Amitav Ghosh - Sea of Poppies

silboot (*The Glossary): 'Like sirdrar, which is but the Hind. corruption of the undergarment known as a "short drawer", this word for "slipper" has reentered English usage in an altered form.'

silmagoor: From the Jack-Chits: 'Could this be a lascar's way of saying "sail-maker"?' A marginal note, written long afterwards, confirms his guess with a triumphant'!': 'Roebuck leaves no doubt of it.'

sirdrar (*The Glossary): See silboot.

soor (*The Barney-Book): 'Pig, hence soor-ka-butcha, son of a pig'.

tabar (*Roebuck): 'Royal' as applied to a ship's rigging; see dol.

+tael: 'Another name for a Chinese liang or ounce,' but a note in the margins specifies: 'According to the Oracle, this weight equals

oz. avoirdupois.'

+talipot: Neel was mistaken in thinking this to be the English word for 'toddy-palm'. The Oraclepronounces it to be a 'South Indian fan palm, Corypha umbraculifera. '

taliyamar (*Roebuck): Neel mistook this word to mean 'bow-wave' but was glad to be corrected: 'Roebuck explains that this is the Laskari for "cut-water", derived from the Portuguese talhamar . I remember having always heard the word spoken by lascars who were looking down from the bowsprit. Hence my error: I mistook the effect for the object.'

tamancha: 'Roebuck confirms that this was, as I remember, the common Laskari word for a lesser firearm.'

tapori: From the Jack-Chits: 'This was the lascar's word for the wooden bowl out of which he ate – the equivalent of the English seaman's "kid". These were made of the plainest hollowed wood, and were bought in great numbers from bumboats. Apart from this there was also the metal khwancha– a large tray on which they ate together.'

+tatty (*The Glossary): 'Such was the term for a screen made of khus-khus grass. Although the word is perfectly respectable, being derived from the tamil vettiveru (from which vetiver), its resemblance to a common Hind. word for a certain bodily product tended to create misunderstandings. A story is told of a formidable BeeBeewho issued a peremptory hookumto a timid chuckeroo: "Boy! Drop a tatty! Jildee!" The unfortunate lad was gubbrowedhalf out of his wits and complied with such celerity that the BeeBeewas put utterly to rout.

'To further complicate matters, those who were responsible for the maintenance of these screens were known, in certain households, as tattygars. Unfortunate indeed was the kismetof the khidmatgarswho were thus designated, and it was no easy matter to fill these positions. It was because of such misunderstandings, perhaps, that this word is gradually yielding to its Hind. synonym khus-khus.'

+teapoy: See charpoy.

teek (*The Barney-Book): 'According to the Barneymen, the Hind. thik became in its English avatar "exact, close, precise."'

+tical: A silver coin equal to a rupee.

tickytaw boys/tickytock boys (*The Glossary): 'These ghastly attempts at onomatopoeia were once the terms of reference for players of the tabla.'

+tiff, to: 'Ironic indeed that India should be the last refuge of this fine North Country English word, meaning to take refreshments (from which tiffin, lunch etc)'.

tiffin: See above.

+tindal: See lascar.

+topas/topass: Neel would have been astonished by the Oracle's gloss of this word: 'A person of mixed Black and Portuguese descent; often applied to a soldier, or a ship's scavenger or bath-attendant, who is of this class.' See lascar.

trikat (*Roebuck): See dol.

tuckiah / tuckier (*The Glossary): 'Sir Henry claims that this common Hind. word for "pillow" or "bolster" is often used in the same sense as ashram . I am baffled by this, I must confess.'

+ tumasher / tamasha / tomashaw / tomascia: Being a contrarian, Neel had a particular fondness for the seventeenth-century English usage of this word, in which it was spelled tomashawor even tomascia, and had the sense of 'spectacle' or 'show', being sometimes thus applied also to rituals. He deplored the gradual debasement of the word, whereby it 'can now scarcely be told apart from a petty goll-maul.'

tumlet (*The Glossary): 'Is it possible that this Hind. corruption of "tumbler" will reenter the English language and, like the notorious cuckoo, eject its parent from its nest? Would that it could be so!'

tuncaw (*The Glossary): 'The mystery of English turned this Hind. for "salary", tankha , into an almost derogatory term, used mainly for servant's wages.'

+turban: See seersucker.

turnee (*Roebuck): 'This (as also tarniand tanni), were the lascars' abbreviations of the word "attorney", and it was applied always to English supercargoes. Phaltu-tanni, however, was their word for the Flemish horse, a very curious element of a ship's tackle.'

udlee-budlee: See shoke.

upper-roger (*The Glossary, *The Barney-Book): 'A corruption of Skt. yuva-raja , "young king", says Sir Henry, to which the Barneymenadd, apropos nothing, that the Nawab Siraj-uddowlah was similarly known to British wordy-wallahs as Sir Roger Dowler.'

+vakeel: Lawyer, pleader. 'One of the oldest mysteriesof the courtroom, reputed to be a denizen of the English language since the early seventeenth century.'

+vetiver: See tatty.

+wanderoo: See bandar. In the margins of this a nameless relative has written: 'In the jungles of English, only a little less antique than vakeel, dating back to the 1680s, according to Oracle.'

woolock (*The Glossary): 'Boats of this name were often to be seen on the Hooghly, but I recall neither size nor any details of their construction.'

wordy-wallah (*The Glossary): This phrase, from Hind. vardi-wala , was used in English to mean 'wearer of a uniform'. Those especially gifted in this regard were known as wordy-majors(or woordy-majors). Neel's usage of these terms bore no resemblance to their proper definition.

zubben/zubán: 'Of this word,' writes Neel, 'I can find no evidence in any of my dictionaries. But I know I have heard it often used, and if it does not exist, it should, for no other expression could so accurately describe the subject of the Chrestomathy .'

[1]Whether this abbreviation refers to a specific language (Hindi?/Urdu?/Hindusthani?) or merely to all things Indian has long been a subject of controversy within the family. Suffice it to say that the matter can never be satisfactorily resolved since Neel only ever used this contracted form. Chrestomathy , is a reference always to Lt. Thomas Roebuck's pioneering work of lexicography: An English and Hindostanee Naval Dictionary of Technical Terms and Sea Phrases and also the Various Words of Command Given in Working a Ship, &C. with Many Sentences of Great Use at Sea; to which Is Prefixed a Short Grammar of the Hindostanee Language . First printed in Calcutta, this lexicon was reprinted in London in 1813 by the booksellers to the Hon. East India Company: Black, Parry & Co. of Leadenhall Street. Neel once described it as the most important glossary of the nineteenth century – because as he put it, 'in its lack, the age of sail would have been becalmed in a kalmariya, with sahibs and lascars mouthing incomprehensible nothings at each other.' It is certainly true that this modest word-list was to have an influence that probably far exceeded Lt. Roebuck's expectations. Seven decades after its publication it was revised by the Rev. George Small, and reissued by W. H. Allen & Co. under the title: A Laskari Dictionary or Anglo-Indian Vocabulary of Nautical Terms and Phrases in English and Hindustani (in 1882): this latter edition was available well into the twentieth century. The Laskari Dictionary was Neel's favourite lexicon and his use of it was so frequent that he appears to have developed a sense of personal familiarity with the author.