[SEVEN PAGODAS, n.p. The Tam. Mavallipuram, Skt. Mahabalipura, 'the City of the Great Bali,' a place midway between Sadras and Covelong. But in one of the inscriptions (about 620 A.D.) a King, whose name is said to have been Amara, is described as having conquered the chief of the Mahamalla race. Malla was probably the name of a powerful highland chieftain subdued by the Chalukyans. (See Crole, Man. of Chingleput, 92 seq.). Dr. Oppert (Orig. Inhabit., 98) takes the name to be derived from the Malla or Palli race.

SEVEN SISTERS, or BROTHERS. The popular name (Hind. sāt-bhāī) of a certain kind of bird, about the size of a thrush, common throughout most parts of India, Malacocercus terricolor, Hodgson, 'Bengal babbler' of Jerdon. The latter author gives the native name as Seven Brothers, which is the form also given in the quotation below from Tribes on My Frontier. The bird is so named from being constantly seen in little companies of about that number. Its characteristics are well given in the quotations. See also Jerdon's Birds (Godwin-Austen's ed., ii. 59). In China certain birds of starling kind are called by the Chinese pa-ko, or "Eight Brothers," for a like reason. See Collingwood's Rambles of a Naturalist, 1868, p. 319. (See MYNA.)

SEVERNDROOG, n.p. A somewhat absurd corruption, which has been applied to two forts of some fame, viz.:

a. Suvarna-druga, or Suwandrug, on the west coast, about 78 m. below Bombay (Lat. 17° 48′ N.). It was taken in 1755 by a small naval force from Tulajī Angria, of the famous piratical family. [For the commander of the expedition, Commodore James, and his monument on Shooter's Hill, see Douglas, Bombay and W. India, i. 117 seq.]

b. Savandrug; a remarkable double hill-fort in Mysore, standing on a two-topped bare rock of granite, which was taken by Lord Cornwallis's army in 1791 (Lat. 12° 55′). [Wilks (Hist. Sketches, Madras reprint, i. 228, ii. 232) calls it Savendy Droog, and Savendroog.]

SEYCHELLE ISLANDS, n.p. A cluster of islands in the Indian Ocean, politically subordinate to the British Government of Mauritius, lying be-between 3° 40′ & 4° 50′ S. Lat., and about 950 sea-miles east of Mombas on the E. African coast. There are 29 or 30 of the Seychelles proper, of which Mahé, the largest, is about 17 m. long by 3 or 4 wide. The principal islands are granitic, and rise "in the centre of a vast plateau of coral" of some 120 m. diameter.

These islands are said to have been visited by Soares in 1506, and were known vaguely to the Portuguese navigators of the 16th century as the Seven Brothers (Os sete Irmanos or Hermanos), sometimes Seven Sisters (Sete Irmanas), whilst in Delisle's Map of Asia (1700) we have both "les Sept Frères" and "les Sept Sœurs." Adjoining these on the W. or S.W. we find also on the old maps a group called the Almirantes, and this group has retained that name to the present day, constituting now an appendage of the Seychelles.

The islands remained uninhabited, and apparently unvisited, till near the middle of the 18th century. In 1742 the celebrated Mahé de la Bourdonnais, who was then Governor of Mauritius and the Isle of Bourbon, despatched two small vessels to explore the islands of this little archipelago, an expedition which was renewed by Lazare Picault, the commander of one of the two vessels, in 1774, who gave to the principal island the name of Mahé, and to the group the name of Iles de Bourdonnais, for which Iles Mahé (which is the name given in the Neptune Orientale of D'Apres de Manneville, 1775, pp. 29-38, and the charts), seems to have been substituted. Whatever may have been La Bourdonnais' plans with respect to these islands, they were interrupted by his engagement in the Indian campaigns of 1745-46, and his government of Mauritius was never resumed. In 1756 the Sieur Morphey (Murphy?), commander of the frigate Le Cerf, was sent by M. Magon, Governor of Mauritius and Bourbon, to take possession of the Island of Mahé. But it seems doubtful if any actual settlement of the islands by the French occurred till after 1769. [See the account of the islands in Owen's Narrative, ii. 158 seqq.]

A question naturally has suggested itself to us as to how the group came by the name of the Seychelles Islands; and it is one to which no trustworthy answer will be easily found in English, if at all. Even French works of pretension (e.g. the Dictionnaire de la Rousse) are found to state that the islands were named after the "Minister of Marine, Herault de Séchelles, who was eminent for his services and his able administration. He was the first to establish a French settlement there." This is quoted from La Rousse; but the fact is that the only man of the name known to fame is the Jacobin and friend of Danton, along with whom he perished by the guillotine. There never was a Minister of Marine so called! The name Séchelles first (so far as we can learn) appears in the Hydrographie Française of Belin, 1767, where in a map entitled Carte réduite du Canal de Mozambique the islands are given as Les Iles Sécheyles, with two enlarged plans en cartouche of the Port de Sécheyles. In 1767 also Chev. de Grenier, commanding the Heure du Berger, visited the Islands, and in his narrative states that he had with him the chart of Picault, "envoyé par La Bourdonnais pour reconnoître les isles des Sept Frères, lesquelles ont été depuis nommée iles Mahé et ensuite iles Séchelles." We have not been able to learn by whom the latter name was given, but it was probably by Morphey of the Cerf; for among Dalrymple's Charts (pub. 1771), there is a "Plan of the Harbour adjacent to Bat River on the Island Seychelles, from a French plan made in 1756, published by Bellin." And there can be no doubt that the name was bestowed in honour of Moreau de Séchelles, who was Contrôleur-Général des Finances in France in 1754-56, i.e. at the very time when Governor Magon sent Capt. Morphey to take possession. One of the islands again is called Silhouette, the name of an official who had been Commissaire du roi près la Compagnie des Indes, and succeeded Moreau de Séchelles as Controller of Finance; and another is called Praslin, apparently after the Duc de Choiseul Praslin who was Minister of Marine from 1766 to 1770.

The exact date of the settlement of the islands we have not traced. We can only say that it must have been between 1769 and 1772. The quotation below from the Abbé Rochon shows that the islands were not settled when he visited them in 1769; whilst that from Capt. Neale shows that they were settled before his visit in 1772. It will be seen that both Rochon and Neale speak of Mahé as "the island Seychelles, or Sécheyles," as in Belin's chart of 1767. It seems probable that the cloud under which La Bourdonnais fell, on his return to France, must have led to the suppression of his name in connection with the group.

The islands surrendered to the English Commodore Newcome in 1794, and were formally ceded to England with Mauritius in 1815. Seychelles appears to be an erroneous English spelling, now however become established. (For valuable assistance in the preceding article we are indebted to the courteous communications of M. James Jackson, Librarian of the Société de Géographie at Paris, and of M. G. Marcel of the Bibliothèque Nationale. And see, besides the works quoted here, a paper by M. Elie Pujot, in L'Explorateur, vol. iii. (1876) pp. 523-526).

The following passage of Pyrard probably refers to the Seychelles:

SHA, SAH, s. A merchant or banker; often now attached as a surname. It is Hind. sāh and sāhu from Skt. sādhu, 'perfect, virtuous, respectable' 'prudhomme'). See SOWCAR.

SHABASH! interj. 'Well done!' 'Bravo!' Pers. Shā-bāsh. 'Rex fias!'^[243] [Rather shād-bāsh, 'Be joyful.']

SHABUNDER, s. Pers. Shāh-bandar, lit. 'King of the Haven,' Harbour-Master. This was the title of an officer at native ports all over the Indian seas, who was the chief authority with whom foreign traders and ship-masters had to transact. He was often also head of the Customs. Hence the name is of prominent and frequent occurrence in the old narratives. Portuguese authors generally write the word Xabander; ours Shabunder or Sabundar. The title is not obsolete, though it does not now exist in India; the quotation from Lane shows its recent existence in Cairo, [and the Persians still call their Consuls Shāh-bandar (Burton, Ar. Nights, iii. 158)]. In the marine Malay States the Shābandar was, and probably is, an important officer of State. The passages from Lane and from Tavernier show that the title was not confined to seaports. At Aleppo Thevenot (1663) calls the corresponding official, perhaps by a mistake, 'Scheik Bandar' (Voyages, iii. 121). [This is the office which King Mihrjān conferred upon Sindbad the Seaman, when he made him "his agent for the port and registrar of all ships that entered the harbour" (Burton, iv. 351)].

SHADDOCK, s. This name properly belongs to the West Indies, having been given, according to Grainger, from that of the Englishman who first brought the fruit thither from the East, and who was, according to Crawfurd, an interloper captain, who traded to the Archipelago about the time of the Revolution, and is mentioned by his contemporary Dampier. The fruit is the same as the pommelo (q.v.). And the name appears from a modern quotation below to be now occasionally used in India. [Nothing definite seems to be known of this Capt. Shaddock. Mr. R. C. A. Prior (7 ser. N. & Q., vii. 375) writes: "Lunan, in 'Hortus Jamaicensis,' vol. ii. p. 171, says, 'This fruit is not near so large as the shaddock, which received its name from a Capt. Shaddock, who first brought the plant from the East Indies.' The name of the captain is believed to have been Shattock, one not uncommon in the west of Somersetshire. Sloane, in his 'Voyage to Jamaica,' 1707, vol. i. p. 41 says, 'The seed of this was first brought to Barbados by one Capt. Shaddock, commander of an East Indian ship, who touch'd at that island in his passage to England, and left its seed there.'" Watt (Econ. Dict. ii. 349) remarks that the Indian vernacular name Batāvī nībū, 'Batavian lime,' suggests its having been originally brought from Batavia.]

SHADE (TABLE-SHADE, WALL-SHADE), s. A glass guard to protect a candle or simple oil-lamp from the wind. The oldest form, in use at the beginning of the last century, was a tall glass cylinder which stood on the table, the candlestick and candle being placed bodily within in. In later days the universal form has been that of an inverted dome fitting into the candlestick, which has an annular socket to receive it. The wall-shade is a bracket attached to the wall, bearing a candle or cocoa-nut oil lamp, protected by such a shade. In the wine-drinking days of the earlier part of last century it was sometimes the subject of a challenge, or forfeit, for a man to empty a wall-shade filled with claret. The second quotation below gives a notable description of a captain's outfit when taking the field in the 18th century.

SHAGREEN, s. This English word,—French chagrin; Ital. zigrino; Mid. High Ger. Zager,—comes from the Pers. saghrī, Turk. ṣāghrī, meaning properly the croupe or quarter of a horse, from which the peculiar granulated leather, also called sāghrī in the East, was originally made. Diez considers the French (and English adopted) chagrin in the sense of vexation to be the same word, as certain hard skins prepared in this way were used as files, and hence the word is used figuratively for gnawing vexation, as (he states) the Ital. lima also is (Etym. Worterbuch, ed. 1861, ii. 240). He might have added the figurative origin of tribulation. [This view is accepted by the N.E.D.; but Prof. Skeat (Concise Dict.) denies its correctness.]

SHAITAN, Ar. 'The Evil One; Satan.' Shaitān kā bhāī, 'Brother of the Arch-Enemy,' was a title given to Sir C. Napier by the Amīrs of Sind and their followers. He was not the first great English soldier to whom this title had been applied in the East. In the romance of Cœur de Lion, when Richard entertains a deputation of Saracens by serving at table the head of one of their brethren, we are told:

SHALEE, SHALOO, SHELLA, SALLO, &c., s. We have a little doubt as to the identity of all these words; the two latter occur in old works as names of cotton stuffs; the first two (Shakespear and Fallon give sālū) are names in familiar use for a soft twilled cotton stuff, of a Turkey-red colour, somewhat resembling what we call, by what we had judged to be a modification of the word, shaloon. But we find that Skeat and other authorities ascribe the latter word to a corruption of Chalons, which gave its name to certain stuffs, apparently bed-coverlets of some sort. Thus in Chaucer:

[It is exceedingly difficult to disentangle the meanings and derivations of this series of words. In the first place we have saloo, Hind. sālū, the Turkey-red cloth above described; a word which is derived by Platts from Skt. śālū, 'a kind of astringent substance,' and is perhaps the same word as the Tel. sālū, 'cloth.' This was originally an Indian fabric, but has now been replaced in the bazars by an English cloth, the art of dyeing which was introduced by French refugees who came over after the Revolution (see 7 ser. N. & Q. viii. 485 seq.). See PIECE-GOODS, SALOOPAUTS.

Next we have shelah, which may be identical with Hind. selā, which Platts connects with Skt. chela, chaila, 'a piece of cloth,' and defines as "a kind of scarf or mantle (of silk, or lawn, or muslin; usually composed of four breadths depending from the shoulders loosely over the body: it is much worn and given as a present, in the Dakkhan); silk turban." In the Deccan it seems to be worn by men (Herklots, Qanoon-e-Islam, Madras reprint, 18). The Madras Gloss. gives sheelay, Mal. shīla, said to be from Skt. chīra, 'a strip of cloth,' in the sense of clothes; and sullah, Hind. sela, 'gauze for turbans.'

The following may represent the same word, or be perhaps connected with P.—H. chilla, 'a selvage, gold threads in the border of a turban, &c.'

SHAMA, s. Hind. shāmā [Skt. syāma, 'black, dark-coloured.'] A favourite song-bird and cage-bird, Kitta cincla macrura, Gmel. "In confinement it imitates the notes of other birds, and of various animals, with ease and accuracy" (Jerdon). The long tail seems to indicate the identity of this bird rather than the mainā (see MYNA) with that described by Aelian. [Mr. M‘Crindle (Invasion of India, 186) favours the identification of the bird with the Mainā.]

SHAMAN, SHAMANISM, s. These terms are applied in modern times to superstitions of the kind that connects itself with exorcism and "devil-dancing" as their most prominent characteristic, and which are found to prevail with wonderful identity of circumstance among non-Caucasian races over parts of the earth most remote from one another; not only among the vast variety of Indo-Chinese tribes, but among the Dravidian tribes of India, the Veddahs of Ceylon, the races of Siberia, and the red nations of N. and S. America. "Hinduism has assimilated these 'prior superstitions of the sons of Tur,' as Mr. Hodgson calls them, in the form of Tantrika mysteries, whilst, in the wild performance of the Dancing Dervishes at Constantinople, we see, perhaps, again, the infection of Turanian blood breaking out from the very heart of Mussulman orthodoxy" (see Notes to Marco Polo, Bk. II. ch. 50). The characteristics of Shamanism is the existence of certain sooth-sayers or medicine-men, who profess a special art of dealing with the mischievous spirits who are supposed to produce illness and other calamities, and who invoke these spirits and ascertain the means of appeasing them, in trance produced by fantastic ceremonies and convulsive dancings.

SHAMEEANA, SEMIANNA, s. Pers. shamiyāna or shāmiyāna [very doubtfully derived from Pers. shāh, 'king,' miyāna, 'centre'], an awning or flat tent-roof, sometimes without sides, but often in the present day with canauts; sometimes pitched like a porch before a large tent; often used by civil officers, when on tour, to hold their court or office proceedings coram populo, and in a manner generally accessible. [In the early records the word is used for a kind of striped calico.]

SHAMPOO, v. To knead and press the muscles with the view of relieving fatigue, &c. The word has now long been familiarly used in England. The Hind. verb is chāmpnā, from the imperative of which, chāmpō, this is most probably a corruption, as in the case of Bunow, Puckerow, &c. The process is described, though not named, by Terry, in 1616: "Taking thus their ease, they often call their Barbers, who tenderly gripe and smite their Armes and other parts of their bodies instead of exercise, to stirre the bloud. It is a pleasing wantonnesse, and much valued in these hot climes." (In Purchas, ii. 1475). The process was familiar to the Romans under the Empire, whose slaves employed in this way were styled tractator and tractatrix. [Perhaps the earliest reference to the practice is in Strabo (McCrindle, Ancient India, 72).] But with the ancients it seems to have been allied to vice, for which there is no ground that we know in the Indian custom.

SHAN, n.p. The name which we have learned from the Burmese to apply to the people who call themselves the great T'ai, kindred to the Siamese, and occupying extensive tracts in Indo-China, intermediate between Burma, Siam, and China. They are the same people that have been known, after the Portuguese, and some of the early R. C. Missionaries, as Laos (q.v.); but we now give the name an extensive signification covering the whole race. The Siamese, who have been for centuries politically the most important branch of this race, call (or did call themselves—see De la Loubère, who is very accurate) T'ai-Noe or 'Little T'ai,' whilst they applied the term T'ai-Yai, or 'Great T'ai,' to their northern kindred or some part of these;^[244] sometimes also calling the latter T'ai-güt, or the 'Ta'i left behind.' The T'ai or Shan are certainly the most numerous and widely spread race in Indo-China, and innumerable petty Shan States exist on the borders of Burma, Siam, and China, more or less dependent on, or tributary to, their powerful neighbours. They are found from the extreme north of the Irawadi Valley, in the vicinity of Assam, to the borders of Camboja; and in nearly all we find, to a degree unusual in the case of populations politically so segregated, a certain homogeneity in language, civilisation, and religion (Buddhist), which seems to point to their former union in considerable States.

One branch of the race entered and conquered Assam in the 13th century, and from the name by which they were known, Ahom or Aham, was derived, by the frequent exchange of aspirant and sibilant, the name, just used, of the province itself. The most extensive and central Shan State, which occupied a position between Ava and Yunnan, is known in the Shan traditions as Mung-Mau, and in Burma by the Buddhisto-classical name of Kauśāmbi (from a famous city of that name in ancient India) corrupted by a usual process into Ko-Shan-pyi and interpreted to mean 'Nine-Shan-States.' Further south were those T'ai States which have usually been called Laos, and which formed several considerable kingdoms, going through many vicissitudes of power. Several of their capitals were visited and their ruins described by the late Francis Garnier, and the cities of these and many smaller States of the same race, all built on the same general quadrangular plan, are spread broadcast over that part of Indo-China which extends from Siam north of Yunnan.

Mr. Cushing, in the Introduction to his Shan Dictionary (Rangoon, 1881), divides the Shan family by dialectic indications into the Ahoms, whose language is now extinct, the Chinese Shan (occupying the central territory of what was Mau or Kauśāmbi), the Shan (Proper, or Burmese Shan), Laos (or Siamese Shan), and Siamese.

The term Shan is borrowed from the Burmese, in whose peculiar orthography the name, though pronounced Shān, is written rham. We have not met with its use in English prior to the Mission of Col. Symes in 1795. It appears in the map illustrating his narrative, and once or twice in the narrative itself, and it was frequently used by his companion, F. Buchanan, whose papers were only published many years afterwards in various periodicals difficult to meet with. It was not until the Burmese war of 1824-1826, and the active investigation of our Eastern frontier which followed, that the name became popularly known in British India. The best notice of the Shans that we are acquainted with is a scarce pamphlet by Mr. Ney Elias, printed by the Foreign Dept. of Calcutta in 1876 (Introd. Sketch of the Hist. of the Shans, &c.). [The ethnology of the race is discussed by J. G. Scott, Upper Burma Gazetteer, i. pt. i. 187 seqq. Also see Prince Henri d'Orleans, Du Tonkin aux Indes, 1898; H. S. Hallett, Among the Shans, 1885, and A Thousand Miles on an Elephant, 1890.]

Though the name as we have taken it is a Burmese oral form, it seems to be essentially a genuine ethnic name for the race. It is applied in the form Sam by the Assamese, and the Kakhyens; the Siamese themselves have an obsolete Siẽm (written Sieyam) for themselves, and Sieng (Sieyang) for the Laos. The former word is evidently the Sien, which the Chinese used in the compound Sien-lo (for Siam,—see Marco Polo, 2nd ed. Bk. iii. ch. 7, note 3), and from which we got, probably through a Malay medium, our Siam (q.v.). The Burmese distinguish the Siamese Shans as Yudia (see JUDEA) Shans, a term perhaps sometimes including Siam itself. Symes gives this (through Arakanese corruption) as 'Yoodra-Shaan,' and he also (no doubt improperly) calls the Manipūr people 'Cassay Shaan' (see CASSAY).