Hobson-Jobson: A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases, and of Kindred Terms, Etymological, Historical, Geographical and Discursive c10.362

c10.362

In Percival's *Ceylon* (1803) we read: "Before I arrived in the island I had heard many stories of a monstrous snake, so vast in size as to devour tigers and buffaloes, and so daring as even to attack the elephant" (p. 303). Also, in Pridham's *Ceylon and its Dependencies* (1849, ii. 750-51): "Pimbera or Anaconda is of the genus Python, Cuvier, and is known in English as the rock-snake." Emerson Tennent (*Ceylon*, 4th ed., 1860, i. 196) says: "The great python (the 'boa' as it is commonly designated by Europeans, the 'anaconda' of Eastern story) which is supposed to crush the bones of an elephant, and to swallow a tiger" . . . It may be suspected that the letter of "R. Edwin" was the foundation of all or most of the stories alluded to in these passages. Still we have the authority of Ray's friend that Anaconda, or rather *Anacondaia*, was at Leyden applied as a Ceylonese name to a specimen of this python. The only interpretation of this that we can offer is Tamil *ānai-kondra* [*ānaik-konda*], "which killed an elephant"; an appellative, but not a name. We have no authority for the application of this appellative to a snake, though the passages quoted from Percival, Pridham, and Tennent are all suggestive of such stories, and the interpretation of the name anacondaia given to Ray: “Bubalorum . . . membra conterens,” is at least quite analogous as an appellative. It may be added that in Malay anakanda signifies “one that is well-born,” which does not help us. . . Mr Skeat is unable to trace the word in Malay, and rejects the derivation from anakanda given above. A more plausible explanation is that given by Mr D. Ferguson (8 Ser. N. & Q. xii. 123), who derives anacondaia from Singhalese Henakandayâ (hena, ‘lightning’; kanda, ‘stem, trunk,’) which is a name for the whip-snake (Passerita mycterizans), the name of the smaller reptile being by a blunder transferred to the greater. It is at least a curious coincidence that Ogilvy (1670) in his “Description of the African Isles” (p. 690), gives: “Anakandef, a sort of small snakes,” which is the Malagasy Anakandify, ‘a snake.’]