Hobson-Jobson: A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases, and of Kindred Terms, Etymological, Historical, Geographical and Discursive c6.36

c6.36

With the gradual assumption of administration after the middle of last century, we adopted into partial colloquial use an immense number of terms, very many of them Persian or Arabic, belonging to technicalities of revenue and other departments, and largely borrowed from our Mahommedan predecessors. Malay has contributed some of our most familiar expressions, owing partly to the ceaseless rovings among the Eastern coasts of the Portuguese, through whom a part of these reached us, and partly doubtless to the fact that our early dealings and the sites of our early factories lay much more on the shores of the Eastern Archipelago than on those of Continental India. *Paddy*, *godown*, *compound*, *bankshall*, *rattan*, *durian*, *a-muck*, *prow*, and *cadjan*, *junk*, *crease*, are some of these. It is true that several of them may be traced eventually to Indian originals, but it seems not the less certain that we got them through the Malay, just as we got words already indicated through the Portuguese.