombay as the Hill or Sago palm. It has penetrated in Upper India as far as Chunār.] The name Caryota seems taken from Pliny, but his application is to a kind of date-palm; his statement that it afforded the best wine of {167a}the East probably suggested the transfer.
c. A.D. 70.—"Ab his caryotae maxume celebrantur, et cibo quidem et suco uberrimae, ex quibus praecipua vina orienti, iniqua capiti, unde pomo nomen."—Pliny, xiii. § 9.
1681.—"The next tree is the Kettule.  It yieldeth a sort of Liquor ... very sweet and pleasing to the Pallate.... The which Liquor they boyl and make a kind of brown sugar called Jaggory [see JAGGERY], &c."—Knox, p. 15.
1777.—"The Caryota urens, called the Saguer tree, grew between Salatiga and Kopping, and was said to be the real tree from which sago is made."—Thunberg, E. T. iv. 149. A mistake, however.
1861.—See quotation under PEEPUL.
CASH, s. A name applied by Europeans to sundry coins of low value in various parts of the Indies. The word in its original form is of extreme antiquity, "Skt. karsha ... a weight of silver or gold equal to 1⁄400 of a Tulā" (Williams, Skt. Dict.; and see also a Note on the Kārsha, or rather kārshāpaṇa, as a copper coin of great antiquity, in E. Thomas's Pathân Kings of Delhi, 361-362). From the Tam. form kāsu, or perhaps from some Konkani form which we have not traced, the Portuguese seem to have made caixa, whence the English cash. In Singalese also kāsi is used for 'coin' in general. The English term was appropriated in the monetary system which prevailed in S. India up to 1818; thus there was a copper coin for use in Madras struck in England in 1803, which bears on the reverse, "XX Cash." A figure of this coin is given in Ruding. Under this system 80 cash = 1 fanam, 42 fanams = 1 star pagoda. But from an early date the Portuguese had applied caixa to the small money of foreign systems, such as those of the Malay Islands, and especially to that of the Chinese. In China the word cash is used, by Europeans and their hangers-on, as the synonym of the Chinese le and tsien, which are those coins made of an alloy of copper and lead with a square hole in the middle, which in former days ran 1000 to the liang or tael (q.v.), and which are strung in certain numbers on cords. [This type of money, as was recently pointed out {167b}by Lord Avebury, is a survival of the primitive currency, which was in the shape of an axe.] Rouleaux of coin thus strung are represented on the surviving bank-notes of the Ming dynasty (A.D. 1368 onwards), and probably were also on the notes of their Mongol predecessors.
The existence of the distinct English word cash may probably have affected the form of the corruption before us. This word had a European origin from It. cassa, French caisse, 'the money-chest': this word in book-keeping having given name to the heading of account under which actual disbursements of coin were entered (see Wedgwood and N.E.D. s.v.). In Minsheu (2nd ed. 1627) the present sense of the word is not attained. He only gives "a tradesman's Cash, or Counter to keepe money in."
1510.—"They have also another coin called cas, 16 of which go to a tare of silver."—Varthema, 130.
" "In this country (Calicut) a great number of apes are produced, one of which is worth 4 casse, and one casse is worth a quattrino."—Ibid. 172. (Why a monkey should be worth 4 casse is obscure.)
1598.—"You must understand that in Sunda there is also no other kind of money than certaine copper mynt called Caixa, of the bignes of a Hollãdes doite, but not half so thicke, in the middle whereof is a hole to hang it on a string, for that commonlie they put two hundreth or a thousand vpon one string."—Linschoten, 34; [Hak. Soc. i. 113].
1600.—"Those (coins) of Lead are called caxas, whereof 1600 make one mas."—John Davis, in Purchas, i. 117.
1609.—"Ils (les Chinois) apportent la monnoye qui a le cours en toute l'isle de Iava, et Isles circonvoisines, laquelle en lãgue Malaique est appellee Cas.... Cette monnoye est jettée en moule en Chine, a la Ville de Chincheu."—Houtman, in Nav. des Hollandois, i. 30b.
[1621.—"In many places they threw abroad Cashes (or brasse money) in great quantety."—Cocks, Diary, ii. 202.]
1711.—"Doodoos and Cash are Copper Coins, eight of the former make one Fanham, and ten of the latter one Doodoo."—Lockyer, 8. [Doodoo is the Tel. duddu, Skt. dvi, 'two'; a more modern scale is: 2 dooggaunies = 1 doody: 3 doodies = 1 anna.—Mad. Gloss. s.v.]
1718.—"Cass (a very small coin, eighty whereof make one Fano)."—Propagation of the Gospel in the East, ii. 52.
1727.—"At Atcheen they have a small coin of leaden Money called Cash, from {168a}12 to 1600 of them goes to one Mace, or Masscie."—A. Hamilton, ii. 109.
c. 1750-60.—"At Madras and other parts of the coast of Coromandel, 80 casches make a fanam, or 3d. sterling; and 36 fanams a silver pagoda, or 7s. 8d. sterling."—Grose, i. 282.
1790.—"So far am I from giving credit to the late Government (of Madras) for œconomy, in not making the necessary preparations for war, according to the positive orders of the Supreme Government, after having received the most gross insult that could be offered to any nation! I think it very possible that every Cash of that ill-judged saving may cost the company a crore of rupees."—Letter of Lord Cornwallis to E. J. Hollond, Esq., see the Madras Courier, 22nd Sept. 1791.
[1792.—"Whereas the sum of Raheties 1223, 6 fanams and 30 khas has been deducted."—Agreement in Logan, Malabar, iii. 226.]
1813.—At Madras, according to Milburn, the coinage ran:
"10 Cash = 1 doodee; 2 doodees = 1 pice; 8 doodees = 1 single fanam," &c.
The following shows a singular corruption, probably of the Chinese tsien, and illustrates how the striving after meaning shapes such corruptions:—
1876.—"All money transactions (at Manwyne on the Burman-Chinese frontier) are effected in the copper coin of China called 'change,' of which about 400 or 500 go to the rupee. These coins are generally strung on cord," &c.—Report on the Country through which the Force passed to meet the Governor, by W. J. Charlton, M.D.
An intermediate step in this transformation is found in Cocks's Japan Journal, passim, e.g., ii. 89:
"But that which I tooke most note of was of the liberalitee and devotion of these heathen people, who thronged into the Pagod in multetudes one after another to cast money into a littel chapell before the idalles, most parte ... being gins or brass money, whereof 100 of them may vallie som 10d. str., and are about the bignes of a 3d. English money."
CASHEW, s. The tree, fruit, or nut of the Anacardium occidentale, an American tree which must have been introduced early into India by the Portuguese, for it was widely diffused apparently as a wild tree long before the end of the 17th century, and it is described as an Indian tree by Acosta, who wrote in 1578. Crawfurd also speaks of it as abundant, and in full bearing, in the jungly islets of Hastings Archipelago, off the coast of Camboja (Emb. to Siam, &c., i. 103) [see Teele's {168b}note on Linschoten, Hak. Soc. ii. 27]. The name appears to be S. American, acajou, of which an Indian form, kājū, [and Malay gajus], have been made. The so-called fruit is the fleshy top of the peduncle which bears the nut. The oil in the shell of the nut is acrid to an extraordinary degree, whilst the kernels, which are roasted and eaten, are quite bland. The tree yields a gum imported under the name of Cadju gum.
1578.—"This tree gives a fruit called commonly Caiu; which being a good stomachic, and of good flavour, is much esteemed by all who know it.... This fruit does not grow everywhere, but is found in gardens at the city of Santa Cruz in the Kingdom of Cochin."—C. Acosta, Tractado, 324 seqq.
1598.—"Cajus groweth on trees like apple-trees, and are of the bignes of a Peare."—Linschoten, p. 94; [Hak. Soc. ii. 28].
[1623.—P. della Valle, Hak. Soc. i. 135, calls it cagiu.]
1658.—In Piso, De Indiae utriusque Re Naturali et Medicâ, Amst., we have a good cut of the tree as one of Brasil, called Acaibaa "et fructus ejus Acaju."
1672.—"... il Cagiu.... Questo è l'Amandola ordinaria dell'India, per il che se ne raccoglie grandissima quantità, essendo la pianta fertilissima e molto frequente, ancora nelli luoghi più deserti et inculti."—Vincenzo Maria, 354.
1673.—Fryer describes the tree under the name Cheruse (apparently some mistake), p. 182.
1764.—
"... Yet if
The Acajou haply in the garden bloom...."
Grainger, iv.
[1813.—Forbes calls it "the chashew-apple," and the "cajew-apple."—Or. Mem. 2nd ed. i. 232, 238.]
c. 1830.—"The cashew, with its apple like that of the cities of the Plain, fair to look at, but acrid to the taste, to which the far-famed nut is appended like a bud."—Tom Cringle, ed. 1863, p. 140.
1875.—"Cajoo kernels."—Table of Customs Duties imposed in Br. India up to 1875.
CASHMERE, n.p. The famous valley province of the Western Himālaya, H. and P. Kashmīr, from Skt. Kaśmīra, and sometimes Kāśmīra, alleged by Burnouf to be a contraction of Kaśyapamīra. [The name is more probably connected with the Khasa tribe.] Whether or not it be the Kaspatyrus or Kaspapyrus of Herodotus, we believe it undoubtedly to be the Kaspeiria (kingdom) of Ptolemy. {169a}Several of the old Arabian geographers write the name with the guttural ḳ, but this is not so used in modern times.
c. 630.—"The Kingdom of Kia-shi-mi-lo (Kaśmīra) has about 7000 li of circuit. On all sides its frontiers are surrounded by mountains; these are of prodigious height; and although there are paths affording access to it, these are extremely narrow."—Hwen T'sang (Pèl. Bouddh.) ii. 167.
c. 940.—"Ḳashmīr ... is a mountainous country, forming a large kingdom, containing not less than 60,000 or 70,000 towns or villages. It is inaccessible except on one side, and can only be entered by one gate."—Mas'ūdi, i. 373.
1275.—"Ḳashmīr, a province of India, adjoining the Turks; and its people of mixt Turk and Indian blood excel all others in beauty."—Zakarīya Kazvīni, in Gildemeister, 210.
1298.—"Keshimur also is a province inhabited by a people who are idolaters and have a language of their own ... this country is the very source from which idolatry has spread abroad."—Marco Polo, i. 175.
1552.—"The Mogols hold especially towards the N.E. the region Sogdiana, which they now call Queximir, and also Mount Caucasus which divides India from the other Provinces."—Barros, IV. vi. 1.
1615.—"Chishmeere, the chiefe Citie is called Sirinakar."—Terry, in Purchas, ii. 1467; [so in Roe's Map, vol. ii. Hak. Soc. ed.; Chismer in Foster, Letters, iii. 283].
1664.—"From all that hath been said, one may easily conjecture, that I am somewhat charmed with Kachemire, and that I pretend there is nothing in the world like it for so small a kingdom."—Bernier, E. T. 128; [ed. Constable, 400].
1676.—
"A trial of your kindness I must make;
Though not for mine, so much as virtue's sake,
The Queen of Cassimere...."
Dryden's Aurungzebe, iii. 1.
1814.—"The shawls of Cassimer and the silks of Iran."—Forbes, Or. Mem. iii. 177; [2nd ed. ii. 232]. (See KERSEYMERE.)
CASIS, CAXIS, CACIZ, &c., s. This Spanish and Portuguese word, though Dozy gives it only as prêtre chrétien, is frequently employed by old travellers, and writers on Eastern subjects, to denote Mahommedan divines (mullas and the like). It may be suspected to have arisen from a confusion of two Arabic terms—kāḍi (see CAZEE) and ḳashīsh or ḳasīs, 'a Christian Presbyter' (from a Syriac root signifying senuit). Indeed we sometimes find the precise word {169b}ḳashīsh (Caxix) used by Christian writers as if it were the special title of a Mahommedan theologian, instead of being, as it really is, the special and technical title of a Christian priest (a fact which gives Mount Athos its common Turkish name of Ḳashīsh Dāgh). In the first of the following quotations the word appears to be applied by the Mussulman historian to pagan priests, and the word for churches to pagan temples. In the others, except that from Major Millingen, it is applied by Christian writers to Mahommedan divines, which is indeed its recognised signification in Spanish and Portuguese. In Jarric's Thesaurus (Jesuit Missions, 1606) the word Cacizius is constantly used in this sense.
c. 1310.—"There are 700 churches (kalīsīa) resembling fortresses, and every one of them overflowing with presbyters (ḳashīshān) without faith, and monks without religion."—Description of the Chinese City of Khanzai (Hangchau) in Wasāf's History (see also Marco Polo, ii. 196).
1404.—"The town was inhabited by Moorish hermits called Caxixes; and many people came to them on pilgrimage, and they healed many diseases."—Markham's Clavijo, 79.
1514.—"And so, from one to another, the message passed through four or five hands, till it came to a Gazizi, whom we should call a bishop or prelate, who stood at the King's feet...."—Letter of Giov. de Empoli, in Archiv. Stor. Ital. Append. p. 56.
1538.—"Just as the Cryer was offering to deliver me unto whomsoever would buy me, in comes that very Cacis Moulana, whom they held for a Saint, with 10 or 11 other Cacis his Inferiors, all Priests like himself of their wicked sect."—F. M. Pinto (tr. by H. C.), p. 8.
1552.—Caciz in the same sense used by Barros, II. ii. 1.
[1553.—See quotation from Barros under LAR.
[1554.—"Who was a Caciz of the Moors, which means in Portuguese an ecclesiastic."—Castañeda, Bk. I. ch. 7.]
1561.—"The King sent off the Moor, and with him his Casis, an old man of much authority, who was the principal priest of his Mosque."—Correa, by Ld. Stanley, 113.
1567.—"... The Holy Synod declares it necessary to remove from the territories of His Highness all the infidels whose office it is to maintain their false religion, such as are the cācizes of the Moors, and the preachers of the Gentoos, jogues, sorcerers, (feiticeiros), jousis, grous (i.e. joshis or astrologers, and gurūs), and whatsoever others make a business of religion among the infidels, and so also the bramans and paibus {170a}(? prabhūs, see PURVOE)."—Decree 6 of the Sacred Council of Goa, in Arch. Port. Or. fasc. 4.
1580.—"... e foi sepultado no campo per Cacises."—Primor e Honra, &c., f. 13v.
1582.—"And for pledge of the same, he would give him his sonne, and one of his chief chaplaines, the which they call Cacis."—Castañeda, by N. L.
1603.—"And now those initiated priests of theirs called Cashishes (Casciscis) were endeavouring to lay violent hands upon his property."—Benedict Goës, in Cathay, &c., ii. 568.
1648.—"Here is to be seen an admirably wrought tomb in which a certain Casis lies buried, who was the Pedagogue or Tutor of a King of Guzuratte."—Van Twist, 15.
1672.—"They call the common priests Casis, or by another name Schierifi (see SHEREEF), who like their bishops are in no way distinguished in dress from simple laymen, except by a bigger turban ... and a longer mantle...."—P. Vincenzo Maria, 55.
1688.—"While they were thus disputing, a Caciz, or doctor of the law, joined company with them."—Dryden, L. of Xavier, Works, ed. 1821, xvi. 68.
1870.—"A hierarchical body of priests, known to the people (Nestorians) under the names of Kieshishes and Abunas, is at the head of the tribes and villages, entrusted with both spiritual and temporal powers."—Millingen, Wild Life among the Koords, 270.
CASSANAR, CATTANAR, s. A priest of the Syrian Church of Malabar; Malayāl. kattanār, meaning originally 'a chief,' and formed eventually from the Skt. kartṛi.
1606.—"The Christians of St. Thomas call their priests Caçanares."—Gouvea, f. 28b. This author gives Catatiara and Caçaneira as feminine forms, 'a Cassanar's wife.' The former is Malayāl. kàttatti, the latter a Port. formation.
1612.—"A few years ago there arose a dispute between a Brahman and a certain Cassanar on a matter of jurisdiction."—P. Vincenzo Maria, 152.
[1887.—"Mgr. Joseph ... consecrated as a bishop ... a Catenar."—Logan, Man. of Malabar, i. 211.]
CASSAY, n.p. A name often given in former days to the people of Munneepore (Manipur), on the eastern frontier of Bengal. It is the Burmese name of this people, Kasé, or as the Burmese pronounce it, Kathé. It must not be confounded with Cathay (q.v.) with which it has nothing to do. [See SHAN.]
1759.—In Dalrymple's Orient. Repert. we find Cassay (i. 116).
1795.—"All the troopers in the King's service are natives of Cassay, who are much better horsemen than the Burmans."—Symes, p. 318.
CASSOWARY, s. The name of this great bird, of which the first species known (Casuarius galeatus) is found only in Ceram Island (Moluccas), is Malay kasavārī or kasuārī; [according to Scott, the proper reading is kasuwārī, and he remarks that no Malay Dict. records the word before 1863]. Other species have been observed in N. Guinea, N. Britain, and N. Australia.
[1611.—"St. James his Ginny Hens, the Cassawarway moreover."—(Note by Coryat.) "An East Indian bird at St. James in the keeping of Mr. Walker, that will carry no coales, but eat them as whot you will."—Peacham, in Paneg. verses on Coryat's Crudities, sig. 1. 3r. (1776); quoted by Scott.]
1631.—"De Emeu, vulgo Casoaris. In insula Ceram, aliisque Moluccensibus vicinis insulis, celebris haec avis reperitur."—Jac. Bontii, lib. v. c. 18.
1659.—"This aforesaid bird Cossebàres also will swallow iron and lead, as we once learned by experience. For when our Connestabel once had been casting bullets on the Admiral's Bastion, and then went to dinner, there came one of these Cossebàres on the bastion, and swallowed 50 of the bullets. And ... next day I found that the bird after keeping them a while in his maw had regularly cast up again all the 50."—J. J. Saar, 86.
1682.—"On the islands Sumatra (?) Banda, and the other adjoining islands of the Moluccas there is a certain bird, which by the natives is called Emeu or Eme, but otherwise is commonly named by us Kasuaris."—Nieuhof, ii. 281.
1705.—"The Cassawaris is about the bigness of a large Virginia Turkey. His head is the same as a Turkey's; and he has a long stiff hairy Beard upon his Breast before, like a Turkey...."—Funnel, in Dampier, iv. 266.
CASTE, s. "The artificial divisions of society in India, first made known to us by the Portuguese, and described by them under their term caste, signifying 'breed, race, kind,' which has been retained in English under the supposition that it was the native name" (Wedgwood, s.v.). [See the extraordinary derivation of Hamilton below.] Mr. Elphinstone prefers to write "Cast."
We do not find that the early Portuguese writer Barbosa (1516) applies the word casta to the divisions of Hindu {171a}society. He calls these divisions in Narsinga and Malabar so many leis de gentios, i.e. 'laws' of the heathen, in the sense of sectarian rules of life. But he uses the word casta in a less technical way, which shows how it should easily have passed into the technical sense. Thus, speaking of the King of Calicut: "This King keeps 1000 women, to whom he gives regular maintenance, and they always go to his court to act as the sweepers of his palaces ... these are ladies, and of good family" (estas saom fidalgas e de boa casta.—In Coll. of Lisbon Academy, ii. 316). So also Castanheda: "There fled a knight who was called Fernão Lopez, homem de boa casta" (iii. 239). In the quotations from Barros, Correa, and Garcia de Orta, we have the word in what we may call the technical sense.
c. 1444.—"Whence I conclude that this race (casta) of men is the most agile and dexterous that there is in the world."—Cadamosto, Navegação, i. 14.
1552.—"The Admiral ... received these Naires with honour and joy, showing great contentment with the King for sending his message by such persons, saying that he expected this coming of theirs to prosper, as there did not enter into the business any man of the caste of the Moors."—Barros, I. vi. 5.
1561.—"Some of them asserted that they were of the caste (casta) of the Christians."—Correa, Lendas, i. 2, 685.
1563.—"One thing is to be noted ... that no one changes from his father's trade, and all those of the same caste (casta) of shoemakers are the same."—Garcia, f. 213b.
1567.—"In some parts of this Province (of Goa) the Gentoos divide themselves into distinct races or castes (castas) of greater or less dignity, holding the Christians as of lower degree, and keep these so superstitiously that no one of a higher caste can eat or drink with those of a lower...."—Decree 2nd of the Sacred Council of Goa, in Archiv. Port. Orient., fasc. 4.
1572.—
"Dous modos ha de gente; porque a nobre
Nairos chamados são, e a menos dina
Poleas tem por nome, a quem obriga
A lei não misturar a castà antiga."—
Camões, vii. 37.
By Burton:
"Two modes of men are known; the nobles know
the name of Nayrs, who call the lower Caste
Poléas, whom their haughty laws contain
from intermingling with the higher strain."
1612.—"As regards the castes (castas) the great impediment to the conversion of the {171b}Gentoos is the superstition which they maintain in relation to their castes, and which prevents them from touching, communicating, or mingling with others, whether superior or inferior; these of one observance with those of another."—Couto, Dec. V. vi. 4. See also as regards the Portuguese use of the word, Gouvea, ff. 103, 104, 105, 106b, 129b; Synodo, 18b, &c.
1613.—"The Banians kill nothing; there are thirtie and odd severall Casts of these that differ something in Religion, and may not eat with each other."—N. Withington, in Purchas, i. 485; see also Pilgrimage, pp. 997, 1003.
1630.—"The common Bramane hath eighty two Casts or Tribes, assuming to themselves the name of that tribe...."—Lord's Display of the Banians, p. 72.
1673.—"The mixture of Casts or Tribes of all India are distinguished by the different modes of binding their Turbats."—Fryer, 115.
c. 1760.—"The distinction of the Gentoos into their tribes or Casts, forms another considerable object of their religion."—Grose, i. 201.
1763.—"The Casts or tribes into which the Indians are divided, are reckoned by travellers to be eighty-four."—Orme (ed. 1803), i. 4.
[1820.—"The Kayasthas (pronounced Kaists, hence the word caste) follow next."—W. Hamilton, Descr. of Hindostan, i. 109.]
1878.—"There are thousands and thousands of these so-called Castes; no man knows their number, no man can know it; for the conception is a very flexible one, and moreover new castes continually spring up and pass away."—F. Jagor, Ost-Indische Handwerk und Gewerbe, 13.
Castes are, according to Indian social views, either high or low.
1876.—"Low-caste Hindoos in their own land are, to all ordinary apprehension, slovenly, dirty, ungraceful, generally unacceptable in person and surroundings.... Yet offensive as is the low-caste Indian, were I estate-owner, or colonial governor, I had rather see the lowest Pariahs of the low, than a single trim, smooth-faced, smooth-wayed, clever high-caste Hindoo, on my lands or in my colony."—W. G. Palgrave, in Fortnightly Rev., cx. 226.
In the Madras Pres. castes are also 'Right-hand' and 'Left-hand.' This distinction represents the agricultural classes on the one hand, and the artizans, &c., on the other, as was pointed out by F. W. Ellis. In the old days of Ft. St. George, faction-fights between the two were very common, and the terms right-hand and left-hand castes occur early in the old records of that settlement, and {172a}frequently in Mr. Talboys Wheeler's extracts from them. They are mentioned by Couto. [See Nelson, Madura, Pt. ii. p. 4; Oppert, Orig. Inhab. p. 57.]
Sir Walter Elliot considers this feud to be "nothing else than the occasional outbreak of the smouldering antagonism between Brahmanism and Buddhism, although in the lapse of ages both parties have lost sight of the fact. The points on which they split now are mere trifles, such as parading on horse-back or in a palankeen in procession, erecting a pandal or marriage-shed on a given number of pillars, and claiming to carry certain flags, &c. The right-hand party is headed by the Brahmans, and includes the Parias, who assume the van, beating their tom-toms when they come to blows. The chief of the left-hand are the Panchalars [i.e. the Five Classes, workers in metal and stone, &c.], followed by the Pallars and workers in leather, who sound their long trumpets and engage the Parias." (In Journ. Ethnol. Soc. N.S. 1869, p. 112.)
1612.—"From these four castes are derived 196; and those again are divided into two parties, which they call Valanga and Elange [Tam. valangai, idangai], which is as much as to say 'the right hand' and 'the left hand'...."—Couto, u. s.
The word is current in French:
1842.—"Il est clair que les castes n'ont jamais pu exister solidement sans une veritable conservation religieuse."—Comte, Cours de Phil. Positive, vi. 505.
1877.—"Nous avons aboli les castes et les privilèges, nous avons inscrit partout le principe de l'égalité devant la loi, nous avons donné le suffrage à tous, mais voilà qu'on réclame maintenant l'égalité des conditions."—E. de Laveleye, De la Propriété, p. iv.
Caste is also applied to breeds of animals, as 'a high-caste Arab.' In such cases the usage may possibly have come directly from the Port. alta casta, casta baixa, in the sense of breed or strain.
CASTEES, s. Obsolete. The Indo-Portuguese formed from casta the word castiço, which they used to denote children born in India of Portuguese parents; much as creole was used in the W. Indies.
1599.—"Liberi vero nati in Indiâ, utroque parente Lusitano, castisos vocantur, in omnibus fere Lusitanis similes, colore tamen modicum differunt, ut qui ad gilvum non nihil deflectant. Ex castisis deinde nati {172b}magis magisque gilvi fiunt, a parentibus et mesticis magis deflectentes; porro et mesticis nati per omnia indigenis respondent, ita ut in tertiâ generatione Lusitani reliquis Indis sunt simillimi."—De Bry, ii. 76; (Linschoten [Hak. Soc. i. 184]).
1638.—"Les habitans sont ou Castizes, c'est à dire Portugais naturels, et nez de pere et de mere Portugais, ou Mestizes, c'est à dire, nez d'vn pere Portugais et d'vne mere Indienne."—Mandelslo.
1653.—"Les Castissos sont ceux qui sont nays de pere et mere reinols (Reinol); ce mot vient de Casta, qui signifie Race, ils sont mesprizez des Reynols...."—Le Gouz, Voyages, 26 (ed. 1657).
1661.—"Die Stadt (Negapatam) ist zimlich volksreich, doch mehrentheils von Mastycen Castycen, und Portugesichen Christen."—Walter Schulze, 108.
1699.—"Castees wives at Fort St. George."—Census of English on the Coast, in Wheeler, i. 356.
1701-2.—In the MS. Returns of Persons in the Service of the Rt. Honble. the E. I. Company, in the India Office, for this year, we find, "4th (in Council) Matt. Empson, Sea Customer, marry'd Castees," and under 1702, "13. Charles Bugden ... marry'd Casteez."
1726.—"... or the offspring of the same by native women, to wit Mistices and Castices, or blacks ... and Moors."—Valentijn, v. 3.
CASUARINA, s. A tree (Casuarina muricata, Roxb.—N. O. Casuarineae) indigenous on the coast of Chittagong and the Burmese provinces, and southward as far as Queensland. It was introduced into Bengal by Dr. F. Buchanan, and has been largely adopted as an ornamental tree both in Bengal and in Southern India. The tree has a considerable superficial resemblance to a larch or other finely-feathered conifer, making a very acceptable variety in the hot plains, where real pines will not grow. [The name, according to Mr. Scott, appears to be based on a Malayan name associating the tree with the Cassowary, as Mr. Skeat suggests from the resemblance of its needles to the quills of the bird.]
1861.—See quotation under PEEPUL.
1867.—"Our road lay chiefly by the sea-coast, along the white sands, which were fringed for miles by one grand continuous line or border of casuarina trees."—Lt.-Col. Lewin, A Fly on the Wheel, 362.
1879.—"It was lovely in the white moonlight, with the curving shadows of palms on the dewy grass, the grace of the drooping casuarinas, the shining water, and the long drift of surf...."—Miss Bird, Golden Chersonese, 275.
CATAMARÁN, s. Also CUTMURRAM, CUTMURÁL. Tam. kaṭṭu, 'binding,' maram, 'wood.' A raft formed of three or four logs of wood lashed together. The Anglo-Indian accentuation of the last syllable is not correct.
1583.—"Seven round timbers lashed together for each of the said boats, and of the said seven timbers five form the bottom; one in the middle longer than the rest makes a cutwater, and another makes a poop which is under water, and on which a man sits.... These boats are called Gatameroni."—Balbi, Viaggio, f. 82.
1673.—"Coasting along some Cattamarans (Logs lashed to that advantage that they waft off all their Goods, only having a Sail in the midst and Paddles to guide them) made after us...."—Fryer, 24.
1698.—"Some time after the Cattamaran brought a letter...."—In Wheeler, i. 334.
1700.—"Un pecheur assis sur un catimaron, c'est à dire sur quelques grosses pièces de bois liées ensemble en manière de radeau."—Lett. Edif. x. 58.
c. 1780.—"The wind was high, and the ship had but two anchors, and in the next forenoon parted from that by which she was riding, before that one who was coming from the shore on a Catamaran could reach her."—Orme, iii. 300.
1810.—Williamson (V. M. i. 65) applies the term to the rafts of the Brazilian fishermen.
1836.—"None can compare to the Catamarans and the wonderful people that manage them ... each catamaran has one, two, or three men ... they sit crouched upon their heels, throwing their paddles about very dexterously, but very unlike rowing."—Letters from Madras, 34.
1860.—"The Cattamaran is common to Ceylon and Coromandel."—Tennent, Ceylon, i. 442.
[During the war with Napoleon, the word came to be applied to a sort of fire-ship. "Great hopes have been formed at the Admiralty (in 1804) of certain vessels which were filled with combustibles and called catamarans."—(Ld. Stanhope, Life of Pitt, iv. 218.) This may have introduced the word in English and led to its use as 'old cat' for a shrewish hag.]
CATECHU, also CUTCH and CAUT, s. An astringent extract from the wood of several species of Acacia (Acacia catechu, Willd.), the khair, and Acacia suma, Kurz, Ac. sundra, D. C. and probably more. The extract is called in H. kaṭh, [Skt. kvath, 'to decoct'], but the two first {173b}commercial names which we have given are doubtless taken from the southern forms of the word, e.g. Can. kāchu, Tam. kāsu, Malay kachu. De Orta, whose judgments are always worthy of respect, considered it to be the lycium of the ancients, and always applied that name to it; but Dr. Royle has shown that lycium was an extract from certain species of berberis, known in the bazars as rasōt. Cutch is first mentioned by Barbosa, among the drugs imported into Malacca. But it remained unknown in Europe till brought from Japan about the middle of the 17th century. In the 4th ed. of Schröder's Pharmacop. Medico-chymica, Lyons, 1654, it is briefly described as Catechu or Terra Japonica, "genus terrae exoticae" (Hanbury and Flückiger, 214). This misnomer has long survived.
1516.—"... drugs from Cambay; amongst which there is a drug which we do not possess, and which they call puchô (see PUTCHOCK) and another called cachô."—Barbosa, 191.
1554.—"The bahar of Cate, which here (at Ormuz) they call cacho, is the same as that of rice."—A. Nunes, 22.
1563.—"Colloquio XXXI. Concerning the wood vulgarly called Cate; and containing profitable matter on that subject."—Garcia, f. 125.
1578.—"The Indians use this Cate mixt with Areca, and with Betel, and by itself without other mixture."—Acosta, Tract. 150.
1585.—Sassetti mentions catu as derived from the Khadira tree, i.e. in modern Hindi the Khair (Skt. khadira).
[1616.—"010 bags Catcha."—Foster, Letters, iv. 127.]
1617.—"And there was rec. out of the Adviz, viz. ... 7 hhds. drugs cacha; 5 hampers pochok" (see PUTCHOCK).—Cocks's Diary, i. 294.
1759.—"Hortal [see HURTAUL] and Cotch, Earth-oil, and Wood-oil."—List of Burma Products in Dalrymple, Oriental Repert. i. 109.
c. 1760.—"To these three articles (betel, areca, and chunam) is often added for luxury what they call cachoonda, a Japan-earth, which from perfumes and other mixtures, chiefly manufactured at Goa, receives such improvement as to be sold to advantage when re-imported to Japan....  The peasants manufacture catechu, or terra Japonica, from the Keiri [khair] tree (Mimosa catechu) which grows wild on the hills of Kankana, but in no other part of the Indian Peninsula" {174a}[erroneous].—Forbes, Or. Mem. i. 303; [2nd ed. i. 193].
CATHAY, n.p. China; originally Northern China. The origin of the name is given in the quotation below from the Introduction to Marco Polo. In the 16th century, and even later, from a misunderstanding of the medieval travellers, Cathay was supposed to be a country north of China, and is so represented in many maps. Its identity with China was fully recognised by P. Martin Martini in his Atlas Sinensis; also by Valentijn, iv. China, 2.
1247.—"Kitai autem ... homines sunt pagani, qui habent literam specialem ... homines benigni et humani satis esse videantur. Barbam non habent, et in dispositione faciei satis concordant cum Mongalis, non tamen sunt in facie ita lati ... meliores artifices non inveniuntur in toto mundo ... terra eorum est opulenta valde."—J. de Plano Carpini, Hist. Mongalorum, 653-4.
1253.—"Ultra est magna Cataya, qui antiquitus, ut credo, dicebantur Seres.... Isti Catai sunt parvi homines, loquendo multum aspirantes per nares et ... habent parvam aperturam oculorum," &c.—Itin. Wilhelmi de Rubruk, 291-2.
c. 1330.—"Cathay is a very great Empire, which extendeth over more than c. days' journey, and it hath only one lord...."—Friar Jordanus, p. 54.
1404.—"E lo mas alxofar [see ALJOFAR] que en el mundo se ha, se pesia e falla en aq̃l mar del Catay."—Clavijo, f. 32.
1555.—"The Yndians called Catheies have eche man many wiues."—Watreman, Fardle of Faciouns, M. ii.
1598.—"In the lande lying westward from China, they say there are white people, and the land called Cathaia, where (as it is thought) are many Christians, and that it should confine and border upon Persia."—Linschoten, 57; [Hak. Soc. i. 126].
[1602.—"... and arriued at any porte within the dominions of the kingdomes of Cataya, China, or Japan."—Birdwood, First Letter Book, 24. Here China and Cataya are spoken of as different countries. Comp. Birdwood, Rep. on Old Rec., 168 note.]
Before 1633.—
"I'll wish you in the Indies or Cataia...."
Beaum. & Fletch., The Woman's Prize, iv. 5.
1634.—
"Domadores das terras e dos mares
Não so im Malaca, Indo e Perseu streito
Mas na China, Catai, Japão estranho
Lei nova introduzindo em sacro banho."
Malaca Conquistada.
1664.—"'Tis not yet twenty years, that there went caravans every year from Kachemire, which crossed all those mountains of the great Tibet, entred into Tartary, and {174b}arrived in about three months at Cataja...."—Bernier, E. T., 136; [ed. Constable, 425].
1842.—
"Better fifty years of Europe
than a cycle of Cathay."
Tennyson, Locksley Hall.
1871.—"For about three centuries the Northern Provinces of China had been detached from native rule, and subject to foreign dynasties; first to the Khitan ... whose rule subsisted for 200 years, and originated the name of Khitai, Khata, or Cathay, by which for nearly 1000 years China has been known to the nations of Inner Asia, and to those whose acquaintance with it was got by that channel."—Marco Polo, Introd. ch. ii.
CAT'S-EYE, s. A stone of value found in Ceylon. It is described by Dana as a form of chalcedony of a greenish grey, with glowing internal reflections, whence the Portuguese call it Olho de gato, which our word translates. It appears from the quotation below from Dr. Royle that the Beli oculus of Pliny has been identified with the cat's-eye, which may well be the case, though the odd circumstance noticed by Royle may be only a curious coincidence. [The phrase billī kī ānkh does not appear in Platt's Dict. The usual name is lahsaniyā, 'like garlic.' The Burmese are said to call it kyoung, 'a cat.']
c. A.D. 70.—"The stone called Belus eye is white, and hath within it a black apple, the mids whereof a man shall see to glitter like gold...."—Holland's Plinie, ii. 625.
c. 1340.—"Quaedam regiones monetam non habent, sed pro ea utuntur lapidibus quos dicimus Cati Oculos."—Conti, in Poggius, De Var. Fortunae, lib. iv.
1516.—"And there are found likewise other stones, such as Olho de gato, Chrysolites, and amethysts, of which I do not treat because they are of little value."—Barbosa, in Lisbon Acad., ii. 390.
1599.—"Lapis insuper alius ibi vulgaris est, quem Lusitani olhos de gatto, id est, oculum felinum vocant, propterea quod cum eo et colore et facie conveniat. Nihil autem aliud quam achates est."—De Bry, iv. 84 (after Linschoten); [Hak. Soc. i. 61, ii. 141].
1672.—"The Cat's-eyes, by the Portuguese called Olhos de Gatos, occur in Zeylon, Cambaya, and Pegu; they are more esteemed by the Indians than by the Portuguese; for some Indians believe that if a man wears this stone his power and riches will never diminish, but always increase."—Baldaeus, Germ. ed. 160.
1837.—"Beli oculus, mentioned by Pliny, xxxvii. c. 55, is considered by Hardouin to {175a}be equivalent to œil de chat—named in India billi ke ankh."—Royle's Hindu Medicine, p. 103.
a. A weight used in China, and by the Chinese introduced into the Archipelago. The Chinese name is kin or chin. The word kātī or katī is Malayo-Javanese. It is equal to 16 taels, i.e. 1⅓ lb. avoird. or 625 grammes. This is the weight fixed by treaty; but in Chinese trade it varies from 4 oz. to 28 oz.; the lowest value being used by tea-vendors at Peking, the highest by coal-merchants in Honan.
[1554.—"Cate." See quotation under PECUL.]
1598.—"Everie Catte is as much as 20 Portingall ounces."—Linschoten, 34; [Hak. Soc. i. 113].
1604.—"Their pound they call a Cate, which is one and twentie of our ounces."—Capt. John Davis, in Purchas, i. 123.
1609.—"Offering to enact among them the penaltie of death to such as would sel one cattie of spice to the Hollanders."—Keeling, ibid. i. 199.
1610.—"And (I prayse God) I have aboord one hundred thirtie nine Tunnes, six Cathayes, one quarterne two pound of nutmegs and sixe hundred two and twenty suckettes of Mace, which maketh thirtie sixe Tunnes, fifteene Cathayes one quarterne, one and twentie pound."—David Midleton, ibid. i. 247. In this passage, however, Cathayes seems to be a strange blunder of Purchas or his copyist for Cwt. Suckette is probably Malay sukat, "a measure, a stated quantity." [The word appears as suckell in a letter of 1615 (Foster, iii. 175). Mr. Skeat suggests that it is a misreading for Pecul. Sukat, he says, means 'to measure anything' (indefinitely), but is never used for a definite measure.]
b. The word catty occurs in another sense in the following passage. A note says that "Catty or more literally Kuttoo is a Tamil word signifying batta" (q.v.). But may it not rather be a clerical error for batty?
1659.—"If we should detain them longer we are to give them catty."—Letter in Wheeler, i. 162.
CATUR, s. A light rowing vessel used on the coast of Malabar in the early days of the Portuguese. We have not been able to trace the name to any Indian source, [unless possibly Skt. chatura, 'swift']. Is it not {175b}probably the origin of our 'cutter'? We see that Sir R. Burton in his Commentary on Camoens (vol. iv. 391) says: "Catur is the Arab. katīreh, a small craft, our 'cutter.'" [This view is rejected by the N.E.D., which regards it as an English word from 'to cut.'] We cannot say when cutter was introduced in marine use. We cannot find it in Dampier, nor in Robinson Crusoe; the first instance we have found is that quoted below from Anson's Voyage. [The N.E.D. has nothing earlier than 1745.]
Bluteau gives catur as an Indian term indicating a small war vessel, which in a calm can be aided by oars. Jal (Archéologie Navale, ii. 259) quotes Witsen as saying that the Caturi or Almadias were Calicut vessels, having a length of 12 to 13 paces (60 to 65 feet), sharp at both ends, and curving back, using both sails and oars. But there was a larger kind, 80 feet long, with only 7 or 8 feet beam.
1510.—"There is also another kind of vessel.... These are all made of one piece ... sharp at both ends. These ships are called Chaturi, and go either with a sail or oars more swiftly than any galley, fusta, or brigantine."—Varthema, 154.
1544.—"... navigium majus quod vocant caturem."—Scti. Franc. Xav. Epistolae, 121.
1549.—"Naves item duas (quas Indi catures vocant) summâ celeritate armari jussit, vt oram maritimam legentes, hostes commeatu prohiberent."—Goës, de Bello Cambaico, 1331.
1552.—"And this winter the Governor sent to have built in Cochin thirty Catures, which are vessels with oars, but smaller than brigantines."—Castanheda, iii. 271.
1588.—"Cambaicam oram Jacobus Lacteus duobos caturibus tueri jussus...."—Maffei, lib. xiii. ed. 1752, p. 283.
1601.—"Biremes, seu Cathuris quam plurimae conduntur in Lassaon, Javae civitate...."—De Bry, iii. 109 (where there is a plate, iii. No. xxxvii.).
1688.—"No man was so bold to contradict the man of God; and they all went to the Arsenal. There they found a good and sufficient bark of those they call Catur, besides seven old foysts."—Dryden, Life of Xavier, in Works, 1821, xvi. 200.
1742.—"... to prevent even the possibility of the galeons escaping us in the night, the two Cutters belonging to the Centurion and the Gloucester were both manned and sent in shore...."—Anson's Voyage, 9th ed. 1756, p. 251. Cutter also occurs pp. 111, 129, 150, and other places.
CAUVERY, n.p. The great river of S. India. Properly Tam. Kāviri, or rather Kāveri, and Sanscritized Kāvērī. The earliest mention is that of Ptolemy, who writes the name (after the Skt. form) Χάβηρος (sc. ποταμός). The Καμάρα of the Periplus (c. A.D. 80-90) probably, however, represents the same name, the Χαβηρὶς ἐμποριόν of Ptolemy. The meaning of the name has been much debated, and several plausible but unsatisfactory explanations have been given. Thus the Skt. form Kāvērī has been explained from that language by kāvēra 'saffron.' A river in the Tamil country is, however, hardly likely to have a non-mythological Skt. name. The Cauvery in flood, like other S. Indian rivers, assumes a reddish hue. And the form Kāvēri has been explained by Bp. Caldwell as possibly from the Dravidian kāvi, 'red ochre' or kā (kā-va), 'a grove,' and ēr-u, Tel. 'a river,' ēr-i, Tam. 'a sheet of water'; thus either 'red river' or 'grove river.' [The Madras Admin. Gloss. takes it from kā, Tam. 'grove,' and ēri, Tam. 'tank,' from its original source in a garden tank.] Kā-viri, however, the form found in inscriptions, affords a more satisfactory Tamil interpretation, viz. Kā-viri, 'grove-extender,' or developer. Any one who has travelled along the river will have noticed the thick groves all along the banks, which form a remarkable feature of the stream.
c. 150 A.D.—
"Χαβήρου ποταμοῦ ἐκβολάι
Χαβηρὶς ἐμποριόν."—Ptolemy, lib. vii. 1.
The last was probably represented by Kaveripatan.
c. 545.—"Then there is Sieledēba, i.e. Taprobane ... and then again on the Continent, and further back, is Marallo, which exports conch-shells; Kaber, which exports alabandinum."—Cosmas, Topog. Christ. in Cathay, &c. clxxviii.
1310-11.—"After traversing the passes, they arrived at night on the banks of the river Kānobarī, and bivouacked on the sands."—Amīr Khusrū, in Elliot, ii. 90.
The Cauvery appears to be ignored in the older European account and maps.
CAVALLY, s. This is mentioned as a fish of Ceylon by Ives, 1775 (p. 57). It is no doubt the same that is described in the quotation from Pyrard [see Gray's note, Hak. Soc. {176b}i. 388]. It may represent the genus Equula, of which 12 spp. are described by Day (Fishes of India, pp. 237-242), two being named by different zoologists E. caballa. But Dr. Day hesitates to identify the fish now in question. The fish mentioned in the fourth and fifth quotations may be the same species; but that in the fifth seems doubtful. Many of the spp. are extensively sun-dried, and eaten by the poor.
c. 1610.—"Ces Moucois pescheurs prennent entr'autres grande quantité d'vne sorte de petit poisson, qui n'est pas plus grande que la main et large comme vn petit bremeau. Les Portugais l'appellent Pesche cauallo. Il est le plus commun de toute ceste coste, et c'est de quoy ils font le plus grand trafic; car ils le fendent par la moitié, ils le salent, et le font secher au soleil."—Pyrard de Laval, i. 278; see also 309; [Hak. Soc. i. 427; ii. 127, 294, 299].
1626.—"The Ile inricht us with many good things; Buffols, ... oysters, Breams, Cavalloes, and store of other fish."—Sir T. Herbert, 28.
1652.—"There is another very small fish vulgarly called Cavalle, which is good enough to eat, but not very wholesome."—Philippus a Sanct. Trinitate, in Fr. Tr. 383.
1796.—"The ayla, called in Portuguese cavala, has a good taste when fresh, but when salted becomes like the herring."—Fra Paolini, E. T., p. 240.
1875.—"Caranx denter (Bl. Schn.). This fish of wide range from the Mediterranean to the coast of Brazil, at St. Helena is known as the Cavalley, and is one of the best table fish, being indeed the salmon of St. Helena. It is taken in considerable numbers, chiefly during the summer months, around the coast, in not very deep water: it varies in length from nine inches up to two or three feet."—St. Helena, by J. C. Melliss, p. 106.
CAWNEY, CAWNY, s. Tam. kāni, 'property,' hence 'land,' [from Tam. kan, 'to see,' what is known and recognised,] and so a measure of land used in the Madras Presidency. It varies, of course, but the standard Cawny is considered to be = 24 manai or Grounds (q.v.), of 2,400 sq. f. each, hence 57,600 sq. f. or ac. 1.322. This is the only sense in which the word is used in the Madras dialect of the Anglo-Indian tongue. The 'Indian Vocabulary' of 1788 has the word in the form Connys, but with an unintelligible explanation.
1807.—"The land measure of the Jaghire is as follows: 24 Adies square = 1 Culy; 100 Culies = 1 Canay. Out of what is {177a}called charity however the Culy is in fact a Bamboo 26 Adies or 22 feet 8 inches in length ... the Ady or Malabar foot is therefore 1046⁄100 inches nearly; and the customary canay contains 51,375 sq. feet, or 118⁄100 acres nearly; while the proper canay would only contain 43,778 feet."—F. Buchanan, Mysore, &c. i. 6.
CAWNPORE, n.p. The correct name is Kānhpur, 'the town of Kānh, Kanhaiya or Krishna.' The city of the Doab so called, having in 1891 a population of 188,712, has grown up entirely under British rule, at first as the bazar and dependence of the cantonment established here under a treaty made with the Nabob of Oudh in 1766, and afterwards as a great mart of trade.
CAYMAN, s. This is not used in India. It is an American name for an alligator; from the Carib acayuman (Littré). But it appears formerly to have been in general use among the Dutch in the East. [It is one of those words "which the Portuguese or Spaniards very early caught up in one part of the world, and naturalised in another." (N.E.D.)].
1530.—"The country is extravagantly hot; and the rivers are full of Caimans, which are certain water-lizards (lagarti)."—Nunno de Guzman, in Ramusio, iii. 339.
1598.—"In this river (Zaire or Congo) there are living divers kinds of creatures, and in particular, mighty great crocodiles, which the country people there call Caiman."—Pigafetta, in Harleian Coll. of Voyages, ii. 533.
This is an instance of the way in which we so often see a word belonging to a different quarter of the world undoubtingly ascribed to Africa or Asia, as the case may be. In the next quotation we find it ascribed to India.
1631.—"Lib. v. cap. iii. De Crocodilo qui per totam Indiam cayman audit."—Bontius, Hist. Nat. et Med.
1672.—"The figures so represented in Adam's footsteps were ... 41. The King of the Caimans or Crocodiles."—Baldaeus (Germ. ed.), 148.
1692.—"Anno 1692 there were 3 newly arrived soldiers ... near a certain gibbet that stood by the river outside the boom, so sharply pursued by a Kaieman that they were obliged to climb the gibbet for safety whilst the creature standing up on his hind feet reached with his snout to the very top of the gibbet."—Valentijn, iv. 231.
CAYOLAQUE, s. Kayu = 'wood,' in Malay. Laka is given in Crawfurd's Malay Dict. as "name of a red wood used as incense, Myristica iners." In his Descr. Dict. he calls it the "Tanarius major; a tree with a red-coloured wood, a native of Sumatra, used in dyeing and in pharmacy. It is an article of considerable native trade, and is chiefly exported to China" (p. 204). [The word, according to Mr. Skeat, is probably kayu, 'wood,' lakh, 'red dye' (see LAC), but the combined form is not in Klinkert, nor are these trees in Ridley's plant list. He gives Laka-laka or Malaka as the name of the phyllanthus emblica.]
1510.—"There also grows here a very great quantity of lacca for making red colour, and the tree of this is formed like our trees which produce walnuts."—Varthema, p. 238.
c. 1560.—"I being in Cantan there was a rich (bed) made wrought with Iuorie, and of a sweet wood which they call Cayolaque, and of Sandalum, that was prized at 1500 Crownes."—Gaspar Da Cruz, in Purchas, iii. 177.
1585.—"Euerie morning and euening they do offer vnto their idolles frankensence, benjamin, wood of aguila, and cayolaque, the which is maruelous sweete...."—Mendoza's China, i. 58.
CAZEE, KAJEE, &c., s. Arab. ḳāḍi, 'a judge,' the letter ẓwād with which it is spelt being always pronounced in India like a z. The form Cadi, familiar from its use in the old version of the Arabian Nights, comes to us from the Levant. The word with the article, al-ḳāḍi, becomes in Spanish alcalde;[58] not alcaide, which is from ḳā'īd, 'a chief'; nor alguacil, which is from wazīr. So Dozy and Engelmann, no doubt correctly. But in Pinto, cap. 8, we find "ao guazil da justica q̃ em elles he como corregedor entre nos"; where guazil seems to stand for ḳāẓī.
It is not easy to give an accurate account of the position of the Ḳāẓī in British India, which has gone through variations of which a distinct record cannot be found. But the following outline is believed to be substantially correct.
Under Adawlut I have given a brief sketch of the history of the judiciary under the Company in the Bengal Presidency. Down to 1790 the greater part of the administration of criminal justice was still in the hands of native judges, and other native officials of various kinds, though under European supervision in varying forms. But the native judiciary, except in positions of a quite subordinate character, then ceased. It was, however, still in substance Mahommedan law that was administered in criminal cases, and also in civil cases between Mahommedans as affecting succession, &c. And a Ḳāẓī and a Muftī were retained in the Provincial Courts of Appeal and Circuit as the exponents of Mahommedan law, and the deliverers of a formal Futwa. There was also a Ḳāẓī-al-Ḳoẓāt, or chief Ḳāẓī of Bengal, Behar and Orissa, attached to the Sudder Courts of Dewanny and Nizamut, assisted by two Muftis, and these also gave written futwas on references from the District Courts.
The style of Ḳāẓī and Muftī presumably continued in formal existence in connection with the Sudder Courts till the abolition of these in 1862; but with the earlier abolition of the Provincial Courts in 1829-31 it had quite ceased, in this sense, to be familiar. In the District Courts the corresponding exponents were in English officially designated Law-officers, and, I believe, in official vernacular, as well as commonly among Anglo-Indians, Moolvees (q.v.).
Under the article LAW-OFFICER, it will be seen that certain trivial cases were, at the discretion of the magistrate, referred for disposal by the Law-officer of the district. And the latter, from this fact, as well as, perhaps, from the tradition of the elders, was in some parts of Bengal popularly known as 'the Ḳāẓī.' "In the Magistrate's office," writes my friend Mr. Seton-Karr, "it was quite common to speak of this case as referred to the joint magistrate, and that to the Chhoṭā Ṣāḥib (the Assistant), and that again to the Ḳāẓī."
But the duties of the Ḳāẓī popularly so styled and officially recognised, had, almost from the beginning of the century, become limited to certain notarial functions, to the performance {178b}and registration of Mahommedan marriages, and some other matters connected with the social life of their co-religionists. To these functions must also be added as regards the 18th century and the earlier years of the 19th, duties in connection with distraint for rent on behalf of Zemindars. There were such Ḳāẓīs nominated by Government in towns and pergunnas, with great variation in the area of the localities over which they officiated. The Act XI. of 1864, which repealed the laws relating to law-officers, put an end also to the appointment by Government of Kāẓīs. But this seems to have led to inconveniences which were complained of by Mahommedans in some parts of India, and it was enacted in 1880 (Act XII., styled "The Ḳāẓīs Act") that with reference to any particular locality, and after consultation with the chief Musulman residents therein, the Local Government might select and nominate a Ḳāẓī or Ḳāẓīs for that local area (see FUTWA, LAW-OFFICER, MUFTY).
1338.—"They treated me civilly and set me in front of their mosque during their Easter; at which mosque, on account of its being their Easter, there were assembled from divers quarters a number of their Cadini, i.e. of their bishops."—Letter of Friar Pascal, in Cathay, &c., 235.
c. 1461.—
"Au tems que Alexandre regna
Ung hom, nommé Diomedès
Devant luy, on luy amena
Engrilloné poulces et detz
Comme ung larron; car il fut des
Escumeurs que voyons courir
Si fut mys devant le cadès,
Pour estre jugé à mourir."
Gd. Testament de Fr. Villon.
[c. 1610.—"The Pandiare is called Cady in the Arabic tongue."—Pyrard de Laval, Hak. Soc. i. 199.]
1648.—"The Government of the city (Ahmedabad) and surrounding villages rests with the Governor Coutewael, and the Judge (whom they call Casgy)."—Van Twist, 15.
[1670.—"The Shawbunder, Cozzy."—Hedges, Diary, Hak. Soc. ii. ccxxix.]
1673.—"Their Law-Disputes, they are soon ended; the Governor hearing; and the Cadi or Judge determining every Morning."—Fryer, 32.
" "The Cazy or Judge ... marries them."—Ibid. 94.
1683.—"... more than that 3000 poor men gathered together, complaining with full mouths of his exaction and injustice {179a}towards them: some demanding Rupees 10, others Rupees 20 per man, which Bulchund very generously paid them in the Cazee's presence...."—Hedges, Nov. 5; [Hak. Soc. i. 134; Cazze in i. 85].
1684.—"January 12.—From Cassumbazar 'tis advised ye Merchants and Picars appeal again to ye Cazee for Justice against Mr. Charnock. Ye Cazee cites Mr. Charnock to appear...."—Ibid. i. 147.
1689.—"A Cogee ... who is a Person skilled in their Law."—Ovington, 206.
Here there is perhaps a confusion with Coja.
1727.—"When the Man sees his Spouse, and likes her, they agree on the Price and Term of Weeks, Months, or Years, and then appear before the Cadjee or Judge."—A. Hamilton, i. 52.
1763.—"The Cadi holds court in which are tried all disputes of property."—Orme, i. 26 (ed. 1803).
1773.—"That they should be mean, weak, ignorant, and corrupt, is not surprising, when the salary of the principal judge, the Cazi, does not exceed Rs. 100 per month."—From Impey's Judgment in the Patna Cause, quoted by Stephen, ii. 176.
1790.—"Regulations for the Court of Circuit.
"24. That each of the Courts of Circuit be superintended by two covenanted civil servants of the Company, to be denominated Judges of the Courts of Circuit ... assisted by a Kazi and a Mufti."—Regns. for the Adm. of Justice in the Foujdarry or Criminal Courts in Bengal, Bahar, and Orissa. Passed by the G.-G. in C., Dec. 3, 1790.
"32. ... The charge against the prisoner, his confession, which is always to be received with circumspection and tenderness ... &c. ... being all heard and gone through in his presence and that of the Kazi and Mufti of the Court, the Kazi and Mufti are then to write at the bottom of the record of the proceedings held in the trial, the futwa or law as applicable to the circumstances of the case.... The Judges of the Court shall attentively consider such futwa, &c."—Ibid.
1791.—"The Judges of the Courts of Circuit shall refer to the Kazi and Mufti of their respective Courts all questions on points of law ... regarding which they may not have been furnished with specific instructions from the G.-G. in C. or the Nizamut Adawlut...."—Regn. No. XXXV.
1792.—Revenue Regulation of July 20, No. lxxv., empowers Landholders and Farmers of Land to distrain for Arrears of Rent or Revenue. The "Kazi of the Pegunnah" is the official under the Collector, repeatedly referred to as regulating and carrying out the distraint. So, again, in Regn. XVII. of 1793.
1793.—"lxvi. The Nizamut Adaulat shall continue to be held at Calcutta.
"lxvii. The Court shall consist of the {179b}Governor-General, and the members of the Supreme Council, assisted by the head Cauzy of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa, and two Muftis." (This was already in the Regulations of 1791.)—Regn. IX. of 1793. See also quotation under MUFTY.
1793.—"I. Cauzies are stationed at the Cities of Patna, Dacca, and Moorshedabad, and the principal towns, and in the pergunnahs, for the purpose of preparing and attesting deeds of transfer, and other law papers, celebrating marriages, and performing such religious duties or ceremonies prescribed by the Mahommedan law, as have been hitherto discharged by them under the British Government."—Reg. XXXIX. of 1793.
1803.—Regulation XLVI. regulates the appointment of Cauzy in towns and pergunnahs, "for the purpose of preparing and attesting deeds of transfer, and other law papers, celebrating marriages," &c., but makes no allusion to judicial duties.
1824.—"Have you not learned this common saying—'Every one's teeth are blunted by acids except the cadi's, which are by sweets.'"—Hajji Baba, ed. 1835, p. 316.
1864.—"Whereas it is unnecessary to continue the offices of Hindoo and Mahomedan Law-Officers, and is inexpedient that the appointment of Cazee-ool-Cozaat, or of City, Town, or Pergunnah Cazees should be made by Government, it is enacted as follows:—
* * * * *
"II. Nothing contained in this Act shall be construed so as to prevent a Cazee-ool-Cozaat or other Cazee from performing, when required to do so, any duties or ceremonies prescribed by the Mahomedan Law."—Act No. XI. of 1864.
1880.—"... whereas by the usage of the Muhammadan community in some parts of India the presence of Kázís appointed by the Government is required at the celebration of marriages...."—Bill introduced into the Council of Gov.-Gen., January 30, 1880.
" "An Act for the appointment of persons to the office of Kází.
"Whereas by the preamble to Act No. XI. of 1864 ... it was (among other things declared inexpedient, &c.) ... and whereas by the usage of the Muhammadan community in some parts of India the presence of Kázís appointed by the Government is required at the celebration of marriages and the performance of certain other rites and ceremonies, and it is therefore expedient that the Government should again be empowered to appoint such persons to the office of Kází; It is hereby enacted...."—Act No. XII. of 1880.
1885.—"To come to something more specific. 'There were instances in which men of the most venerable dignity, persecuted without a cause by extortioners, died of rage and shame in the gripe of the vile alguazils of Impey'" [Macaulay's Essay on Hastings].
"Here we see one Cazi turned into an indefinite number of 'men of the most venerable dignity'; a man found guilty by legal process of corruptly oppressing a helpless widow into 'men of the most venerable dignity' persecuted by extortioners without a cause; and a guard of sepoys, with which the Supreme Court had nothing to do, into 'vile alguazils of Impey.'"—Stephen, Story of Nuncomar, ii. 250-251.
Cazee also is a title used in Nepal for Ministers of State.
1848.—"Kajees, Counsellors, and mitred Lamas were there, to the number of twenty, all planted with their backs to the wall, mute and motionless as statues."—Hooker's Himalayan Journals, ed. 1855, i. 286.
1868.—"The Durbar (of Nepal) have written to the four Kajees of Thibet enquiring the reason."—Letter from Col. R. Lawrence, dated 1st April, regarding persecution of R. C. Missions in Tibet.
1873.—
"Ho, lamas, get ye ready,
Ho, Kazis, clear the way;
The chief will ride in all his pride
To the Rungeet Stream to-day."
Wilfrid Heeley, A Lay of Modern Darjeeling.
CEDED DISTRICTS, n.p. A name applied familiarly at the beginning of the last century to the territory south of the Tungabhadra river, which was ceded to the Company by the Nizam in 1800, after the defeat and death of Tippoo Sultan. This territory embraced the present districts of Bellary, Cuddapah, and Karnúl, with the Palnād, which is now a subdivision of the Kistna District. The name perhaps became best known in England from Gleig's Life of Sir Thomas Munro, that great man having administered these provinces for 7 years.
1873.—"We regret to announce the death of Lieut.-General Sir Hector Jones, G.C.B., at the advanced age of 86. The gallant officer now deceased belonged to the Madras Establishment of the E. I. Co.'s forces, and bore a distinguished part in many of the great achievements of that army, including the celebrated march into the Ceded Districts under the Collector of Canara, and the campaign against the Zemindar of Madura."—The True Reformer, p. 7 ("wrot serkestick").
CELÉBES, n.p. According to Crawfurd this name is unknown to the natives, not only of the great island itself, but of the Archipelago generally, and must have arisen from some Portuguese misunderstanding or {180b}corruption. There appears to be no general name for the island in the Malay language, unless Tanah Bugis, 'the Land of the Bugis people' [see BUGIS]. It seems sometimes to have been called the Isle of Macassar. In form Celebes is apparently a Portuguese plural, and several of their early writers speak of Celebes as a group of islands. Crawfurd makes a suggestion, but not very confidently, that Pulo sālabih, 'the islands over and above,' might have been vaguely spoken of by the Malays, and understood by the Portuguese as a name. [Mr. Skeat doubts the correctness of this explanation: "The standard Malay form would be Pulau Sălĕbih, which in some dialects might be Să-lĕbis, and this may have been a variant of Si-Lĕbih, a man's name, the si corresponding to the def. art. in the Germ. phrase 'der Hans.' Numerous Malay place-names are derived from those of people."]
1516.—"Having passed these islands of Maluco ... at a distance of 130 leagues, there are other islands to the west, from which sometimes there come white people, naked from the waist upwards.... These people eat human flesh, and if the King of Maluco has any person to execute, they beg for him to eat him, just as one would ask for a pig, and the islands from which they come are called Celebe."—Barbosa, 202-3.
c. 1544.—"In this street (of Pegu) there were six and thirty thousand strangers of two and forty different Nations, namely ... Papuaas, Selebres, Mindanaos ... and many others whose names I know not."—F. M. Pinto, in Cogan's tr., p. 200.
1552.—"In the previous November (1529) arrived at Ternate D. Jorge de Castro who came from Malaca by way of Borneo in a junk ... and going astray passed along the Isle of Macaçar...."—Barros, Dec. IV. i. 18.
" "The first thing that the Samarao did in this was to make Tristão de Taide believe that in the Isles of the Celebes, and of the Macaçares and in that of Mindinão there was much gold."—Ibid. vi. 25.
1579.—"The 16 Day (December) wee had sight of the Iland Celebes or Silebis."—Drake, World Encompassed (Hak. Soc.), p. 150.
1610.—"At the same time there were at Ternate certain ambassadors from the Isles of the Macaçás (which are to the west of those of Maluco—the nearest of them about 60 leagues).... These islands are many, and joined together, and appear in the sea-charts thrown into one very big island, extending, as the sailors say, North and South, and having near 100 leagues of compass. And {181a}this island imitates the shape of a big locust, the head of which (stretching to the south to 5½ degrees) is formed by the Cellebes (são os Cellebes), which have a King over them.... These islands are ruled by many Kings, differing in language, in laws, and customs...."—Couto, Dec. V. vii. 2.
CENTIPEDE, s. This word was perhaps borrowed directly from the Portuguese in India (centopèa). [The N.E.D. refers it to Sp.]
1662.—"There is a kind of worm which the Portuguese call un centopè, and the Dutch also 'thousand-legs' (tausend-bein)."—T. Saal, 68.
CERAM, n.p. A large island in the Molucca Sea, the Serang of the Malays. [Klinkert gives the name Seran, which Mr. Skeat thinks more likely to be correct.]
CERAME, CARAME, &c., s. The Malayālim śrāmbi, a gatehouse with a room over the gate, and generally fortified. This is a feature of temples, &c., as well as of private houses, in Malabar [see Logan, i. 82]. The word is also applied to a chamber raised on four posts. [The word, as Mr. Skeat notes, has come into Malay as sarambi or serambi, 'a house veranda.']
[1500.—"He was taken to a cerame, which is a one-storied house of wood, which the King had erected for their meeting-place."—Castañeda, Bk. I. cap. 33, p. 103.]
1551.—"... where stood the çarame of the King, which is his temple...."—Ibid. iii. 2.
1552.—"Pedralvares ... was carried ashore on men's shoulders in an andor till he was set among the Gentoo Princes whom the Çamorin had sent to receive him at the beach, whilst the said Çamorin himself was standing within sight in the cerame awaiting his arrival."—Barros, I. v. 5.
1557.—The word occurs also in D'Alboquerque's Commentaries (Hak. Soc. tr. i. 115), but it is there erroneously rendered "jetty."
1566.—"Antes de entrar no Cerame vierão receber alguns senhores dos que ficarão com el Rei."—Dam. de Goes, Chron. 76 (ch. lviii.).
CEYLON, n.p. This name, as applied to the great island which hangs from India like a dependent jewel, becomes usual about the 13th century. But it can be traced much earlier. For it appears undoubtedly to be formed from Sinhala or Sihala, 'lions' abode,' the name adopted in the island {181b}itself at an early date. This, with the addition of 'Island,' Sihala-dvīpa, comes down to us in Cosmas as Σιελεδίβα. There was a Pali form Sihalan, which, at an early date, must have been colloquially shortened to Silan, as appears from the old Tamil name Ilam (the Tamil having no proper sibilant), and probably from this was formed the Sarandīp and Sarandīb which was long the name in use by mariners of the Persian Gulf.
It has been suggested by Mr. Van der Tuuk, that the name Sailan or Silan was really of Javanese origin, as sela (from Skt. śilā, 'a rock, a stone') in Javanese (and in Malay) means 'a precious stone,' hence Pulo Selan would be 'Isle of Gems.' ["This," writes Mr. Skeat, "is possible, but it remains to be proved that the gem was not named after the island (i.e. 'Ceylon stone'). The full phrase in standard Malay is batu Sēlan, where batu means 'stone.' Klinkert merely marks Sailan (Ceylon) as Persian."] The island was really called anciently Ratnadvīpa, 'Isle of Gems,' and is termed by an Arab historian of the 9th century Jazīrat-al yaḳūt, 'Isle of Rubies.' So that there is considerable plausibility in Van der Tuuk's suggestion. But the genealogy of the name from Sihala is so legitimate that the utmost that can be conceded is the possibility that the Malay form Selan may have been shaped by the consideration suggested, and may have influenced the general adoption of the form Sailān, through the predominance of Malay navigation in the Middle Ages.
c. 362.—"Unde nationibus Indicis certatim cum donis optimates mittentibus ante tempus, ab usque Divis et Serendivis."—Ammianus Marcellinus, XXI. vii.
c. 430.—"The island of Lanka was called Sihala after the Lion; listen ye to the narration of the island which I (am going to) tell: 'The daughter of the Vanga King cohabited in the forest with a lion.'"—Dipavanso, IX. i. 2.
c. 545.—"This is the great island in the ocean, lying in the Indian Sea. By the Indians it is called Sielediba, but by the Greeks Taprobane."—Cosmas, Bk. xi.
851.—"Near Sarandīb is the pearl-fishery. Sarandīb is entirely surrounded by the sea."—Relation des Voyages, i. p. 5.
c. 940.—"Mas'ūdi proceeds: In the Island Sarandīb, I myself witnessed that when the King was dead, he was placed on a chariot with low wheels so that his hair {182a}dragged upon the ground."—In Gildemeister, 154.
c. 1020.—"There you enter the country of Lárán, where is Jaimúr, then Malia, then Kánji, then Darúd, where there is a great gulf in which is Sinkaldíp (Sinhala dvīpa), or the island of Sarandíp."—Al Birūnī, as given by Rashíduddín, in Elliot, i. 66.
1275.—"The island Sailan is a vast island between China and India, 80 parasangs in circuit.... It produces wonderful things, sandal-wood, spikenard, cinnamon, cloves, brazil, and various spices...."—Kazvīnī, in Gildemeister, 203.
1298.—"You come to the island of Seilan, which is in good sooth the best island of its size in the world."—Marco Polo, Bk. iii. ch. 14.
c. 1300.—"There are two courses ... from this place (Ma'bar); one leads by sea to Chín and Máchín, passing by the island of Sílán."—Rashíduddín, in Elliot, i. 70.
1330.—"There is another island called Sillan.... In this ... there is an exceeding great mountain, of which the folk relate that it was upon it that Adam mourned for his son one hundred years."—Fr. Odoric, in Cathay, i. 98.
c. 1337.—"I met in this city (Brussa) the pious sheikh 'Abd-Allah-al-Miṣrī, the Traveller. He was a worthy man. He made the circuit of the earth, except he never entered China, nor the island of Sarandīb, nor Andalusia, nor the Sūdān. I have excelled him, for I have visited those regions."—Ibn Batuta, ii. 321.
c. 1350.—"... I proceeded to sea by Seyllan, a glorious mountain opposite to Paradise.... 'Tis said the sound of the waters falling from the fountain of Paradise is heard there."—Marignolli, in Cathay, ii. 346.
c. 1420.—"In the middle of the Gulf there is a very noble island called Zeilam, which is 3000 miles in circumference, and on which they find by digging, rubies, saffires, garnets, and those stones which are called cats'-eyes."—N. Conti, in India in the XVth Century, 7.
1498.—"... much ginger, and pepper, and cinnamon, but this is not so fine as that which comes from an island which is called Cillam, and which is 8 days distant from Calicut."—Roteiro de V. da Gama, 88.
1514.—"Passando avanti intra la terra e il mare si truova l'isola di Zolan dove nasce la cannella...."—Giov. da Empoli, in Archiv. Stor. Ital., Append. 79.
1516.—"Leaving these islands of Mahaldiva ... there is a very large and beautiful island which the Moors, Arabs, and Persians call Ceylam, and the Indians call it Ylinarim."—Barbosa, 166.
1586.—"This Ceylon is a brave Iland, very fruitful and fair."—Hakl. ii. 397.
[1605.—"Heare you shall buie theis Comodities followinge of the Inhabitants of Selland."—Birdwood, First Letter Book, 84.
[1615.—"40 tons of cinnamon of Celand."—Foster, Letters, iii. 277.
[ " "Here is arrived a ship out of Holland ... at present turning under Silon."—Ibid. iv. 34.]
1682.—"... having run 35 miles North without seeing Zeilon."—Hedges, Diary, July 7; [Hak. Soc. i. 28].
1727.—A. Hamilton writes Zeloan (i. 340, &c.), and as late as 1780, in Dunn's Naval Directory, we find Zeloan throughout.
1781.—"We explored the whole coast of Zelone, from Pt. Pedro to the Little Basses, looked into every port and spoke to every vessel we saw, without hearing of French vessels."—Price's Letter to Ph. Francis, in Tracts, i. 9.
1830.—
"For dearer to him are the shells that sleep
By his own sweet native stream,
Than all the pearls of Serendeep,
Or the Ava ruby's gleam!
Home! Home! Friends—health—repose,
What are Golconda's gems to those?"
Bengal Annual.
CHABEE, s. H. chābī, chābhī, 'a key,' from Port. chave. In Bengali it becomes sābī, and in Tam. sāvī. In Sea-H. 'a fid.'
CHABOOTRA, s. H. chabūtrā and chābūtara, a paved or plastered platform, often attached to a house, or in a garden.
c. 1810.—"It was a burning evening in June, when, after sunset, I accompanied Mr. Sherwood to Mr. Martin's bungalow.... We were conducted to the Cherbuter ... this Cherbuter was many feet square, and chairs were set for the guests."—Autobiog. of Mrs. Sherwood, 345.
1811.—"... the Chabootah or Terrace."—Williamson, V. M. ii. 114.
1827.—"The splendid procession, having entered the royal gardens, approached through a long avenue of lofty trees, a chabootra or platform of white marble canopied by arches of the same material."—Sir W. Scott, The Surgeon's Daughter, ch. xiv.
1834.—"We rode up to the Chabootra, which has a large enclosed court before it, and the Darogha received us with the respect which my showy escort claimed."—Mem. of Col. Mountain, 133.
CHACKUR, s. P.—H. chākar, 'a servant.' The word is hardly ever now used in Anglo-Indian households except as a sort of rhyming amplification to Naukar (see NOKUR): "Naukar-chākar," the whole following. But in a past generation there was a distinction made between naukar, the superior servant, such as a munshī, a gomāshta, {183a}a chobdār, a khānsama, &c., and chākar, a menial servant. Williamson gives a curious list of both classes, showing what a large Calcutta household embraced at the beginning of last century (V. M. i. 185-187).
1810.—"Such is the superiority claimed by the nokers, that to ask one of them 'whose chauker he is?' would be considered a gross insult."—Williamson, i. 187.
CHALIA, CHALÉ, n.p. Chālyam, Chāliyam, or Chālayam; an old port of Malabar, on the south side of the Beypur [see BEYPOOR] R., and opposite Beypur. The terminal station of the Madras Railway is in fact where Chālyam was. A plate is given in the Lendas of Correa, which makes this plain. The place is incorrectly alluded to as Kalyān in Imp. Gazetteer, ii. 49; more correctly on next page as Chalium. [See Logan, Malabar, i. 75.]
c. 1330.—See in Abulfeda, "Shāliyāt, a city of Malabar."—Gildemeister, 185.
c. 1344.—"I went then to Shālyāt, a very pretty town, where they make the stuffs that bear its name [see SHALEE].... Thence I returned to Kalikut."—Ibn Batuta, iv. 109.
1516.—"Beyond this city (Calicut) towards the south there is another city called Chalyani, where there are numerous Moors, natives of the country, and much shipping."—Barbosa, 153.
c. 1570.—"And it was during the reign of this prince that the Franks erected their fort at Shaleeat ... it thus commanded the trade between Arabia and Calicut, since between the last city and Shaleeat the distance was scarcely 2 parasangs."—Tohfut-ul-Mujahideen, p. 129.
1572.—
"A Sampaio feroz succederá
Cunha, que longo tempe tem o leme:
De Chale as torres altas erguerá
Em quanto Dio illustre delle treme."
Camões, x. 61.
By Burton:
"Then shall succeed to fierce Sampaio's powers
Cunha, and hold the helm for many a year,
building of Chale-town the lofty towers,
while quakes illustrious Diu his name to hear."
[c. 1610.—"... crossed the river which separates the Calecut kingdom from that of a king named Chaly."—Pyrard de Laval, Hak. Soc. i. 368.]
1672.—"Passammo Cinacotta situata alla bocca del fiume Ciali, doue li Portughesi hebbero altre volte Fortezza."—P. Vincenzo Maria, 129.
CHAMPA, n.p. The name of a kingdom at one time of great power and importance in Indo-China, occupying the extreme S.E. of that region. A limited portion of its soil is still known by that name, but otherwise as the Binh-Thuān province of Cochin China. The race inhabiting this portion, Chams or Tsiams, are traditionally said to have occupied the whole breadth of that peninsula to the Gulf of Siam, before the arrival of the Khmer or Kambojan people. It is not clear whether the people in question took their name from Champa, or Champa from the people; but in any case the form of Champa is Sanskrit, and probably it was adopted from India like Kamboja itself and so many other Indo-Chinese names. The original Champā was a city and kingdom on the Ganges, near the modern Bhāgalpur. And we find the Indo-Chinese Champa in the 7th century called Mahā-champā, as if to distinguish it. It is probable that the Ζάβα or Ζάβαι of Ptolemy represents the name of this ancient kingdom; and it is certainly the Ṣanf or Chanf of the Arab navigators 600 years later; this form representing Champ as nearly as is possible to the Arabic alphabet.
c. A.D. 640.—"... plus loin à l'est, le royaume de Mo-ho-tchen-po" (Mahāchampā).—Hiouen Thsang, in Pèlerins Bouddh. iii. 83.
851.—"Ships then proceed to the place called Ṣanf (or Chanf) ... there fresh water is procured; from this place is exported the aloes-wood called Chanfi. This is a kingdom."—Relation des Voyages, &c., i. 18.
1298.—"You come to a country called Chamba, a very rich region, having a King of its own. The people are idolaters, and pay a yearly tribute to the Great Kaan ... there are a very great number of Elephants in this Kingdom, and they have lign-aloes in great abundance."—Marco Polo, Bk. iii. ch. 5.
c. 1300.—"Passing on from this, you come to a continent called Jampa, also subject to the Kaan...."—Rashīduddīn, in Elliot, i. 71.
c. 1328.—"There is also a certain part of India called Champa. There, in place of horses, mules, asses, and camels, they make use of elephants for all their work."—Friar Jordanus, 37.
1516.—"Having passed this island (Borney) ... towards the country of Ansiam and China, there is another great island of Gentiles called Champa; which has a King and language of its own, and many elephants.... There also grows in it aloes-wood."—Barbosa, 204.
1552.—"Concorriam todolos navegantes dos mares Occidentaes da India, e dos Orientaes a ella, que são as regiões di Sião, China, Choampa, Cambòja...."—Barros, ii. vi. 1.
1572.—
"Ves, corre a costa, que Champa se chama
Cuja mata he do pao cheiroso ornada."
Camões, x. 129.
By Burton:
"Here courseth, see, the callèd Champa shore,
with woods of odorous wood 'tis deckt and dight."
1608.—"... thence (from Assam) eastward on the side of the northern mountains are the Nangata [i.e. Nāga] lands, the Land of Pukham lying on the ocean, Balgu [Baigu? i.e. Pegu], the land Rakhang, Hamsavati, and the rest of the realm of Munyang; beyond these Champa, Kamboja, etc. All these are in general named Koki."—Taranatha (Tibetan) Hist. of Buddhism, by Schiefner, p. 262. The preceding passage is of great interest as showing a fair general knowledge of the kingdoms of Indo-China on the part of a Tibetan priest, and also as showing that Indo-China was recognised under a general name, viz. Koki.
1696.—"Mr. Bowyear says the Prince of Champa whom he met at the Cochin Chinese Court was very polite to him, and strenuously exhorted him to introduce the English to the dominions of Champa."—In Dalrymple's Or. Repert. i. 67.
CHAMPANA, s. A kind of small vessel. (See SAMPAN.)
CHANDAUL, s. H. Chaṇḍāl, an outcaste, 'used generally for a man of the lowest and most despised of the mixt tribes' (Williams); 'properly one sprung from a Sudra father and Brahman mother' (Wilson). [The last is the definition of the Āīn (ed. Jarrett, iii. 116). Dr. Wilson identifies them with the Kandali or Gondali of Ptolemy (Ind. Caste, i. 57).]
712.—"You have joined those Chandáls and coweaters, and have become one of them."—Chach-Nāmah, in Elliot, i. 193.
[1810.—"Chandela," see quotation under HALALCORE.]
CHANDERNAGORE, n.p. The name of the French settlement on the Hoogly, 24 miles by river above Calcutta, originally occupied in 1673. The name is alleged by Hunter to be properly Chandan(a)-nagara, 'Sandalwood City,' but the usual form points rather to Chandra-nagara, 'Moon City.' {184b}[Natives prefer to call it Farash-danga, or 'The gathering together of Frenchmen.']
1727.—"He forced the Ostenders to quit their Factory, and seek protection from the French at Charnagur.... They have a few private Families dwelling near the Factory, and a pretty little Church to hear Mass in, which is the chief Business of the French in Bengal."—A. Hamilton, ii. 18.
[1753.—"Shandernagor." See quotation under CALCUTTA.]
CHANK, CHUNK, s. H. sankh, Skt. sankha, a large kind of shell (Turbinella rapa) prized by the Hindus, and used by them for offering libations, as a horn to blow at the temples, and for cutting into armlets and other ornaments. It is found especially in the Gulf of Manaar, and the Chank fishery was formerly, like that of the pearl-oysters, a Government monopoly (see Tennent's Ceylon, ii. 556, and the references). The abnormal chank, with its spiral opening to the right, is of exceptional value, and has been sometimes priced, it is said, at a lakh of rupees!
c. 545.—"Then there is Sielediba, i.e. Taprobane ... and then again on the continent, and further back is Marallo, which exports conch-shells (κοχλίους)."—Cosmas, in Cathay, I. clxxviii.
851.—"They find on its shores (of Ceylon) the pearl, and the shank, a name by which they designate the great shell which serves for a trumpet, and which is much sought after."—Reinaud, Relations, i. 6.
1563.—"... And this chanco is a ware for the Bengal trade, and formerly it produced more profit than now.... And there was formerly a custom in Bengal that no virgin in honour and esteem could be corrupted unless it were by placing bracelets of chanco on her arms; but since the Patans came in this usage has more or less ceased; and so the chanco is rated lower now...."—Garcia, f. 141.
1644.—"What they chiefly bring (from Tuticorin) are cloths called cachas[59] ... a large quantity of Chanquo; these are large shells which they fish in that sea, and which supply Bengal, where the blacks make of them bracelets for the arm; also the biggest and best fowls in all these Eastern parts."—Bocarro, MS. 316.
1672.—"Garroude flew in all haste to Brahma, and brought to Kisna the chianko, or kinkhorn, twisted to the right."—Baldaeus, Germ. ed. 521.
1673.—"There are others they call chanquo; the shells of which are the Mother of Pearl."—Fryer, 322.
1727.—"It admits of some Trade, and produces Cotton, Corn, coars Cloth, and Chonk, a Shell-fish in shape of a Periwinkle, but as large as a Man's Arm above the Elbow. In Bengal they are saw'd into Rings for Ornaments to Women's Arms."—A. Hamilton, i. 131.
1734.—"Expended towards digging a foundation, where chanks were buried with accustomed ceremonies."—In Wheeler, iii. 147.
1770.—"Upon the same coast is found a shell-fish called xanxus, of which the Indians at Bengal make bracelets."—Raynal (tr. 1777) i. 216.
1813.—"A chank opening to the right hand is highly valued ... always sells for its weight in gold."—Milburn, i. 357.
[1871.—"The conch or chunk shell."—Mateer, Land of Charity, 92.]
1875.—
| Valuation | |||||
| "Chanks. | Large for Cameos. | per | 100 | 10 | Rs. |
| White, live | " | " | 6 | " | |
| Wh"te, dead | " | " | 3 | " | |
| Table of Customs Duties on Imports into British India up to 1875." |
CHARPOY, s. H. chārpāī, from P. chihār-pāī (i.e. four-feet), the common Indian bedstead, sometimes of very rude materials, but in other cases handsomely wrought and painted. It is correctly described in the quotation from Ibn Batuta.
c. 1350.—"The beds in India are very light. A single man can carry one, and every traveller should have his own bed, which his slave carries about on his head. The bed consists of four conical legs, on which four staves are laid; between they plait a sort of ribbon of silk or cotton. When you lie on it you need nothing else to render the bed sufficiently elastic."—iii. 380.
c. 1540.—"Husain Khan Tashtdár was sent on some business from Bengal. He went on travelling night and day. Whenever sleep came over him he placed himself on a bed (chahār-pāī) and the villagers carried him along on their shoulders."—MS. quoted in Elliot, iv. 418.
1662.—"Turbans, long coats, trowsers, shoes, and sleeping on chárpáis, are quite unusual."—H. of Mir Jumla's Invasion of Assam, transl. by Blochmann, J.A.S.B. xli. pt. i. 80.
1876.—"A syce at Mozuffernuggar, lying asleep on a charpoy ... was killed by a tame buck goring him in the side ... it was supposed in play."—Baldwin, Large and Small Game of Bengal, 195.
1883.—"After a gallop across country, he would rest on a charpoy, or country bed, and hold an impromptu levee of all the {185b}village folk."—C. Raikes, in L. of L. Lawrence, i. 57.
CHATTA, s. An umbrella; H. chhātā, chhatr; Skt. chhatra.
c. 900.—"He is clothed in a waist-cloth, and holds in his hand a thing called a Jatra; this is an umbrella made of peacock's feathers."—Reinaud, Relations, &c. 154.
c. 1340.—"They hoist upon these elephants as many chatrās, or umbrellas of silk, mounted with many precious stones, and with handles of pure gold."—Ibn Batuta, iii. 228.
c. 1354.—"But as all the Indians commonly go naked, they are in the habit of carrying a thing like a little tent-roof on a cane handle, which they open out at will as a protection against sun and rain. This they call a chatyr. I brought one home to Florence with me...."—John Marignolli, in Cathay, &c. p. 381.
1673.—"Thus the chief Naik with his loud Musick ... an Ensign of Red, Swallow-tailed, several Chitories, little but rich Kitsolls (which are the Names of several Countries for Umbrelloes)...."—Fryer, 160.
[1694.—"3 chatters."—Hedges, Diary, Hak. Soc. ii. cclxv.
[1826.—"Another as my chitree-burdar or umbrella-carrier."—Pandurang Hari, ed. 1873, i. 28.]
CHATTY, s. An earthen pot, spheroidal in shape. It is a S. Indian word, but is tolerably familiar in the Anglo-Indian parlance of N. India also, though the H. Ghurra (ghaṛā) is more commonly used there. The word is Tam. shāṭi, shaṭṭi, Tel. chatti, which appears in Pali as chāḍi.
1781.—"In honour of His Majesty's birthday we had for dinner fowl cutlets and a flour pudding, and drank his health in a chatty of sherbet."—Narr. of an Officer of Baillie's Detachment, quoted in Lives of the Lindsays, iii. 285.
1829.—"The chatties in which the women carry water are globular earthen vessels, with a bell-mouth at top."—Mem. of Col. Mountain, 97.
CHAW, s. For chā, i.e. Tea (q.v.).
1616.—"I sent ... a silver chaw pot and a fan to Capt. China wife."—Cock's Diary, i. 215.
CHAWBUCK, s. and v. A whip; to whip. An obsolete vulgarism from P. chābuk, 'alert'; in H. 'a horse-whip.' It seems to be the same as the sjambok in use at the Cape, and apparently carried from India (see the quotation from Van Twist). [Mr. {186a}Skeat points out that Klinkert gives chambok or sambok, as Javanese forms, the standard Malay being chabok or chabuk; and this perhaps suggests that the word may have been introduced by Malay grooms once largely employed at the Cape.]
1648.—"... Poor and little thieves are flogged with a great whip (called Siamback) several days in succession."—Van Twist, 29.
1673.—"Upon any suspicion of default he has a Black Guard that by a Chawbuck, a great Whip, extorts Confession."—Fryer, 98.
1673.—"The one was of an Armenian, Chawbucked through the City for selling of Wine."—Ibid. 97.
1682.—"... Ramgivan, our Vekeel there (at Hugly) was sent for by Permesuradass, Bulchund's servant, who immediately clapt him in prison. Ye same day was brought forth and slippered; the next day he was beat on ye soles of his feet, ye third day Chawbuckt, and ye 4th drub'd till he could not speak, and all to force a writing in our names to pay Rupees 50,000 for custome of ye Silver brought out this year."—Hedges, Diary, Nov. 2; [Hak. Soc. i. 45].
[1684-5.—"Notwithstanding his being a great person was soon stripped and chawbuckt."—Pringle, Madras Consns. iv. 4.]
1688.—"Small offenders are only whipt on the Back, which sort of Punishment they call Chawbuck."—Dampier, ii. 138.
1699.—"The Governor of Surrat ordered the cloth Broker to be tyed up and chawbucked."—Letter from General and Council at Bombay to E. I. C. (in Record Office), 23rd March, 1698-9.
1726.—"Another Pariah he chawbucked 25 blows, put him in the Stocks, and kept him there an hour."—Wheeler, ii. 410.
1756.—"... a letter from Mr. Hastings ... says that the Nabob to engage the Dutch and French to purchase also, had put peons upon their Factories and threatened their Vaquills with the Chaubac."—In Long, 79.
1760.—"Mr. Barton, laying in wait, seized Benautrom Chattogee opposite to the door of the Council, and with the assistance of his bearer and his peons tied his hands and his feet, swung him upon a bamboo like a hog, carried him to his own house, there with his own hand chawbooked him in the most cruel manner, almost to the deprivation of life; endeavoured to force beef into his mouth, to the irreparable loss of his Bramin's caste, and all this without giving ear to, or suffering the man to speak in his own defence...."—Fort Wm. Consn., in Long, 214-215.
1784.—
"The sentinels placed at the door
Are for our security bail;
With Muskets and Chaubucks secure,
They guard us in Bangalore Jail."
Song, by a Gentleman of the Navy
(prisoner with Hyder) in Seton-Karr, i. 18.
1817.—"... ready to prescribe his favourite regimen of the Chabuk for every man, woman, or child who dared to think otherwise."—Lalla Rookh.
CHAWBUCKSWAR, s. H. from P. chābuk-suwār, a rough-rider.
[1820.—"As I turned him short, he threw up his head, which came in contact with mine and made my chabookswar exclaim, Ali mudat, 'the help of Ali.'"—Tod, Personal Narr. Calcutta rep. ii. 723.
[1892.—"A sort of high-stepping caper is taught, the chabuksowar (whip-rider), or breaker, holding, in addition to the bridle, cords tied to the fore fetlocks."—Kipling, Beast and Man in India, 171.]
CHEBULI. The denomination of one of the kinds of Myrobolans (q.v.) exported from India. The true etymology is probably Kābulī, as stated by Thevenot, i.e. 'from Cabul.'
c. 1343.—"Chebuli mirabolani."—List of Spices, &c., in Pegolotti (Della Decima, iii. 303).
c. 1665.—"De la Province de Caboul ... les Mirabolans croissent dans les Montagnes et c'est la cause pourquoi les Orientaux les appelent Cabuly."—Thevenot, v. 172.
CHEECHEE, adj. A disparaging term applied to half-castes or Eurasians (q.v.) (corresponding to the Lip-lap of the Dutch in Java) and also to their manner of speech. The word is said to be taken from chī (Fie!), a common native (S. Indian) interjection of remonstrance or reproof, supposed to be much used by the class in question. The term is, however, perhaps also a kind of onomatopœia, indicating the mincing pronunciation which often characterises them (see below). It should, however, be added that there are many well-educated East Indians who are quite free from this mincing accent.
1781.—
"Pretty little Looking-Glasses,
Good and cheap for Chee-chee Misses."
Hicky's Bengal Gazette, March 17.
1873.—"He is no favourite with the pure native, whose language he speaks as his own in addition to the hybrid minced English (known as chee-chee), which he also employs."—Fraser's Magazine, Oct., 437.
1880.—"The Eurasian girl is often pretty and graceful.... 'What though upon her lips there hung The accents of her tchi-tchi tongue.'"—Sir Ali Baba, 122.
1881.—"There is no doubt that the 'Chee Chee twang,' which becomes so objectionable to every Englishman before he has been {187a}long in the East, was originally learned in the convent and the Brothers' school, and will be clung to as firmly as the queer turns of speech learned in the same place."—St. James's Gazette, Aug. 26.
CHEENAR, s. P. chīnār, the Oriental Plane (Platanus orientalis) and platanus of the ancients; native from Greece to Persia. It is often by English travellers in Persia miscalled sycamore from confusion with the common British tree (Acer pseudoplatanus), which English people also habitually miscall sycamore, and Scotch people miscall plane-tree! Our quotations show how old the confusion is. The tree is not a native of India, though there are fine chīnārs in Kashmere, and a few in old native gardens in the Punjab, introduced in the days of the Moghul emperors. The tree is the Arbre Sec of Marco Polo (see 2nd ed. vol. i. 131, 132). Chīnārs of especial vastness and beauty are described by Herodotus and Pliny, by Chardin and others. At Buyukdereh near Constantinople, is still shown the Plane under which Godfrey of Boulogne is said to have encamped. At Tejrīsh, N. of Teheran, Sir H. Rawlinson tells us that he measured a great chīnār which has a girth of 108 feet at 5 feet from the ground.
c. 1628.—"The gardens here are many ... abounding in lofty pyramidall cypresses, broad-spreading Chenawrs...."—Sir T. Herbert, 136.
1677.—"We had a fair Prospect of the City (Ispahan) filling the one half of an ample Plain, few Buildings ... shewing themselves by reason of the high Chinors, or Sicamores shading the choicest of them...."—Fryer, 259.
" "We in our Return cannot but take notice of the famous Walk between the two Cities of Jelfa and Ispahaun; it is planted with two rows of Sycamores (which is the tall Maple, not the Sycamore of Alkair)."—Ibid. 286.
1682.—"At the elegant villa and garden at Mr. Bohun's at Lee. He shewed me the Zinnar tree or platanus, and told me that since they had planted this kind of tree about the Citty of Ispahan ... the plague ... had exceedingly abated of its mortal effects."—Evelyn's Diary, Sept. 16.
1726.—"... the finest road that you can imagine ... planted in the middle with 135 Sennaar trees on one side and 132 on the other."—Valentijn, v. 208.
1783.—"This tree, which in most parts of Asia is called the Chinaur, grows to the size of an oak, and has a taper straight trunk, with a silver-coloured bark, and its {187b}leaf, not unlike an expanded hand, is of a pale green."—G. Forster's Journey, ii. 17.
1817.—
"... they seem
Like the Chenar-tree grove, where winter throws
O'er all its tufted heads its feathery snows."
Mokanna.
[1835.—"... the island Char chúnar ... a skilful monument of the Moghul Emperor, who named it from the four plane trees he planted on the spot."—Hügel, Travels in Kashmir, 112.
[1872.—"I ... encamped under some enormous chunar or oriental plane trees."—Wilson, Abode of Snow, 370.]
Chīnār is alleged to be in Badakhshān applied to a species of poplar.
CHEENY, s. See under SUGAR.
1810.—"The superior kind (of raw sugar) which may often be had nearly white ... and sharp-grained, under the name of cheeny."—Williamson, V. M. ii. 134.
CHEESE, s. This word is well known to be used in modern English slang for "anything good, first-rate in quality, genuine, pleasant, or advantageous" (Slang Dict.). And the most probable source of the term is P. and H. chīz, 'thing.' For the expression used to be common among Anglo-Indians, e.g., "My new Arab is the real chīz"; "These cheroots are the real chīz," i.e. the real thing. The word may have been an Anglo-Indian importation, and it is difficult otherwise to account for it. [This view is accepted by the N.E.D.; for other explanations see 1 ser. N. & Q. viii. 89; 3 ser. vii. 465, 505.]
CHEETA, s. H. chītā, the Felis jubata, Schreber, [Cynaelurus jubatus, Blanford], or 'Hunting Leopard,' so called from its being commonly trained to use in the chase. From Skt. chitraka, or chitrakāya, lit. 'having a speckled body.'
1563.—"... and when they wish to pay him much honour they call him Ráo; as for example Chita-Ráo, whom I am acquainted with; and this is a proud name, for Chita signifies 'Ounce' (or panther) and this Chita-Rao means 'King as strong as a Panther.'"—Garcia, f. 36.
c. 1596.—"Once a leopard (chīta) had been caught, and without previous training, on a mere hint by His Majesty, it brought in the prey, like trained leopards."—Āīn-i-Akbarī, ed. Blochmann, i. 286.
1610.—Hawkins calls the Cheetas at Akbar's Court 'ounces for game.'—In Purchas, i. 218.
[1785.—"The Cheetah-connah, the place where the Nabob's panthers and other animals for hunting are kept."—Forbes, Or. Mem. 2nd ed. ii. 450.]
1862.—"The true Cheetah, the Hunting Leopard of India, does not exist in Ceylon."—Tennent, i. 140.
1879.—"Two young cheetahs had just come in from Bombay; one of these was as tame as a house-cat, and like the puma, purred beautifully when stroked."—"Jamrach's," in Sat. Review, May 17, p. 612.
It has been ingeniously suggested by Mr. Aldis Wright that the word cheater, as used by Shakspere, in the following passage, refers to this animal:—
Falstaff: "He's no swaggerer, Hostess; a tame cheater i' faith; you may stroke him gently as a puppy greyhound; he'll not swagger."—2nd Part King Henry IV. ii. 4.
Compare this with the passage just quoted from the Saturday Review! And the interpretation would rather derive confirmation from a parallel passage from Beaumont & Fletcher:
"... if you give any credit to the juggling rascal, you are worse than simple widgeons, and will be drawn into the net by this decoy-duck, this tame cheater."—The Fair Maid of the Inn, iv. 2.
But we have not been able to trace any possible source from which Shakspere could have derived the name of the animal at all, to say nothing of the familiar use of it. [The N.E.D. gives no support to the suggestion.]
CHELING, CHELI, s. The word is applied by some Portuguese writers to the traders of Indian origin who were settled at Malacca. It is not found in the Malay dictionaries, and it is just possible that it originated in some confusion of Quelin (see KLING) and Chuli (see CHOOLIA), or rather of Quelin and Chetin (see CHETTY).
1567.—"From the cohabitation of the Chelins of Malaqua with the Christians in the same street (even although in divers houses) spring great offences against God our Lord."—Decrees of the Sacred Council of Goa, in Archiv. Port. Orient., Dec. 23.
1613.—"E depois daquelle porto aberto e franqueado aportarão mercadores de Choromandel; mormente aquelles chelis com roupas...."—Godinho de Eredia, 4v.
" "This settlement is divided into two parishes, S. Thome and S. Estevão, and that part of S. Thome called Campon Chelim extends from the shore of the Jaos Bazar to the N.W. and terminates at the Stone {188b}Bastion; in this part dwell the Chelis of Choromandel."—Godinho de Eredia, 5v. See also f. 22, [and under CAMPOO].
CHELINGO, s. Arab. shalandī, [whence Malayāl. chalanti, Tam. shalangu;] "djalanga, qui va sur l'eau; chalangue, barque, bateau dont les planches sont clouées" (Dict. Tam. Franc., Pondichéry, 1855). This seems an unusual word, and is perhaps connected through the Arabic with the medieval vessel chelandia, chelandria, chelindras, chelande, &c., used in carrying troops and horses. [But in its present form the word is S. Indian.]
1726.—"... as already a Chialeng (a sort of small native row-boat, which is used for discharging and loading cargo)...."—Valentijn, V. Chor. 20.
1746.—
"Chillinga hire . . . . . . . 0 22 0"
Account charges at Fort St. David,
Decr. 31, MS. in India Office.
1761.—"It appears there is no more than one frigate that has escaped; therefore don't lose an instant to send us chelingoes upon chelingoes loaded with rice...."—Lally to Raymond at Pulicat. In Comp. H. of the War in India (Tract), 1761, p. 85.
" "No more than one frigate has escaped; lose not an instant in sending chelingoes upon chelingoes loaded with rice."—Carraccioli's Life of Clive, i. 58.
CHEROOT, s. A cigar; but the term has been appropriated specially to cigars truncated at both ends, as the Indian and Manilla cigars always were in former days. The word is Tam. shuruṭṭu, [Mal. churuṭṭu,] 'a roll (of tobacco).' In the South cheroots are chiefly made at Trichinopoly and in the Godavery Delta, the produce being known respectively as Trichies and Lunkas. The earliest occurrence of the word that we know is in Father Beschi's Tamil story of Parmartta Guru (c. 1725). On p. 1 one of the characters is described as carrying a firebrand to light his pugaiyailai shshuruṭṭu, 'roll (cheroot) of tobacco.' [The N.E.D. quotes cheroota in 1669.] Grose (1750-60), speaking of Bombay, whilst describing the cheroot does not use that word, but another which is, as far as we know, entirely obsolete in British India, viz. Buncus (q.v.).
1759.—In the expenses of the Nabob's entertainment at Calcutta in this year we find:
"60 lbs. of Masulipatam cheroots, Rs. 500."—In Long, 194.
1781.—"... am tormented every day by a parcel of gentlemen coming to the end of my berth to talk politics and smoke cheroots—advise them rather to think of mending the holes in their old shirts, like me."—Hon. J. Lindsay (in Lives of the Lindsays), iii. 297.
 24.
1782.—"Le tabac y réussit très bien; les chiroutes de Manille sont renommées dans toute l'Inde par leur goût agréable; aussi les Dames dans ce pays fument-elles toute la journée."—Sonnerat, Voyage, iii. 43.
1792.—"At that time (c. 1757) I have seen the officers mount guard many's the time and oft ... neither did they at that time carry your fusees, but had a long Pole with an iron head to it.... With this in one Hand and a Chiroot in the other you saw them saluting away at the Main Guard."—Madras Courier, April 3.
1810.—"The lowest classes of Europeans, as also of the natives ... frequently smoke cheroots, exactly corresponding with the Spanish segar, though usually made rather more bulky."—Williamson, V. M. i. 499.
1811.—"Dire que le T'cherout est la cigarre, c'est me dispenser d'en faire la description."—Solvyns, iii.
[1823.—"He amused himself by smoking several carrotes."—Owen, Narr. ii. 50.]
1875.—"The meal despatched, all who were not on duty lay down ... almost too tired to smoke their cheroots before falling asleep."—The Dilemma, ch. xxxvii.
CHERRY FOUJ, s. H. charī-fauj? This curious phrase occurs in the quotations, the second of which explains its meaning. I am not certain what the first part is, but it is most probably charī, in the sense of 'movable,' 'locomotive,' so that the phrase was equivalent to 'flying brigade.' [It may possibly be chaṛhī, for chaṛhnī, in the sense of 'preparation for battle.'] It was evidently a technicality of the Mahratta armies.
1803.—"The object of a cherry fouj, without guns, with two armies after it, must be to fly about and plunder the richest country it can find, not to march through exhausted countries, to make revolutions in cities."—Elphinstone, in Life, i. 59.
1809.—"Two detachments under ... Mahratta chiefs of some consequence, are now employed in levying contributions in different parts of the Jypoor country. Such detachments are called churee fuoj; they are generally equipped very lightly, with but little artillery; and are equally formidable in their progress to friend and foe."—Broughton, Letters from a Mahratta Camp, 128; [ed. 1892, p. 96].
CHETTY, s. A member of any of the trading castes in S. India, answering in every way to the Banyans of W. and N. India. Malayāl. cheṭṭi, Tam. sheṭṭi, [Tel. seṭṭi, in Ceylon seḍḍi]. These have all been supposed to be forms from the Skt. śreshṭi; but C. P. Brown (MS.) denies this, and says "Shetti, a shop-keeper, is plain Telegu," and quite distinct from śreshṭi. [The same view is taken in the Madras Gloss.] Whence then the H. Seṭh (see SETT)? [The word was also used for a 'merchantman': see the quotations from Pyrard on which Gray notes: "I do not know any other authority for the use of the word for merchantships, though it is analogous to our merchantmen.'"]
c. 1349.—The word occurs in Ibn Batuta (iv. 259) in the form ṣăti, which he says was given to very rich merchants in China; and this is one of his questionable statements about that country.
1511.—"The great Afonso Dalboquerque ... determined to appoint Ninachatu, because he was a Hindoo, Governor of the Quilins (Cheling) and Chetins."—Comment. of Af. Dalboq., Hak. Soc. iii. 128; [and see quotation from ibid. iii. 146, under KLING].
1516.—"Some of these are called Chettis, who are Gentiles, natives of the province of Cholmender."—Barbosa, 144.
1552.—"... whom our people commonly call Chatis. These are men with such a genius for merchandise, and so acute in every mode of trade, that among our people when they desire either to blame or praise any man for his subtlety and skill in merchant's traffic they say of him, 'he is a Chatim'; and they use the word chatinar for 'to trade,'—which are words now very commonly received among us."—Barros, I. ix. 3.
c. 1566.—"Ui sono uomini periti che si chiamano Chitini, li quali metteno il prezzo alle perle."—Cesare Federici, in Ramusio, iii. 390.
1596.—"The vessels of the Chatins of these parts never sail along the coast of Malavar nor towards the north, except in a cafilla, in order to go and come more securely, and to avoid being cut off by the Malavars and other corsairs, who are continually roving in those seas."—Viceroy's Proclamation at Goa, in Archiv. Port. Or., fasc. 3, 661.
1598.—"The Souldiers in these dayes give themselves more to be Chettijns [var. lect. Chatiins] and to deale in Marchandise, than to serve the King in his Armado."—Linschoten, 58; [Hak. Soc. i. 202].
[ " "Most of these vessels were Chetils, that is to say, merchantmen."—Pyrard de Laval, Hak. Soc. i. 345.
[c. 1610.—"Each is composed of fifty or sixty war galiots, without counting those of chetie, or merchantmen."—Pyrard de Laval, Hak. Soc. ii. 117.]
1651.—"The Sitty are merchant folk."—Rogerius, 8.
1686.—"... And that if the Chetty Bazaar people do not immediately open their shops, and sell their grain, etc., as usually, that the goods and commodities in their several ships be confiscated."—In Wheeler, i. 152.
1726.—"The Sittis are merchant folk and also porters...."—Valentijn, Choro. 88.
" "The strength of a Bramin is Knowledge; the strength of a King is Courage; the strength of a Bellale (or Cultivator) is Revenue; the strength of a Chetti is Money."—Apophthegms of Ceylon, tr. in Valentijn, v. 390.
c. 1754.—"Chitties are a particular kind of merchants in Madras, and are generally very rich, but rank with the left-hand cast."—Ives, 25.
1796.—"Cetti, mercanti astuti, diligenti, laboriosi, sobrii, frugali, ricchi."—Fra Paolino, 79.
[CHEYLA, s. "Originally a H. word (chelā, Skt. cheṭaka, cheḍaka) meaning 'a servant,' many changes have been rung upon it in Hindu life, so that it has meant a slave, a household slave, a family retainer, an adopted member of a great family, a dependant relative and a soldier in its secular senses; a follower, a pupil, a disciple and a convert in its ecclesiastical senses. It has passed out of Hindu usage into Muhammadan usage with much the same meanings and ideas attached to it, and has even meant a convert from Hinduism to Islam." (Col. Temple, in Ind. Ant., July, 1896, pp. 200 seqq.). In Anglo-Indian usage it came to mean a special battalion made up of prisoners and converts.
[c. 1596.—"The Chelahs or Slaves. His Majesty from religious motives dislikes the name bandah or slave.... He therefore calls this class of men Chelahs, which Hindi term signifies a faithful disciple."—Āīn, Blochmann, i. 253 seqq.
[1791.—"(The Europeans) all were bound on the parade and rings (boly) the badge of slavery were put into their ears. They were then incorporated into a battalion of Cheylas."—In Seton-Karr, ii. 311.
[1795.—"... a Havildar ... compelled to serve in one of his Chela Corps."—Ibid. ii. 407.]
CHIAMAY, n.p. The name of an imaginary lake, which in the maps of the 16th century, followed by most of those {190b}of the 17th, is made the source of most of the great rivers of Further India, including the Brahmaputra, the Irawadi, the Salwen, and the Menam. Lake Chiamay was the counterpart of the African lake of the same period which is made the source of all the great rivers of Africa, but it is less easy to suggest what gave rise to this idea of it. The actual name seems taken from the State of Zimmé (see JANGOMAY) or Chiang-mai.
c. 1544.—"So proceeding onward, he arrived at the Lake of Singipamor, which ordinarily is called Chiammay...."—F. M. Pinto, Cogan's tr., p. 271.
1552.—"The Lake of Chiamai, which stands to the northward, 200 leagues in the interior, and from which issue six notable streams, three of which combining with others form the great river which passes through the midst of Siam, whilst the other three discharge into the Gulf of Bengala."—Barros, I. ix. 1.
1572.—
"Olha o rio Menão, que se derrama
Do grande lago, que Chiamai se chama."
Camões, x. 125.
1652.—"The Countrey of these Brames ... extendeth Northwards from the neerest Peguan Kingdomes ... watered with many great and remarkable Rivers, issuing from the Lake Chiamay, which though 600 miles from the Sea, and emptying itself continually into so many Channels, contains 400 miles in compass, and is nevertheless full of waters for the one or the other."—P. Heylin's Cosmographie, ii. 238.
CHICANE, CHICANERY, ss. These English words, signifying pettifogging, captious contention, taking every possible advantage in a contest, have been referred to Spanish chico, 'little,' and to Fr. chic, chicquet, 'a little bit,' as by Mr. Wedgwood in his Dict. of Eng. Etymology. See also quotation from Saturday Review below. But there can be little doubt that the words are really traceable to the game of chaugān, or horse-golf. This game is now well known in England under the name of Polo (q.v.). But the recent introduction under that name is its second importation into Western Europe. For in the Middle Ages it came from Persia to Byzantium, where it was popular under a modification of its Persian name (verb τζυκανίζειν, playing ground τζυκανιστήριον), and from Byzantium it passed, as a pedestrian game, to Languedoc, where it was called, by a further modification, chicane (see {191a}Ducange, Dissertations sur l'Histoire de St. Louis, viii., and his Glossarium Graecitatis, s.v. τζυκανίζειν; also Ouseley's Travels, i. 345). The analogy of certain periods of the game of golf suggests how the figurative meaning of chicaner might arise in taking advantage of the petty accidents of the surface. And this is the strict meaning of chicaner, as used by military writers.
Ducange's idea was that the Greeks had borrowed both the game and the name from France, but this is evidently erroneous. He was not aware of the Persian chaugān. But he explains well how the tactics of the game would have led to the application of its name to "those tortuous proceedings of pleaders which we old practitioners call barres." The indication of the Persian origin of both the Greek and French words is due to W. Ouseley and to Quatremère. The latter has an interesting note, full of his usual wealth of Oriental reading, in his translation of Makrizi's Mameluke Sultans, tom. i. pt. i. pp. 121 seqq.
The preceding etymology was put forward again in Notes upon Mr. Wedgwood's Dictionary published by one of the present writers in Ocean Highways, Sept. 1872, p. 186. The same etymology has since been given by Littré (s.v.), who says: "Dès lors, la série des sens est: jeu de mail, puis action de disputer la partie, et enfin manœuvres processives"; [and is accepted by the N.E.D. with the reservation that "evidence actually connecting the French with the Greek word appears not to be known"].
The P. forms of the name are chaugān and chauigān; but according to the Bahāri 'Ajam (a great Persian dictionary compiled in India, 1768) the primitive form of the word is chulgān from chūl, 'bent,' which (as to the form) is corroborated by the Arabic sawljān. On the other hand, a probable origin of chaugān would be an Indian (Prakrit) word, meaning 'four corners' [Platts gives chaugāna, 'four-fold'], viz. as a name for the polo-ground. The chulgān is possibly a 'striving after meaning.' The meanings are according to Vüllers (1) any stick with a crook; (2) such a stick used as a drumstick; (3) a crook from which a steel ball is suspended, which was one of the royal insignia, otherwise called kaukaba [see Blochmann, Āīn, vol. i. plate ix. No. 2.]; {191b}(4) (The golf-stick, and) the game of horse-golf.
The game is now quite extinct in Persia and Western Asia, surviving only in certain regions adjoining India, as is specified under Polo. But for many centuries it was the game of kings and courts over all Mahommedan Asia. The earliest Mahommedan historians represent the game of chaugān as familiar to the Sassanian kings; Ferdusi puts the chaugān-stick into the hands of Siāwūsh, the father of Kai Khusrū or Cyrus; many famous kings were devoted to the game, among whom may be mentioned Nūruddīn the Just, Atābek of Syria and the great enemy of the Crusaders. He was so fond of the game that he used (like Akbar in after days) to play it by lamp-light, and was severely rebuked by a devout Mussulman for being so devoted to a mere amusement. Other zealous chaugān-players were the great Saladin, Jalāluddīn Mankbarni of Khwārizm, and Malik Bībars, Marco Polo's "Bendocquedar Soldan of Babylon," who was said more than once to have played chaugān at Damascus and at Cairo within the same week. Many illustrious persons also are mentioned in Asiatic history as having met their death by accidents in the maidān, as the chaugān-field was especially called; e.g. Ḳutbuddīn Ībak of Delhi, who was killed by such a fall at Lahore in (or about) 1207. In Makrizi (I. i. 121) we read of an Amīr at the Mameluke Court called Husāmuddīn Lajīn 'Azīzī the Jukāndār (or Lord High Polo-stick).
It is not known when the game was conveyed to Constantinople, but it must have been not later than the beginning of the 8th century.[60] The fullest description of the game as played there is given by Johannes Cinnamus (c. 1190), who does not however give the barbarian name:
"The winter now being over and the gloom cleared away, he (the Emperor Manuel Comnenus) devoted himself to a certain sober exercise which from the first had been the custom of the Emperors and their sons to practise. This is the manner thereof. A party of young men divide into two equal bands, and in a flat space which has been {192a}measured out purposely they cast a leather ball in size somewhat like an apple; and setting this in the middle as if it were a prize to be contended for they rush into the contest at full speed, each grasping in his right hand a stick of moderate length which comes suddenly to a broad rounded end, the middle of which is closed by a network of dried catgut. Then each party strives who shall first send the ball beyond the goal planted conspicuously on the opposite side, for whenever the ball is struck by the netted sticks through the goal at either side, that gives the victory to the other side. This is the kind of game, evidently a slippery and dangerous one. For a player must be continually throwing himself right back, or bending to one side or the other, as he turns his horse short, or suddenly dashes off at speed, with such strokes and twists as are needed to follow up the ball.... And thus as the Emperor was rushing round in furious fashion in this game, it so happened that the horse which he rode came violently to the ground. He was prostrate below the horse, and as he struggled vainly to extricate himself from its incumbent weight his thigh and hand were crushed beneath the saddle and much injured...."—In Bonn ed. pp. 263-264.
We see from this passage that at Byzantium the game was played with a kind of racket, and not with a polo-stick.
We have not been able to find an instance of the medieval French chicane in this sense, nor does Littré's Dictionary give any. But Ducange states positively that in his time the word in this sense survived in Languedoc, and there could be no better evidence. From Henschel's Ducange also we borrow a quotation which shows chuca, used for some game of ball, in French-Latin, surely a form of chaugān or chicane.
The game of chaugān, the ball (gū or gavī) and the playing-ground (maidān) afford constant metaphors in Persian literature.
c. 820.—"If a man dream that he is on horseback along with the King himself, or some great personage, and that he strikes the ball home, or wins the chukān (ἤτοι τζυκανίζει) he shall find grace and favour thereupon, conformable to the success of his ball and the dexterity of his horse." Again: "If the King dream that he has won in the chukān (ὅτι ἐτζυκανίζεν) he shall find things prosper with him."—The Dream Judgments of Achmet Ibn Seirim, from a MS. Greek version quoted by Ducange in Gloss. Graecitatis.
c. 940.—Constantine Porphyrogenitus, speaking of the rapids of the Danapris or Dnieper, says: "ὁ δὲ τούτο φραγμὸς τοσοῦτον ἐστι στενὸς ὅσον τὸ πλάτος τοῦ τζυκανιστηρίου {192b}("The defile in this case is as narrow as the width of the chukan-ground.")—De Adm. Imp., cap. ix. (Bonn ed. iii. 75).
969.—"Cumque inquisitionis sedicio non modica petit pro Constantino ... ex ea parte qua Zucanistri magnitudo portenditur, Constantinus crines solutus per cancellos caput exposuit, suaque ostensione populi mox tumultum sedavit."—Liudprandus, in Pertz, Mon. Germ., iii. 333.
"... he selected certain of his medicines and drugs, and made a goff-stick (jaukan?) [Burton, 'a bat'] with a hollow handle, into which he introduced them; after which ... he went again to the King ... and directed him to repair to the horse-course, and to play with the ball and goff-stick...."—Lane's Arabian Nights, i. 85-86; [Burton, i. 43].
c. 1030-40.—"Whenever you march ... you must take these people with you, and you must ... not allow them to drink wine or to play at chaughān."—Baihaki, in Elliot, ii. 120.
1416.—"Bernardus de Castro novo et nonnulli alii in studio Tholosano studentes, ad ludum lignobolini sive Chucarum luderunt pro vino et volema, qui ludus est quasi ludus billardi," &c.—MS. quoted in Henschel's Ducange.
c. 1420.—"The Τζυκανιστήριον was founded by Theodosius the Less ... Basilius the Macedonian extended and levelled the Τζυκανιστήριον."—Georgius Codinus de Antiq. Constant., Bonn ed. 81-82.
1516.—Barbosa, speaking of the Mahommedans of Cambay, says: "Saom tam ligeiros e manhosos na sela que a cavalo jogaom ha choqua, ho qual joguo eles tem antre sy na conta em que nos temos ho das canas"—(Lisbon ed. 271); i.e. "They are so swift and dexterous in the saddle that they play choca on horseback, a game which they hold in as high esteem as we do that of the canes" (i.e. the jereed).
1560.—"They (the Arabs) are such great riders that they play tennis on horseback" (que jogão a choca a cavallo).—Tenreiro, Itinerario, ed. 1762, p. 359.
c. 1590.—"His Majesty also plays at chaugán in dark nights ... the balls which are used at night are set on fire.... For the sake of adding splendour to the games ... His Majesty has knobs of gold and silver fixed to the tops of the chaugán sticks. If one of them breaks, any player that gets hold of the pieces may keep them."—Āīn-i-Akbarī, i. 298; [ii. 303].
1837.—"The game of choughan mentioned by Baber is still played everywhere in Tibet; it is nothing but 'hockey on horseback,' and is excellent fun."—Vigne, in J. A. S. Bengal, vi. 774.
In the following I would say, in justice to the great man whose words are quoted, that chicane is used in the quasi-military sense of taking every {193a}possible advantage of the ground in a contest:
1761.—"I do suspect that some of the great Ones have had hopes given to them that the Dutch may be induced to join us in this war against the Spaniards,—if such an Event should take place I fear some sacrifices will be made in the East Indies—I pray God my suspicions may be without foundation. I think Delays and Chicanery is allowable against those who take Advantage of the times, our Distresses, and situation."—Unpublished Holograph Letter from Lord Clive, in India Office Records. Dated Berkeley Square, and indorsed 27th Decr. 1761.
1881.—"One would at first sight be inclined to derive the French chic from the English 'cheek'; but it appears that the English is itself the derived word, chic being an old Romance word signifying finesse, or subtlety, and forming the root of our own word chicanery."—Sat. Rev., Sept. 10, p. 326 (Essay on French Slang).
a. H.—P. chik; a kind of screen-blind made of finely-split bamboo, laced with twine, and often painted on the outer side. It is hung or framed in doorways or windows, both in houses and in tents. The thing [which is described by Roe,] may possibly have come in with the Mongols, for we find in Kovalefski's Mongol Dict. (2174) "Tchik = Natte." The Āīn (i. 226) has chigh. Chicks are now made in London, as well as imported from China and Japan. Chicks are described by Clavijo in the tents of Timour's chief wife:
1404.—"And this tent had two doors, one in front of the other, and the first doors were of certain thin coloured wands, joined one to another like in a hurdle, and covered on the outside with a texture of rose-coloured silk, and finely woven; and these doors were made in this fashion, in order that when shut the air might yet enter, whilst those within could see those outside, but those outside could not see those who were within."—§ cxxvi.
[1616.—His wives "whose Curiositye made them breake little holes in a grate of reede that hung before it to gaze on mee."—Sir T. Roe, Hak. Soc. ii. 321.]
1673.—"Glass is dear, and scarcely purchaseable ... therefore their Windows are usually folding doors, screened with Cheeks or latises."—Fryer, 92.
The pron. cheek is still not uncommon among English people:—"The Coach where the Women were was covered with cheeks, a sort of hanging Curtain, made with Bents variously coloured with Lacker, and Checquered with Packthred so artificially that {193b}you see all without, and yourself within unperceived."—Fryer, 83.
1810.—"Cheeks or Screens to keep out the glare."—Williamson, V. M. ii. 43.
1825.—"The check of the tent prevents effectually any person from seeing what passes within...."—Heber (ed. 1844), i. 192.
b. Short for chickeen, a sum of four rupees. This is the Venetian zecchino, cecchino, or sequin, a gold coin long current on the shores of India, and which still frequently turns up in treasure-trove, and in hoards. In the early part of the 15th century Nicolo Conti mentions that in some parts of India, Venetian ducats, i.e. sequins, were current (p. 30). And recently, in fact in our own day, chick was a term in frequent Anglo-Indian use, e.g. "I'll bet you a chick."
The word zecchino is from the Zecca, or Mint at Venice, and that name is of Arabic origin, from sikka, 'a coining die.' The double history of this word is curious. We have just seen how in one form, and by what circuitous secular journey, through Egypt, Venice, India, it has gained a place in the Anglo-Indian Vocabulary. By a directer route it has also found a distinct place in the same repository under the form Sicca (q.v.), and in this shape it still retains a ghostly kind of existence at the India Office. It is remarkable how first the spread of Saracenic power and civilisation, then the spread of Venetian commerce and coinage, and lastly the spread of English commerce and power, should thus have brought together two words identical in origin, after so widely divergent a career.
The sequin is sometimes called in the South shānārcash, because the Doge with his sceptre is taken for the Shānār, or toddy-drawer climbing the palm-tree! [See Burnell, Linschoten, i. 243.] (See also VENETIAN.)
We apprehend that the gambling phrases 'chicken-stakes' and 'chicken-hazard' originate in the same word.
1583.—"Chickinos which be pieces of Golde woorth seuen shillings a piece sterling."—Caesar Frederici, in Hakl. ii. 343.
1608.—"When I was there (at Venice) a chiquiney was worth eleven livers and twelve sols."—Coryat's Crudities, ii. 68.
1609.—"Three or four thousand chequins were as pretty a proportion to live quietly {194a}on, and so give over."—Pericles, P. of Tyre, iv. 2.
1612.—"The Grand Signiors Custome of this Port Moha is worth yearly unto him 1500 chicquenes."—Saris, in Purchas, i. 348.
[1616.—"Shee tooke chickenes and royalls for her goods."—Sir T. Roe, Hak. Soc. i. 228.]
1623.—"Shall not be worth a chequin, if it were knock'd at an outcry."—Beaum. & Flet., The Maid in the Mill, v. 2.
1689.—"Four Thousand Checkins he privately tied to the flooks of an Anchor under Water."—Ovington, 418.
1711.—"He (the Broker) will charge 32 Shahees per Chequeen when they are not worth 31½ in the Bazar."—Lockyer, 227.
1727.—"When my Barge landed him, he gave the Cockswain five Zequeens, and loaded her back with Poultry and Fruit."—A. Hamilton, i. 301; ed. 1744, i. 303.
1767.—
"Received....
* * * * *
"Chequins 5 at 5. Arcot Rs. 25 0 0"
* * * * *
Lord Clive's Account of his Voyage to India,
in Long, 497.
1866.—
"Whenever master spends a chick,
I keep back two rupees, Sir."
Trevelyan, The Dawk Bungalow.
1875.—"'Can't do much harm by losing twenty chicks,' observed the Colonel in Anglo-Indian argot."—The Dilemma, ch. x.
CHICKEN, s. Embroidery; Chickenwalla, an itinerant dealer in embroidered handkerchiefs, petticoats, and such like. P. chikin or chikīn, 'art needlework.' [At Lucknow, the chief centre of the manufacture, this embroidery was formerly done in silk; the term is now applied to hand-worked flowered muslin. (See Hoey, Monograph, 88, Yusuf Ali, 69.)]