Dr. D'Acunha has set this English traveller down to 1684, and introduces a quotation from him in illustration of the coinage of the latter period, in his quasi-chronological notes, a new element in the confusion of his readers.
"3 plaghe" in Balbi.
"Serafinno di argento" (ibid.).
"Quando si parla di pardai d'oro s'intendono, tanghe 6, di buona moneta" (Balbi). This does not mean the old pardao d'ouro or golden pagoda, a sense which apparently had now become obsolete, but that in dealing in jewels, &c., it was usual to settle the price in pardaos of 6 good tangas instead of 5 (as we give doctors guineas instead of pounds). The actual pagodas of gold are also mentioned by Balbi, but these were worth, new ones 7½ and old ones 8 tangas of good money.
No doubt, however, foreign coins were used to make up sums, and reduce the bulk of small change.
Sir W. Elliot refers to the Aśoka inscription (Edict II.) as bearing Palaya or Paraya, named with Choḍa (or Chola), Kerala, &c., as a country or people "in the very centre of the Dravidian group ... a reading which, if it holds good, supplies a satisfactory explanation of the origin of the Paria name and nation" (in J. Ethnol. Soc. N.S., 1869, p. 103). But apparently the reading has not held good, for M. Senart reads the name Pām̃dya (see Ind. Ant. ix. 287). [Mr. V. A. Smith writes: "The Girnar text is very defective in this important passage, which is not in the Dhauli text; that text gives only 11 out of the 14 edicts. The capital of the Pām̃diyan Kingdom was Madura. The history of the kingdom is very imperfectly known. For a discussion of it see Sewell, Lists of Antiquities, Madras, vol. ii. Of course it has nothing to do with Parias."]
"... great diversion is found ... in firing balls at birds, particularly the albitross, a large species of the swan, commonly seen within two or three hundred miles round the Cape of Good Hope, and which the French call Montons (Moutons) du Cap."—Munro's Narrative, 13. The confusion of genera here equals that mentioned in our article above.
It is an easy assumption that this export trade from India was killed by the development of machinery in England. We can hardly doubt that this cause would have killed it in time. But it was not left to any such lingering and natural death. Much time would be required to trace the whole of this episode of "ancient history." But it is certain that this Indian trade was not killed by natural causes: it was killed by prohibitory duties. These duties were so high in 1783 that they were declared to operate as a premium on smuggling, and they were reduced to 18 per cent. ad valorem. In the year 1796-97 the value of piece-goods from India imported into England was £2,776,682, or one-third of the whole value of the imports from India, which was £8,252,309. And in the sixteen years between 1793-4 and 1809-10 (inclusive) the imports of Indian piece-goods amounted in value to £26,171,125.
In 1799 the duties were raised. I need not give details, but will come down to 1814, just before the close of the war, when they were, I believe, at a maximum. The duties then, on "plain white calicoes," were:—
| £ | s. | d. | |||
| Warehouse duty | 4 | 0 | 0 | per cent. | |
| War enhancement | 1 | 0 | 0 | " | |
| Customs duty | 50 | 0 | 0 | " | |
| War enhancement | 12 | 10 | 0 | " | |
| Total | 67 | 10 | 0 | per cent. | on value. |
There was an Excise duty upon British manufactured and printed goods of 3½d. per square yard, and of twice that amount on foreign (Indian) calico and muslin printed in Great Britain, and the whole of both duty and excise upon such goods was recoverable as drawback upon re-exportation. But on the exportation of Indian white goods there was no drawback recoverable; and stuffs printed in India were at this time, so far as we can discern, not admitted through the English Custom-house at all until 1826, when they were admitted on a duty of 3½d. per square yard. (See in the Statutes, 43 Geo. III. capp. 68, 69, 70; 54 Geo. III. cap. 36; 6 Geo. IV. cap. 3; also Macpherson's Annals of Commerce, iv. 426).
In Sir A. Arbuthnot's publication of Sir T. Munro's Minutes (Memoir, p. cxxix.) he quotes a letter of Munro's to a friend in Scotland, written about 1825, which shows him surprisingly before his age in the matter of Free Trade, speaking with reference to certain measures of Mr. Huskisson's. The passage ends thus: "India is the country that has been worst used in the new arrangements. All her products ought undoubtedly to be imported freely into England, upon paying the same duties, and no more, which English duties [? manufactures] pay in India. When I see what is done in Parliament against India, I think that I am reading about Edward III. and the Flemings."
Sir A. Arbuthnot adds very appropriately a passage from a note by the late Prof. H. H. Wilson in his continuation of James Mill's History of India (1845, vol. i. pp. 538-539), a passage which we also gladly insert here:
"It was stated in evidence (in 1813) that the cotton and silk goods of India, up to this period, could be sold for a profit in the British market at a price from 50 to 60 per cent. lower than those fabricated in England. It consequently became necessary to protect the latter by duties of 70 or 80 per cent. on their value, or by positive prohibition. Had this not been the case, had not such prohibitory duties and decrees existed, the mills of Paisley and of Manchester would have been stopped in their outset, and could hardly have been again set in motion, even by the powers of steam. They were created by the sacrifice of the Indian manufactures. Had India been independent, she would have retaliated; would have imposed preventive duties upon British goods, and would thus have preserved her own productive industry from annihilation. This act of self-defence was not permitted her; she was at the mercy of the stranger. British goods were forced upon her without paying any duty; and the foreign manufacturer employed the arm of political injustice to keep down and ultimately strangle a competitor with whom he could not contend on equal terms."
See details in the Field of Nov. 15, 1884, p. 667, courteously given in reply to a query from the present writer.
Thomas Rastall or Rastell went out apparently in 1615, in 1616 is mentioned as a "chief merchant of the fleet at Swally Road," and often later as chief at Surat (see Sainsbury, i. 476, and ii. passim).
Pera o sapal, i.e. 'for the marsh.' We cannot be certain of the meaning of this; but we may note that in 1543 the King, as a favour to the city of Goa, and for the commodity of its shipping and the landing of goods, &c., makes a grant "of the marsh inundated with sea-water (do sapal alagado dagoa salgada) which extends along the river-side from the houses of Antonio Correa to the houses of Afonso Piquo, which grant is to be perpetual ... to serve for a landing-place and quay for the merchants to moor and repair their ships, and to erect their bankshalls (bangaçaes), and never to be turned away to any other purpose." Possibly the fines went into a fund for the drainage of this sapal and formation of landing-places. See Archiv. Port. Orient., Fasc. 2, pp. 130-131.
We do not know what word is intended, unless it be a special use of Ar. baṭan, 'the interior or middle of a thing.' Dorn refers to a note, which does not exist in his book. Bellew gives the title conferred by the Prophet as "Pīhtān or Pāthān, a term which in the Syrian language signifies a rudder." Somebody else interprets it as 'a mast.'
P. pāsbān and nigabān, both meaning literally 'watch-keeper,' the one from pās, 'a watch,' in the sense of a division of the day, the other from nigah, 'watch,' in the sense of 'heed' or 'observation.' [Dusaud = Dosādh, a low caste often employed as watchmen.]
Favre gives (Dict. Malay-Français): "Duku" (buwa is = fruit). "Nom d'un fruit de la grosseur d'un œuf de poule; il parait être une grosse espèce de Lansium." (It is L. domesticum.) The Rambeh is figured by Marsden in Atlas to Hist. of Sumatra, 3rd ed. pl. vi. and pl. ix. It seems to be Baccaurea dulcis, Müll. (Pierardia dulcis, Jack).
Müller and (very positively) Fabricius discard Βουτύρου for Βοσμόρου, which "no fellow understands." A. Hamilton (i. 136) mentions "Wheat, Pulse, and Butter" as exports from Mangaroul on this coast. He does not mention Bosmoron!
This is shown by a 17th century Dutch chart in I.O. to be a creek on the west side, very little below Diamond Point. It is also shown in Tassin's Maps of the R. Hoogly, 1835; not later.
This also points to the locality of Diamond Harbour, and the Chingrī Khāl.
These ingots were called saum. Ibn Batuta says: "At one day's journey from Ukak are the hills of the Rūs, who are Christians; they have red hair and blue eyes, they are ugly in feature and crafty in character. They have silver mines, and they bring from their country saum, i.e. ingots of silver, with which they buy and sell in that country. The weight of each ingot is five ounces."—ii. 414. Pegolotti (c. 1340), speaking of the land-route to Cathay, says that on arriving at Cassai (i.e. Kinsay of Marco Polo or Hang-chau-fu) "you can dispose of the sommi of silver that you have with you ... and you may reckon the sommo to be worth 5 golden florins" (see in Cathay, &c., ii. 288-9, 293). It would appear from Wasāf, quoted by Hammer (Geschichte der Goldenen Horde, 224), that gold ingots also were called sum or saum. The ruble is still called sūm in Turkestan.
The term Sonaut rupees, which was of frequent occurrence down to the reformation and unification of the Indian coinage in 1833, is one very difficult to elucidate. The word is properly sanwāt, pl. of Ar. sana(t), a year. According to the old practice in Bengal, coins deteriorated in value, in comparison with the rupee of account, when they passed the third year of their currency, and these rupees were termed Sanwāt or Sonaut. But in 1773, to put a stop to this inconvenience, Government determined that all rupees coined in future should bear the impression of the 19th san or year of Shāh 'Alam (the Mogul then reigning). And in all later uses of the term Sonaut it appears to be equivalent in value to the Farrukhābād rupee, or the modern "Company's Rupee" (which was of the same standard).
Like the Βαιτύλιον which the Greeks got through the Semitic nations. In Photius there are extracts from Damascius (Life of Isidorus the Philosopher), which speak of the stones called Baitulos and Baitulion, which were objects of worship, gave oracles, and were apparently used in healing. These appear, from what is stated, to have been meteoric stones. There were many in Lebanon (see Phot. Biblioth., ed. 1653, pp. 1047, 1062-3).
"It is curious that without any allusion to this work, another on the Veterinary Art, styled Sálotari, and said to comprise in the Sanskrit original 16,000 slokas, was translated in the reign of Sháh Jahán ... by Saiyad 'Abdulla Khán Bahádur Firoz Jang, who had found it among some other Sanskrit books which ... had been plundered from Amar Singh, Ráná of Chitor."
Of the birch-tree, Sansk. bhurja, Betula Bhojpattra, Wall., the exfoliating outer bark of which is called tōz.
In a Greek translation of Shakspere, published some years ago at Constantinople, this line is omitted!
Corvina is applied by Cuvier, Cantor and others to fish of the genus Sciaena of more recent ichthyologists.
"Cybium (Scomber, Linn.) guttatum."—Tennent.
Not a general officer, but a letter from the body of the Council.
On another B.M. copy of an earlier edition than that quoted, and which belonged to Jos. Scaliger, there is here a note in his autograph: "Id est Caesar, non est vox Tatarica, sed Vindica seu Illyrica, ex Latino detorta."
"At pueri ludentes, Rex eris, aiunt,
Si recte facies."—Hor. Ep. I. i.
On the probable indication of Great and Little used in this fashion, see remarks in notes on Marco Polo, bk. iii. ch. 9.
In both written alike, but the final t in Arabic is generally silent, giving sharba, in Persian sharbat. So we get minaret from Pers. and Turk. munārat, in Ar. (and in India) munāra [manār, manāra].
"Sewalick is the term, according to the common acceptation; but Capt. Kirkpatrick proves, from the evident etymology of it, that it should be Sewa-luck."—Note by Rennell.
This is apparently a mistake. The proposals were certainly original with Mr. Yule.
Here is an instance in which scarlet is used for 'scarlet broadcloth':
c. 1665.—"... they laid them out, partly in fine Cotton Cloth ... partly in Silken Stuffs streaked with Gold and Silver, to make Vests and Summer-Drawers of; partly in English Scarlet, to make two Arabian Vests of for their King...."—Bernier, E.T. 43; [ed. Constable, 139].
Togrul Beg, founder of the Seljuk dynasty, called by various Western writers Tangrolipix, and (as here) Strangolipes.
"... hum rio ... que corta do mar todo aquelle terço de terra."... We are not quite sure how to translate. Crawfurd renders: "This (river) intersects the whole island from sea to sea," which seems very free. But it is true, as we have said, that several old maps show Java and Sunda thus divided from sea to sea.
Apparently 30,000 quintals every two years.
Sunda Kalapa was the same as Jacatra, on the site of which the Dutch founded Batavia in 1619.
These are mentioned in a copper tablet inscription of A.D. 1136; see Blochmann, as quoted further on, p. 226.
Basandhari is also mentioned by Mr. James Grant (1786) in his View of the Revenues of Bengal, as the Pergunna of Belia-bussendry; and by A. Hamilton as a place on the Damūdar, producing much good sugar (Fifth Report, p. 405; A. Ham. ii. 4). It would seem to have been the present Pergunna of Balia, some 13 or 14 miles west of the northern part of Calcutta. See Hunter's Bengal Gaz. i. 365.
So called in the German version which we use; but in the Dutch original he is Schouten.
This affair is alluded to in one of the extracts in Long (p. 342): "Agreed ... that the Fakiers who were made prisoners at the retaking of Dacca may be employed as Coolies in the repair of the Factory."—Procgs. of Council at Ft. William, Dec. 5, 1769.
Williams (Skt. Dict. s.v.) gives Sūrpāraka as "the name of a mythical country"; but it was real enough. There is some ground for believing that there was another Sūrpāraka on the coast of Orissa, Σιππάρα of Ptolemy.
Ῥογχὸ perhaps is Tam. lanha, 'coco-nut.'
Mangalore (q.v.) on this coast, no doubt called Sorathī Mangalor to distinguish it from the well-known Mangalor of Canara.
But it is worthy of note that in the Island of Bali one manner of accomplishing the rite is called Satia (Skt. satyā, 'truth,' from sat, whence also satī). See Crawfurd, H. of Ind. Archip. ii. 243, and Friedrich, in Verhandelingen van het Batav. Genootschap. xxiii. 10.
The same poet speaks of Evadne, who threw herself at Thebes on the burning pile of her husband Capaneus (I. xv. 21), a story which Paley thinks must have come from some early Indian legend.
Hoggiae is of course Khwājas (see COJA). But in the B. Museum there is a copy of Leunclavius, ed. of 1588, with MS. autograph remarks by Joseph Scaliger; and on the word in question he notes as its origin (in Arabic characters): "Ḥujja(t) Disputatio"—which is manifestly erroneous.
These are sheets of the Atlas of India, within Bhawalpur and Jeysalmīr, on the borders of Bikaner.
Mr. Major, in his Introduction to Parke's Mendoza for the Hak. Soc. says of this embassy, that at their halt in the desert 12 marches from Su-chau, they were regaled "with a variety of strong liquors, together with a pot of Chinese tea." It is not stated by Mr. Major whence he took the account; but there is nothing about tea in the translation of M. Quatremère (Not. et Ext. xiv. pt. 1), nor in the Persian text given by him, nor in the translation by Mr. Rehatsek in the Ind. Ant. ii. 75 seqq.
Queen Catharine.
This book was printed in England, whilst the author was in India; doubtless he was innocent of this quaint error.
This refers to an Arab legend that Samarkand was founded in very remote times by Tobba'-al-Akbar, Himyarite King of Yemen, (see e.g. Edrisi, by Jaubert, ii. 198), and the following: "The author of the Treatise on the Figure of the Earth says on this subject: "This is what was told me by Abu-Bakr-Dimashkī—'I have seen over the great gate of Samarkand an iron tablet bearing an inscription, which, according to the people of the place, was engraved in Himyarite characters, and as an old tradition related, had been the work of "Tobba."'"—Shihābuddīn Dimashkī, in Not. et Ext. xiii. 254.
[Col. Temple notes that the pronunciation has always been twofold. At present in Burma it is usual to pronounce it like tickle, and in Siam like tacawl. He regards it as certain that it comes from takā through Talaing and Peguan t'ke.]
Sir H. Rawlinson gives tigra as old Persian for an arrow (see Herod. vol. iii. p. 552). Vüllers seems to consider it rather an induction than a known word for an arrow. He says: "Besides the name of that river (Tigris) Arvand, which often occurs in the Shāhnāma, and which properly signifies 'running' or 'swift'; another Medo-persic name Tigra is found in the cuneiform inscriptions, and is cognate with the Zend word tedjao, tedjerem, and Pehlvi tedjera, i.e. 'a running river,' which is entered in Anquetil's vocabulary. And these, along with the Persian tej 'an arrow,' tegh 'a sword,' tekh and teg 'sharp,' are to be referred to the Zend root tikhsh, Skt. tij, 'to sharpen.' The Persian word tīr, 'an arrow,' may be of the same origin, since its primitive form appears to be tīgra, from which it seems to come by elision of the g, as the Skt. tīr, 'arrow,' comes from tīvra for tīgra, where v seems to have taken the place of g. From the word tīgra ... seem also to be derived the usual names of the river Tigris, Pers. Dizhla, Ar. Dijlah" (Vüllers, s.v. tīr).
Some notice of Major Yule, whose valuable Oriental MSS. were presented to the British Museum after his death, will be found in Dr. Rieu's Preface to the Catalogue of Persian MSS. (vol. iii. p. xviii.).
St. Julien et P. Champion, Industries Anciennes et Modernes de l'Empire Chinois, 1869, p. 75. Wells Williams says: "The peh-tung argentan, or white copper of the Chinese, is an alloy of copper 40.4, zinc 25.4, nickel 31.6, and iron 2.6, and occasionally a little silver; and these proportions are nearly those of German silver."—Middle Kingdom, ed. 1883, ii. 19.
The Pers. partala is always used for a 'waist-belt' in India, but in Persia also for a turban.
Busbecq (1554) says: "... ingens ubique florum copia offerebatur, Narcissorum, Hyacinthorum, et eorum quos Turcae Tulipan vocant."—Epist. i. Elzevir ed. p. 47.
It must be kept in mind that though Rumphius (George Everard Rumpf) died in 1693, his great work was not printed till nearly fifty years afterwards (1741).
Foersch was a surgeon of the third class at Samarang in the year 1773.—Horsfield, in Bat. Trans. as quoted below.
This distance is probably a clerical error. It is quite inconsistent with the other two assigned.
Leschenault also gives the description of another and still more powerful poison, used in a similar way to that of the Antiaris, viz. the tieute, called sometimes Upas Raja, the plant producing which is a Strychnos, and a creeper. Though, as we have said, the name Upas is generic, and is applied to this, it is not the Upas of English metaphor, and we are not concerned with it here. Both kinds are produced and prepared in Java. The Ipo (a form of Upas) of Macassar is the Antiaris; the ipo of the Borneo Dayaks is the Tieute.
I remember when a boy reading the whole of Foersch's story in a fascinating book, called Wood's Zoography, which I have not seen for half a century, and which, I should suppose from my recollection, was more sensational than scientific.—Y.
Compare this vivid description with a modern notice of the same pagoda:
1855. "This meridian range ... 700 miles from its origin in the Naga wilds ... sinks in the sea hard by Negrais, its last bluff crowned by the golden Pagoda of Modain, gleaming far to seaward, a Burmese Sunium."—Yule, Mission to Ava, 272. There is a small view of it in this work.
So wrote A. B. I cannot find the book in the B. Museum Library.—Y. [A bibliographical account of this book will be found in "Le Traité des Trois Imposteurs, et précédé d'une notice philologique et bibliographique par Philomneste Junior (i.e. Brunet), Paris and Brussels, 1867. Also see 7 Ser. N. &. Q. viii. 449 seqq.; 9 Ser. ix. 55. The passage about the Vedas seems to be the following: "Et Sectarii istorum, ut et Vedae et Brachmanorum ante MCCC retro secula obstant collectanea, ut de Sinensibus nil dicam. Tu, qui in angulo Europae hic delitescis, ista neglegis, negas; quam bene videas ipse. Eadem facilitate enim isti tua negant. Et quid non miraculorum superesset ad convincendos orbis incolas, si mundum ex Scorpionis ovo conditum et progenitum terramque Tauri capiti impositam, et rerum prima fundamentis ex prioribus III. Vedae libris constarent, nisi invidus aliquis Deorum filius haec III. prima volumina furatus esset!"]
This last remark is due to A. B.
[The first part of this word is thera, Skt. sthavira. Hardy (E. Monachism, p. 11) says the superior priests were called térunnánses, from Pali thero, "an elder."]
Ποηφάγος, whence no doubt Gray took his name for the genus.
The tails usually brought for sale are those of the tame Yak, and are white. The tail of the wild Yak is black, and of much greater size.