Hobson-Jobson: A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases, and of Kindred Terms, Etymological, Historical, Geographical and Discursive c10.16023

c10.16023

1856.—“There is a peculiar idiom of the Malay language, connected with the monsoons. . . The Malays call all countries west of their own ‘countries above the wind,’ and their own and all countries east of it ‘countries below the wind.’ . . The origin of the phrase admits of no explanation, unless it have reference to the most important of the two monsoons, the western, that which brought to the Malayan countries the traders of India.”—*Crawfurd’s Desc. Dict.* 288.