the Powers should endeavour to take advantage of our position as rulers of India to impose upon us conditions which we deem altogether inadmissible, we can decline to enter into any agreement at all, and leave them to do their worst when a crisis arrives. The continuation of the present state of uncertainty as to the legal position of the Canal is no longer as dangerous as before. A settlement of the difficulty is most desirable, but it is not so essential that we need concede more than we deem just and right in order to get it.'

*

Much reference has lately been made to the 'immensa majestas Romanæ pacis.' England can hardly have a higher ambition than to secure to the world the benefit of such a peace. And anything that strengthens our position, that by reducing time and distance enables us to concentrate and most efficiently employ our necessarily scattered and somewhat limited forces, and that for commercial advantage as well as for political security brings the component parts of Greater Britain into closer relationship with each other, is an advance towards that most desirable object. Such a contribution to the welfare and unity of the British Empire, and so to peaceful interests throughout the world, has Canada now most obviously made by the construction of her inter-oceanic lines, and by the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway.

Essays on some disputed questions on Modern International Law.' By T. J. Lawrence, M.A., LL.M., Dep. Whewell Professor, &c. &c., pp. 68–69.

ART.

ART. VI. HOBSON JOBSON: being a Glossary of Anglo-Indian Colloquial Words and Phrases and of kindred terms, Etymological, Geographical, and Discursive. By Colonel Henry Yule, R.E., C.B., LL.D.; and the late Arthur Coke Burnell, Ph.D., C.I.E. London, 1886.

OF

F all lexicographical achievements there is none likely to be more useful or entertaining than a Glossary, for it comprehends not merely curious, and uncommon or antiquated words applied to special meanings, but also the various uses to which they have been turned by different writers. Glossaries are a form of literary activity which became extremely popular among the Greeks. They were originally remarkable for peculiarities, or even eccentricities, purely etymological; but it was only after the discovery of the New World and the expansion of commerce by sea with the East, that they became of special use to solve the difficulties of semi-educated Europeans, when brought into contact with Asiatics employing unknown and perfected languages. The Indo-Portuguese dialect used in many parts of India for purposes of trade during two centuries, and the Pigeon [i.e. 'business'] English of the Chinese ports, are attempts to discover a lingua franca, or language intelligible alike to the European and the Asiatic. The adoption of native words, and their gradual incorporation into the English language, was another but somewhat similar process; more difficult to trace, indeed, but affording boundless opportunities to the etymologist. There are numerous and obvious reasons, therefore, why of all glossaries an Anglo-Indian glossary should be the most instructive and interesting, and in a certain sense even the most original. The mercantile enterprise in Asia of the different European nations was necessarily divided into hostile and antagonistic groups; but the impressions that these several national groups received from their intercourse with Asiatics were common to them all, and were conveyed through the indispensable vehicle of speech. Many words and phrases, however, taken from the East established themselves as English colloquialisms after passing through a Portuguese or Dutch form, due to the precedence enjoyed in point of time by the Portuguese and Dutch as pioneers of Oriental commerce.

Colonel Yule represents the ideal glossologist. There is no writer among Anglo-Indians, living or dead, who has attained to his degree of eminence in extent or variety of knowledge, in exactitude of workmanship, in shrewd discrimination of the relative value of the fanciful and the practical, and in the capacity of lucid exposition. The books for which English

literature

literature is already indebted to him are gems of the first water. The two best-known of them, his edition of The Book of Ser Marco Polo,' and his 'Cathay and the Way Thither,' are standard authorities on the matters with which they deal that can never be displaced or dispensed with. They are, in the first place, works of geography, and as such have placed their author at the head of English geographers. But geographical knowledge is only one among the many remarkable qualities evinced in the production of these books. Colonel Yule shows himself therein to be an etymologist of great skill, and, what does not always follow, of sound sense. His acquaintance with medieval writers, customs, and phrases, is intimate and correct. His literary style and instinct are of a high order, and in accuracy of information he is admitted to be unsurpassed. These are the qualifications of the ideal glossarian, and it be considered a fortunate coincidence that the author and the subject should have been brought together at such an appropriate and well-timed moment.

may

If we regard Colonel Yule as the author of 'Hobson-Jobson,' it is intended in no way as a disparagement of his coadjutor for a time, the late Mr. Arthur Coke Burnell. Colonel Yule explains in his Preface the circumstances under which he and Mr. Burnell, who had been engaged in somewhat similar enquiries, agreed to combine their labours, and the volume contains not a few sound observations made direct from the lips or pen of Mr. Burnell; as, for instance, that in which he stated his unwillingness to venture any explanation of South-Indian names owing to their excessive corruption. Mr. Burnell's cooperation covered a period of ten years-from 1872 till his death in 1882-and his surviving collaborator writes thus fully and frankly of his share in the work :

'In bulk nearly seven-eighths of the book is mine. But Burnell contributed so much of value, so much of the essential; buying, in the search for illustration, numerous rare and costly books which were not otherwise accessible to him in India; setting me, by his example, on lines of research with which I should have else possibly remained unacquainted; writing letters with such fulness, frequency, and interest on the details of the work, up to the summer of his death; that the measure of bulk in contribution is no gauge of his share in the result.'

If Mr. Burnell had lived to see the completion of the edifice to which he contributed, he would have asked no better reward than these remarks.

We cannot commence our notice of the work itself in a better Vol. 164.-No. 327.

L

manner

manner than by a few extracts from Colonel Yule's introductory remarks.

...

'Words of Indian origin have been insinuating themselves into English ever since the end of the reign of Elizabeth and the beginning of that of King James, when such terms as calico, chintz, and gingham had already effected a lodgment in English warehouses and shops, and were lying in wait for entrance into English literature. Such outlandish guests grew more frequent 120 years ago, when soon after the middle of last century the numbers of Englishmen in the Indian services, civil and military, expanded with the great acquisition of dominion then made by the Company, and we meet them in vastly greater abundance now. Vocabularies of Indian and other foreign words in use among Europeans in the East have not unfrequently been printed. Several of the old travellers have attached the like to their narratives, whilst the prolonged excitement created in England a hundred years since by the impeachment of Hastings, and kindred matters, led to the publication of several glossaries as independent works, and a good many others have been published in later days. . . Our work indeed, in the long course of its compilation, has gone through some modification and enlargement of scope, but hardly such as in any degree to affect its distinctive character, in which something has been aimed at differing in form from any work known to us. In its original conception it was intended to deal with all that class of words which, not in general pertaining to the technicalities of administration, recur constantly in the daily intercourse of the English in India, either as expressing ideas really not provided for by our mother tongue, or supposed by the speakers (often quite erroneously) to express something not capable of just denotation by any English term. A certain percentage of such words has been carried to England by the constant reflux to their native shores of Anglo-Indians, who in some degree imbue with their notions and phraseology the circles from which they had gone forth. This effect has been still more promoted by the currency of a vast mass of literature, of all qualities and for all ages, dealing with Indian subjects, as well as by the regular appearance for many years past of Indian correspondence in English newspapers; insomuch that a considerable number of the expressions in question have not only become familiar in sound to English ears, but have become naturalized in the English language.'

Colonel Yule then proceeds to define the distinctions between different classes of Anglo-Indian words introduced into our language. Some of these, e.g. curry, loot, nabob, toddy, he considers have been admitted to full franchise; while another class, composed of such words as compound, batta, aya, nautch, are described as familiar enough to the English ear, though hardly yet received into citizenship. Among words which,

now

now fully assimilated, really originated in the adoption of an Indian word, Colonel Yule gives the three very unlikely-looking names of the boats of a man-of-war, viz. cutter, jolly boat, and dingy. It is true he qualifies the statement by the insertion of the word 'probable.' But even the Oriental origin of some of our nautical terms is not so surprising as the fact, that such vulgar expressions as 'that is the cheese,' and 'I don't care a damn,' are traced to a similar source. The following is Colonel Yule's account of these two words :

'Cheese. This word is well known to be used in modern English slang for " anything good, first-rate in quality, genuine, pleasant, or advantageous." (Slang Dictionary.) And the most probable source of the term is Pers. and H. chiz="thing." For the expression used to be common among young Anglo-Indians, e.g. "My new Arab is the real chiz"; "These cheroots are the real chiz," i.e. the real thing. The word may have been an Anglo-Indian importation, and it is difficult otherwise to account for it.'

'Dam.-Hind. dam. Originally an actual copper coin... The tendency of denominations of coin is always to sink in value. . . . Damri is a common enough expression for the infinitesimal in coin, and one has often heard a Briton in India say: "No! I won't give a dumree!" with but a vague notion what a damri meant, as in Scotland we have heard, "I won't give a plack," though certainly the speaker could not have stated the value of that ancient coin. And this leads to the suggestion, that a like expression, often heard from coarse talkers in England as well as in India, originated in the latter country, and that whatever profanity there may be in the animus there is none in the etymology, when such an one blurts out "I don't care a dam!" i.e. in other words, "I don't care a brass farthing!

'If the gentle reader deems this a far-fetched suggestion, let us back it by a second. We find in Chaucer ("The Miller's Tale"): ne raught he not a kers," which means, "he recked not a Cress (ne flocci quidem); an expression which is found also in Piers Plowman:

""Wisdom and witte nowe is not worthe a kerse."

'And this, we doubt not, has given rise to that other vulgar expression, "I don't care a curse;" curiously parallel in its corruption to that in illustration of which we quote it.'

The scope and variety of the work may be inferred from these introductory quotations; but in order that the reader may be in a proper position to understand the book, something must be said of its chief title, why it was adopted, as well as its signification. This cannot be done better than in the author's own words: