The
concise guide to the Anglo- Sri Lankan lexicon- III by Richard Boyle
Some words of Portuguese origin
The second editions of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED2) and
Hobson-Jobson (H-J2) include a number of words of Portuguese origin
that have found their way into the Anglo-Sri Lankan lexicon merely
because the British happened to occupy a former Portuguese colony.
While the wider Anglo-Indian lexicon contains a number of words
of Portuguese origin, such as almyra, brinjal, caste, cobra, gram,
mosquito, muster, palmyra, peon, and plantain, there are not so
many Portuguese words exclusively associated with Sri Lanka. Here
are just three examples, the first two being much better known than
the third. Date of first use is provided in brackets:
Boutique (1834).
At the time of the publication of the second edition of H-J2 in
1903, this, as the glossary states, was "a common word in Ceylon
for a small native shop or booth." A century later it is more
or less obsolete, having been replaced by the Sinhala term kade.
Boutique is not of French origin as might be expected. It is derived
from the Portuguese butica or boteca. The Anglo-Sri Lankan sense
of the word is not recorded in the OED2.
The earliest
illustrative quotation given in H-J2 is by Simon Casie Chetty from
the Ceylon Gazetteer of 1834 - "the boutiques are ranged along
both sides of the street." There are many other references
from English literature pertaining to Sri Lanka. One is by William
Skeen from Adam's Peak (1870:169): "We were overtaken by a
smart shower, and gladly availed ourselves of the shelter of a boutique
on the wayside."
Another is by
Henry W. Cave from The Ceylon Government Railway (1910[2002]:10):
"Chatham Street is composed of a strange medley of restaurants,
native jewellers, curiousity shops and provision boutiques."
Bella Woolf,
writing in How to See Ceylon (1914:46), provides possibly the best
description of a boutique in literature pertaining to the island:
"The native shops - boutiques they are called in Ceylon, a
relic of Portuguese days - are open to the winds of heaven. Here
the seller sits cross-legged or on his haunches on the floor, while
all the day and far into the night the purchasers swarm around.
Strange to European eyes are the sacks and baskets full of curry
stuffs, chillies, Maldive fish, and grains unknown to the West,
kurakkan, gingelly, paddy, and gram. The fruit shops brim with plantains
(bananas to most people), pineapples, rambuttans, (red and green
round fruits covered with prickles), mangoes, custard apples, papaws,
breadfruit, brinjals (purple and white), pumpkins. 'Candles for
sale' is the device outside one boutique and attenuated specimens
of the candle tribe dangle on strings. There are boutiques displaying
gay-coloured clothes and handkerchiefs, there are betel-leaves impaled
on sticks, sold together with arecanut and lime for chewing purposes.
In some places tailors are machining for dear life - a tiresome
touch of the West. In another doorway a woman sits at work on pillow
lace. Here is a barber shaving his victim, or an astrologer casting
a horoscope."
My final example
is by Harry Williams, who notes in Ceylon Pearl of the East (1950[1963]:163):
"If they cannot grow this tobacco, they will barter any surplus
crops that they may have at the boutique, or village shop, for it."
Cabook (1834).
In Sinhala this is called kabuk-gal. H-J2 states that it is "the
Ceylon term for the substance called in India laterite. The word
is perhaps the Portuguese cabouco or cavouco, 'a quarry.'"
The editor adds in parenthesis: "Mr (Donald) Ferguson says
that it is a corruption of the Portuguese pedra de covouca, 'quarry-stones,'
the last word being a misapprehension applied to the stones themselves."
This word, deemed
as having a non-naturalized status by the original editors of the
OED, nestles comfortably between caboodle and caboose in the second
edition. According to the entry, it is "The name given in Ceylon
to a reddish gneissoid building-stone, soft when quarried but hardening
by exposure to the air; laterite."
Curiously, as
with boutique, the earliest reference quoted in H-J2 (and the OED2
for that matter) is by Simon Casie Chetty from the Ceylon Gazetteer
of 1834: "The soil varies in different situations on the Island.
In the country round Colombo it consists of a strong red clay, or
marl, called cabook, mixed with sandy ferruginous particles."
And: "The houses are built with cabook, and neatly whitewashed
with chunam."
There is also
a quotation by James Emerson Tennent from Ceylon (1859[1977]:I.17)
that begins: "A peculiarity which is one of the first to strike
a stranger who lands at Galle or Colombo is the bright red colour
of the streets and roads . . . and the ubiquity of the red dust
which penetrates every crevice and imparts its own tint to every
neglected article. Native residents in these localities are easily
recognizable elsewhere by the general hue of their dress. This is
occasioned by the prevalence . . . of laterite, or, as the Singhalese
call it, cabook."
However, an
earlier reference, or antedating, does exist, for James Cordiner
writes in A Description of Ceylon (1807[1983]:7): "The foundation
of the soil is generally a deep layer of reddish clay, mixed with
sandy and ferruginous particles. In this country it is called cabooc
stone. When first broken up it is as soft as a stiff clay, and as
easily cut into pieces; but after being exposed to the heat of the
sun, it becomes indurated and brittle, and is used as a stone for
the purposes of building."
Another pre-1834
reference is by John Davy, who remarks in An Account of the Interior
of Ceylon (1821:38): "The best and most productive soils of
Ceylon, are a brown loam resulting from the decomposition of gneiss
or granitic rock, abounding in felspar, or a reddish loam, resulting
from the decomposition of clay-iron stone called in Ceylon, Kabook-stone."
Other references
include the following by J. W. Bennett from Ceylon and its Capabilities
(1843:373): "From Barberyn to Kalutara, the road is excellent,
in some places cut through hills of Kabook clay" and (Ibid.327)
"There are several excellent houses, chiefly of Kabook, or
iron-stone clay."
Charles Henry
Sirr writes in Ceylon and the Cingalese (1850:I.103) of the hot
springs at Kanniyai, Trincomalee: "The enclosure in which the
springs are, is about forty feet long, and eighteen wide, being
surrounded by a wall of kabook, each well likewise having a low
embankment."
William Skeen
writes in Adam's Peak (1870:123) of the Maha Saman Dewale near Ratnapura:
"Inside these (walls) are corresponding rows of five brick
or cabook pillars, with a passage ten feet wide between."
My final example
is by Henry W. Cave from The Ceylon Government Railway (1910[2002]:10):
The roads are metalled with dark red cabook, a product of disintegrated
gneiss, which being subjected to detrition communicates its hue
to the soil."
Marmala-water
(1857). In Sinhala this is called Pini-diyara. "(Marmala is
a corruption of Portuguese marmelo, the Bengal quince.) A liquid
distilled from the flowers of the marmelos, used in Ceylon as a
perfume for sprinkling." The two striking things about marmala-water
are the brevity of the entry and the paucity of references in mainstream
literature pertaining to Sri Lanka. When I commented thus to the
co-editor of the OED he shrewdly replied: "Oh yes, marmala-water!
A case of the smaller the entry, the more it seems to demand!"
Eventually I
did find an explanatory reference in Robert Knox's Sinhalese Vocabulary,
edited by Donald Ferguson (Journal of the Ceylon Branch of the Royal
Asiatic Society, Vol.14, No.47, 1896). No. 35 on Knox's list is
pinne deura, which Ferguson notes is "dewwater i.e. rosewater.
Pini-diyara. Clough has 'pinidiya nectar of flowers; dew; water
distilled from the Beli or wood apple flower.'" In a footnote
to this, Ferguson comments: "Marmel water still forms an article
of export from Ceylon to India."
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