permanent as their influence on our language. No doubt this was less due
to any direct effect that their residence among the Britons had at the
time on vernacular speech than to the fact that, for many centuries
after their departure, Latin was the language, throughout Europe, of
literature and scholarship. Our supremacy in India is acting on the
languages of that country in both ways, and though it has scarcely
lasted half as long yet as the Roman rule in Britain, English already
bids fair to become one day the common tongue of the Hindus. But there
is also a current flowing the other way, comparatively insignificant,
but curious and interesting.
Few persons in England are aware how often they use words of Indian
origin in common speech. In attempting to give a list of these I will
exclude the trade names of articles of Indian produce or manufacture,
which have no literary interest, and also words which indicate objects,
ideas or customs that are not English, and therefore have no English
equivalents, such as "tom-tom," "sepoy" and "suttee," I will also omit
Indian words, such as "bundobust," and "griffin," which are used by
writers like Thackeray in the same way in which French terms are
commonly introduced into English composition.
Of course, it is not always possible to draw a hard and fast line. There
are words which first came into England as the trade names of Indian
products, but have extended their significance, or entirely changed it,
and taken a permanent place in the English language. Pepper still means
what it originally meant, but it has also become a verb. Another example
is Shawl, a word which has lost all trace of its Oriental origin. It is
a pure Hindustani word, pronounced "Shal," and indicating an article
thus described in the seventeenth century by Thevenot, as quoted in
Hobson-Jobson:--"Une Chal, qui est une maniere de toilette d'une laine
très fine qui se fait a Cachmir." With the article to England came the
name, but soon spread itself over all fabrics worn in the same fashion,
except the Scotch plaid, which held its own.
Somewhat similar is Calico, originally a fine cotton cloth imported from
Calicut. This place is called Calicot by the natives, and may have
dropped the final T through the influence of French dressmakers. Chintz
is another example, being the Hindustani word "cheent," which means a
spotted cotton cloth. In trade fabrics are always described in the
plural, and the Z in Chintz is no doubt a perversion, through
misunderstanding, of the terminal S. Lac is another Indian word which
has retained its own meaning, but it has gone beyond it and given rise
to a verb "to lacquer."
With these perhaps should be mentioned Pyjamas and Shampoo, both of
which have undergone strange perversions. Pyjama is an Indian name for
loose drawers or trousers tied with a cord round the waist, such as
Mussulmans of both sexes wear. In India the Pyjama was long ago adopted,
with a loose coat to match, as a more decent and comfortable costume
than the British nightshirt, and when Anglo-Indians retired they brought
the fashion home with them, English tailors called the whole costume a
"Pyjama suit," but the second word was soon dropped and the first
improved into the plural number.
"Shampoo" comes from a verb "champna," to press or squeeze, and the
imperative, "champo," as often happens, was the form in which it became
English. Forbes, in his _Oriental Memoirs_, writes of "the effects of
opium, champoing and other luxuries indulged in by Oriental
sensualists." When the medical profession in England began to patronise
the practice, it assumed a more dignified name, "massage," and the old
word was relegated to the hairdressers, who appropriated it to the
washing of the head, an operation with which the word has no proper
relation at all.
There are two words of doubtful derivation, which may be mentioned in
this connection. Cot, in the sense of a light bed, or cradle, is not
much used in England, but is given in Webster's and other dictionaries,
with the same Saxon derivation, as the "cot beside the hill" which the
poet Rogers sighed for. If this is correct, then it is at least curious
that the word should have almost gone out of use in England and revived
in India from a distinct root. There it is the term in every-day use for
any rough bedstead, such as the natives sleep on and call a khat. The
average Englishman cannot aspirate a K, and never pronounces the Indian
A aright unless it is followed by an R, so khat becomes "cot" by a
process of which there are many illustrations.
The other doubtful word mentioned above is Teapoy. It is defined in the
dictionaries as an ornamental table, with a folding top, containing
caddies for holding tea, but in India, where it is in much more general
use than it is in England, it signifies simply a light tripod table and
almost certainly comes from "teenpai" (three-foot), corresponding to
another common word, "charpai" (four-foot), which means a native
bedstead. The fact that it is sometimes spelled Tepoy confirms this, but
the other spelling is commoner, and appears to have led to its getting a
special meaning connected with tea among furniture sellers.
Cheroot, Bangle, Curry and Kidgeree are examples of words which have
come to us with the things which they signify, and retain their meaning
though the thing itself may have undergone some change. Curry as made in
England is sometimes not recognisable by a new arrival from India, and
Kidgeree is applied to a preparation of rice and fish, whereas it means
properly a dish of rice, split peas and butter, or "ghee." Fish may be
eaten with it, but is not an ingredient of it. Bazaar may be classed
with these words, and also Polo, which is merely the name for a polo
ball in the language of one of the Himalayan tribes from whom we learned
the game. It is said to have been played in England for the first time
at Aldershot in 1871.
More interest attaches to Gymkhana, for neither the word nor the thing
which it signifies is Indian, though both originated in India, and the
derivation of the word is unknown, though it is scarcely fifty years
old. Several hybrid derivations have been suggested, none of them
probable, and I lean to the suggestion that the starting-point of the
word may have been "jumkhana", a term which, though it is not in
Forbes's _Hindustani Dictionary,_ I have heard a native apply to a large
cotton carpet, such as native acrobats, or wrestlers, might spread when
about to give a performance. Our use of the words Arena, Stage, Boards,
Footlights, etc., shows how easily a carpet might give name to a place
of meeting for athletic exercises.
There is another class of words which have come into England through
returned Anglo-Indians and spread by their own merit. One of these is
Loot. The dictionary says that it means "to plunder," but it holds more
than that or any equivalent English word. Perhaps it has scarcely risen
above the level of slang yet, but the phrase "to run amuck" is
classical, having been used by both Pope and Dryden. The pedantic
attempt made by some writers to change the common way of writing it
because the original Malay term is a single word, "amok," comes too late
in view of Dryden's line,
"And runs an Indian muck at all he meets."
Cheese, in the sense of a thing, or rather of "the very thing," must be
ranked as slang too, though very common. The slang dictionaries give
fanciful derivations from Anglo-Saxon roots, or suggest that it is a
perversion of "chose"; but it is a common Hindustani word for a thing,
and when an Englishman in India finds some article which exactly suits
his purpose and exclaims, "Ah! that's the cheese," no one needs to ask
the derivation. If it did not come to us directly from India, then it
came through the gipsies, for it is one of the many Hindustani words
which occur in their language. Another word that came from India
indirectly is Caste, but it is of Portuguese origin. The early
Portuguese writers applied it ("casta") to the hereditary division of
Hindu society, and the English adopted it. It has now become
indispensable. We have no other word that could take its place in the
lines,
Her manners had not that repose
Which stamps the caste of Vere de Vere.
I must close with two familiar words which have been so long with us
that few who use them ever suspect that they came from the East--namely,
Punch and Toddy. The Rev. J. Ovington, who sailed to Bombay in 1689, in
the ship that carried the glad news of the coronation of William and
Mary, tells us that, in the East India Company's chief factory at Surat,
the common table was supplied with "plenty of generous Sherash (Shiraz)
wine and arak Punch," Arrack (properly "Urk"), sometimes abbreviated to
Rack, means any distilled spirit, or essence, but is commonly used to
distinguish country liquor from imported spirits. The Company's factors
drank it because European wines and beer were at that time very
expensive in India, and to reconcile it to their palates they made it
into a brew called Punch, from the Indian word "panch," meaning five,
because it contained five ingredients--viz. arrack, hot water, limes,
sugar and spice. This was the ordinary drink of poor Englishmen in India
for a longtime, and public "Punch-houses" existed in every settlement of
the East India Company.
Now, one of the principal substances from which country liquor is
distilled is palm juice, the native name for which, "tadee," has been
perverted into "toddy" (as in the case of "cot" above-mentioned), and
"toddy punch" meant the same thing as "arrack punch," Returning
Anglo-Indians brought the receipt for making this brew to England, and
lovers of Vanity Fair will remember how the whole course of that story
was changed by the bowl of "rack punch" which Joseph Sedley ordered at
Vauxhall, where "everybody had rack punch." How soon both the brew and
its Indian name took firm root and spread among us appears from the fact
that, at the Holy Fair described by Burns in the century before last,
the lads and lasses sit round a table and "steer about the toddy."