Sea of Poppies: A Novel (The Ibis Trilogy)

by Amitav Ghosh

  +lorcha: ‘Whether this is a ship of Portuguese make or a Chinese copy of an European design is a vexed issue; suffice it to say that these vessels are often seen off the coast of southern China.’

  luckerbaug (*The Glossary): ‘Over this English word, speakers of Hind. and Bengali have been known to come to blows, the former contending that it derives from their lakkarbagga, “hyena”, and the latter claiming it to be a corruption of nekrebagh, “wolf”. The matter is impossible to decide for I have heard it being applied to both these creatures, and the jackal to boot.’

  lugow/lagao (*The Glossary): ‘A fine example of a humble word which, having “entered through the hawse-holes”, as the saying goes, has now ascended to the Peerage of the Verb. In its correct Laskari usage, it is the exact nautical counterpart of “to bind” or “to fasten”. Given the English lexicon’s general enthusiasm for terms related to binding, tying, beating, pulling and so on, there would seem to be nothing remarkable about its steady rise through the ranks. Its passage into civilian use might well have been occasioned by the phrase “lugowing a line” (i.e., “fastening hawse”, “binding a rope” etc.). This expression has gained such widespread currency that it may well be the ancestor of the verb “to lug”.’

  +maistry/mistri/mystery: Few words aroused Neel’s passions as much as these. A recent discovery among his notes is the draft of a letter to a well-known Calcutta newspaper.

  ‘Dear Sir: As one of the foremost English journals in the Indian subcontinent, you are rightly regarded as something of an oracle on the subject of that language. It is therefore with the greatest regret that we have noted of late, a creeping misuse of the word mistri on your pages. More than once has it been suggested that this is a Hindusthanee word that refers indifferently to plumbers, fitters, masons and repairmen. Now the truth is, sir, that the word mistri along with its variants, maistry and mystery, are, after balti, the commonest Portuguese-derived words in the languages of India (by way of mestre). Like balti they may well have travelled by a nautical route, for the original meaning of maistry was similar to its English cognate “master” (both being derived from the Latin magister), and was probably first used in the sense of “ship’s master”. It is in a similar sense that the term maistry is still employed, being applied mainly to overseers, and preserving fully the connotations of authority that are implicit in its English cousin “master”. It is interesting to note that in India as in Europe, the connotations of this fecund term have developed along parallel paths. Thus, just as the French maître and Italian maestro imply also the mastery of a trade or craft, so similiarly is the word mistri applied in Hindusthanee to artisans and master-craftsmen: it is in this latter form that it is now applied to repairmen, workmen and the like. On this subject, sir, might it also be suggested that you would do well to adopt the variant spelling mystery, which possesses the great advantage of making evident the word’s direct connubium with the Latin ministerium (from which we get such usages as “The Mystery Plays”, so-called because they were produced by workmen who practised a mistery, or ministerium)? Would this not also deepen our sense of awe when we refer to the “Fashioner of All Things” as the “Divine Mystery”?’

  This letter was never posted, but in keeping with his tenets, Neel always used the variant mystery.

  +mali/malley/mauly/molley/mallee: ‘The mysteries of the garden.’

  +malum: ‘Some dictionaries persist in misspelling this word as malem even though its correct form has been a part of the English language since the seventeenth century. This Laskari word for “ship’s officer” or “mate” is, of course, derived from the Arabic mu’allim, “knowledgeable”.’

  +mandir: See sammy-house.

  masalchie (*The Glossary): See bobachee.

  maski: ‘In no way is this curious expression connected with “musk” or “masks”. In the zubben of the South China Coast, it figures rather as something that would be described in Hind. as a takiya-kalám – that is to say, an expression that is used not for its meaning (of which it possesses none) but merely out of habit, so that it becomes, through constant repetition, as familiar and as unremarkable as a pillow or tuckier.’

  +mochi/moochy: ‘The mystery of leather.’

  +mootsuddy/mutsaddi: See dufter.

  +munshi/moonshee: See dufter.

  mura (*Roebuck): ‘For a long time, I had no idea what the lascars meant when they spoke of the “jamna mura” and the “dawa mura”. Only later was I to learn that this was their word for “tack”, a rare borrowing from the Italian.’

  +mussuck: ‘Strange indeed is this name for the leather water-bag carried by bhistis, for it is but the Arabic for puckrow.’

  muttranee (*The Glossary): See halalcore.

  +nainsook/nayansukh: ‘ “Pleasing to the eye” was the name of this fine cloth in Hind. The same cannot be said, however, of the English corruption of our word.’

  nuddee (*the Admiral): ‘This was as much a river as a nullah is a ditch, so why one should be universally used and the other not is beyond my reckoning.’

  +nullah: See above.

  ooloo/ullu: See gadda/gadha/gudder.

  oolta-poolta / oolter-poolter (*The Glossary): ‘While it is by no means incorrect to gloss this expression as having the sense of “upside down”, it ought to be noted that in Laskari it was applied to a vessel that had been tipped over on her beam ends.’

  paik (*The Glossary): See burkundaz.

  +pani/pawnee/parny: Neel hotly disputed the notion that the Hind. word for water had entered the English language through its use in such compounds as brandy-pawnee and blatty-

  pawnee. This was another instance in which he gave full credence to Barrère & Leland’s derivation of it from the gypsy word for water. See also bilayuti.

  +parcheesi/parcheezi: Neel was outraged to find that the familiar pastime of his childhood, pachcheesi, was being packaged and sold as Ludo, Parcheesi etc. ‘Would that we could copyright and patent all things of value in our patrimony, before they are claimed and stolen by these greed-mongers, who think nothing of making our children pay for the innocent diversions that have been handed, even to the poorest of them, as a free bequest from the past.’ No shop-bought version of this game was ever allowed to cross his threshold, and he made sure that his children played it as he had, on a square of embroidered cloth, with the brightest of Seychelles cowries.

  peechil (*Roebuck): See agil.

  +penang-lawyer: See lathi.

  phaltu-tanni: See turnee.

  +pijjin/pidgin: ‘Numerous indeed are the speculations on the origins of this much-used expression, for people are loathe to accept that it is merely a way of pronouncing that commonest of English words: “business”. But such indeed is the case, which is why a novice or griffin is commonly spoken of as a learn- or larn-pijjin. I have recently been informed of another interesting compound, stool-pijjin, which is used, I believe, to describe the business of answering Nature’s call.’

  poggle/porgly/poggly (*The Glossary, *The Barney-Book): On this word Neel quotes with disapproval Barrère & Leland’s borrowing of Sir Henry’s observations: ‘A madman, an idiot, a dolt. [From] Hindu págal . . . A friend used . . . to adduce a macaronic adage which we fear the non-Indian will fail to appreciate: “Pogal et pecunia jaldi separantur”, i.e., a fool and his money are soon parted.’ To this Neel adds: ‘If such were indeed the case then none would be more deserving of pauperdom than these pundits, for a poggle may be out of his mind, but he is no fool.’

  +pollock-saug / palong-shák (*The Glossary): ‘Sir Henry has never been so wrong as in his gloss of this most glorious of greens: “A poor vegetable, called also ‘country spinach’”.’

  pootly/putli (*The Glossary): ‘Sir Henry, ever the innocent, glosses pootly-nautch as if it were mere Hind. for “doll-” or “puppet-dance”! But one can scarcely doubt that he knew full well what the words meant in English (for which see bayadère).’

  +pucka/pucca: Neel believed that the English meaning
of this word came not from the Hind. ‘ripe’, as was often said, but rather the alternative denotation – ‘cooked’, or ‘baked’ – in which sense it was applied to ‘baked’ or ‘burnt’ bricks. ‘A pucka sahib is thus the hardest and most brickish of his kind. Curiously the locution “kutcha sahib” is never used, the word griffin serving as its equivalent.’

  puckrow / puckerow / pakrao (*The Glossary): ‘It is easy to be misled into thinking that this is merely the Hind. for “hold” or “grasp” and was borrowed as such by the English soldier. But the word was quite commonly used also to mean “grapple”. When used by pootlies and dashties in this sense its implications were by no means soldierly.’

  +pultan/paltan: ‘An interesting instance of a word which, after having been borrowed by Hind. (for its military application “platoon”) is reabsorbed into English with the slightly altered sense of “multitude”.’

  +punch: ‘Strange indeed that the beverage of this name has lost all memory of its parent: Hind. panj (“five”). In my time we scorned this mixture as an unpalatable economy.’

  +pundit: Neel was not persuaded of the validity of the usual etymology of this word, whereby it is held to derive from a common Hind. term for ‘learned man’ or ‘scholar’. ‘A hint as to its true origin is to be seen in the eighteenth-century French spelling of it, pandect. Does this not clearly indicate that the word is a compound of “pan” + “edict” – meaning “one who pronounces on all matters”? Surely this is a closer approximation of its somewhat satirical English connotations than our respectful Hind. pundit?’

  +punkah-wallah/-wala: ‘The mystery of the fan.’

  purwan (*Roebuck): Yard (spar from which sail is set); here Neel has underlined carefully his tutor’s footnote: ‘Purwan, I think, is compounded of Pur, a wing, or feather, and Wan, a ship, which last word is much used by the lascars from Durat (properly Soorut) etc., so that Purwan, the yards of the ship, might also be translated as the wings upon which the ship flies’.

  +pyjama/pajama: ‘There must surely be some significance to the fact that the Hind. for leg (pao) has received a much warmer welcome into the English language than the word for head (sir). While variants of pao figure in many compounds, including char+poy, tea+poy, and py+jama, sir has to its credit only turban (sirbandh) and seersucker (sirsukh).’

  +quod/qaid: See chokey.

  +rankin/rinkin (*The Barney-Book): ‘A fine piece of English gypsy-slang, from our own rangin – colourful.’

  +rawnee/rani: ‘Although this Hind. word did indeed mean “queen”, in English usage it had another connotation, for which see bayadère.’

  +roti/rooty/rootie: ‘It is my suspicion that the Oracle will absorb this as the Hind. roti, but it could just as well, as the Barneymen rightly observe, make its travels in the latter two forms, taken from the Bengali – these are, after all, the words that English soldiers commonly use in describing the bread that is served in their chownees.’ It is no mystery that the English soldier does not trouble to distinguish between leavened and unleavened bread since the latter is a quantity unknown to his tongue: thus, what a rootie is to him would be to a sepoy a pao-roti. I am told that it is not merely the presence of yeast, but also of this prefix, pao, that prevents many sepoys from eating English bread: they believe that yeasted dough is kneaded with the feet (pao) and is therefore unclean. If only it were to be explained to them that the pao of pao-roti is merely a Hind. adaptation of pão, the Portuguese for bread! Imagine, if on some arduous march a starving soldier were to deny himself succour due to a grievous misconception: a simple word of explanation would spare him his cries of bachaw! bachaw! This, if anything, is a perfect illustration of why etymology is essential to man’s survival.’

  +ruffugar / ruffoogar / rafugar (*The Glossary): ‘In philological circles a cautionary tale is told of a griffin who, having been set upon by a scruffy budmash, berated his assailant with the cry: “Unhand me, vile ruffoogar!” The speaker was mistaken in believing this to be Hind. for “ruffian”, for a ruffoogar is merely a clothes-repairer.’

  Rum-Johnny (*The Barney-Book): ‘Taken from Hind. Ramjani, this word had a wholly different connotation in English, for which see bayadère.’

  +rye/rai (*The Barney-Book): Neel was right in predicting that this common Hind. word for ‘gentleman’ would appear in the Oracle in its English-gypsy variant rye, rather than in the usual Indian form.

  sabar (*Roebuck): topgallant or t’gallant; see dol.

  +sahib: This word was a source of bafflement to Neel: ‘How did it happen that the Arabic for “friend” became, in Hind. and English, a word meaning “master”?’ The question was answered by a grandson who had visited the Soviet Union; on the margins of Neel’s note he scribbled: ‘“Sahib” was to the Raj what “comrade” is to Communists – a mask for mastery.’ See also Beebee.

  +salwar/shalwar/shulwaur: See kameez.

  +sammy (*The Barney-Book): ‘The anglice of Hind. swami, from which sammy-house to mean “mandir”: whether this is preferable to “pagoda” is a matter of debate.’

  sammy-house: See above.

  sawai (*Roebuck): staysail; see dol.

  +seacunny/seaconny: On this word, meaning ‘helmsman’, Neel penned a note that covers the verso of the four of hearts: ‘It is not uncommon to hear it said that the term seacunny/seaconny is derived from an old English word meaning “rabbit” – to wit: “cony” or “coney” (sea-cunny thus being interpreted to mean “sea-rabbit”). Beware anyone who tells you this, for he is having a quiet laugh at your expense: he probably knows full well that “coney” has a secret, but far more common, use (as when a London buy-em-dear says to a prospective customer, “No money, no coney”). This is why the more pucka ma’amsahibs will not allow the word seacunny to pass their lips, preferring to use the absurd expression sea-bunny. (“Well then, madam,” I was once tempted to say, “if we are thus to describe a helmsman, should we not also speak of the Great Sea-bunny in the Sky?”) If only one could find the words to explain to these ladies that no rabbit need fear the conning of seacunnies: the term is utterly harmless and derives merely from the Arabic sukkán, meaning “rudder”, from which we get sukkáni and thus seacunny.’ See also lascar.

  +seersucker: Neel objected vehemently to the notion that the name of this cotton material was derived (as the Oracle was later to contend) from the Persian shir-o-shakkar, or ‘milk and sugar’. ‘By what stretch of the imagination could anyone imagine that a sweet, milky syrup would be pleasant to wear on the skin?’ Instead, following Sir Henry, he derived the word from sir-sukh, ‘joy of/to the head’, on the analogy of turban (which he thought to be derived from Hind. sir-bandh – ‘head-band’). He took the view that the terms were aptly paired since the latter was sometimes made of the former. As supplemental evidence he cited a maxim which he claimed to be common among lascars: sirbandh me sirsukh – ‘a turban is happiness for the head’.

  +sepoy/seapoy: ‘The variant spelling, sea-poy, has caused much confusion over the ages (see charpoy). One ill-informed wordy-pundit has even espoused the theory that this term is a mispronunciation of “sea-boy” and was thus originally a synonym for lascar. This is, of course, an elementary misunderstanding and could be easily corrected if the English spelling of sepoy were to be altered to sepohy. This would have the dual advantage of advertising this word’s descent from the Persian/Turkish sipáhi, while also making evident its kinship to the French spahi, which refers similarly to a certain kind of colonial mercenary.’

  +serang: See lascar.

  serh (*Roebuck): See dol.

  +seth: See beparee. Neel was aware of the raging controversy that surrounds the question of whether the term seth is related to such words as chetty, chettiar and shetty. But lacking any expertise in the languages of southern India, he was unable to reach any conclusion on the subject.

  +shabash/shahbash: ‘“Bravo!” to Sir Henry.’

  +shampoo: ‘Is it not a commentary on the relationship of England and India that most
of the Hind. candidates for the Peerage of the English Verb pertain to grappling, grasping, binding, tying and whipping? Yet, of all the pretenders who have had their start in this domain – puckrow, bundo, lagow, chawbuck etc. – only one has risen to the rank of a true grandee of the Upper House; only one has claimed a dukedom for itself. This is, strangely enough, that humblest of terms chãpo/chãpna, in its corrupted form, shampoo. The reason for this, surely, is that the notion of chãpo-ing embodies some of the more pleasureable aspects of grappling, grasping and so on – that is to say of kneading, pressing, touching, massaging. Those who would seek to reduce this word to the rank of noun would do well to note that it will not meekly relinquish its active form, clinging to its animate energies even when forced into the Lower House (a case in point being the French le shampooing).’

  +shamshoo/samschoo: ‘The Admiral, who seems never to have tasted any shrob not made in Europe, described this Chinese wine as “fiery, fetid and very injurious to European health”. But this was true only of the varieties sold on Hog Lane; elsewhere there were many very fine bottlings, no less precious than the finest French sharaabs.’