Loanwords from Indian Languages in English Documents from the Empire

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FABIO LUPPI

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Fabio Luppi

AbstractTexts commonly referred to as ‘colonial’ and ‘post-colonial’ abound of loan-

words from indigenous languages. From this perspective Days of the Raj—ananthology composed of extracts from letters, private documents, guides forEnglish people, and many other materials deriving from the Archives of theEmpire in India—represents a significant example. Many words of Indian ori-gin appear in the extracts collected in this non-fiction book. The present paperaims to focus on these borrowings and neologisms dividing them according totheir cultural relevance in their respective semantic fields and comparing themto the definitions given in the dictionary known as Hobson-Jobson, a glossaryof colloquial Anglo-Indian words and phrases, printed in 1886. The evidenceshows that these Anglo-Indian words had often the function to create a divi-sion between the supposed superior culture of the colonizer and the inferiorworld of the colonized.

IntroductionNatural languages are living entities. They live, change, evolve, and die.

Even words have the same natural history. Why shall we need new dictionar-ies? How many times have we been told that a new edition of a dictionary hascome out? In new editions new words previously not included in the older ver-sions appear and obsolete expressions disappear. The process of word forma-tion—the creation of a new word—occurs in different ways (conversion, der-ivation). Neologisms represent an interesting case. A loanword is a wordborrowed from a foreign language and used in the recipient language withouttranslation. Usually this happens when the recipient language is exposed to adonor language and when the latter has a dominant position in the specific fieldof the loanword. In the following study I demonstrate that many borrowingsfrom Indian languages and many neologisms created in the British Eastcolonies were not meant to add a new meaning known to one language only(either the Indian or the British), but their function was to provide definitionsof a structured society with a clear distinction of administrative positions, hi-erarchical roles and especially neat social and cultural status.

1. Macaulay, English and Indian languagesIn discussions leading up to the English Education Act of 1835, Thomas

Babington Macaulay proposed a famous “Minute upon Indian Education.” Inthis document he wondered what language was the most appropriate for the

22 CROSS-LINGUISTIC DIMENSIONS


government of the future Empire in India. Hestressed the absolute necessity to find a com-mon language for the institutional bureaucraticapparatus, a language understood both by thecolonized and the colonizers. British had to“do [their] best to form a class who may be in-terpreters between [them] and the millionswhom [they] govern” (Macaulay 1835). Thequestion was: “What then shall that languagebe? One-half of the committee maintain that itshould be the English. The other half stronglyrecommend the Arabic and Sanskrit. The whole question seems to me to be—which language is the best worth knowing?” (Macaulay 1835).In the end Macaulay solves the controversy proposing English as means of

communication with the indigenous populations since he arbitrarily stated thatthroughout the centuries not only had English proved to have a much wider lit-erature, it also had been used effectively in many different specific domainsfrom physics to moral philosophy. Consequently, also Indian people whowere going to hold positions in the imperial administration were supposed tolearn English—it is not by chance that the Indian ruling class, belonging to theIndian National Congress, that had studied in English universities, and had alsoled to the independence of India and Pakistan—was perfectly bilingual.

Macaulay (1835) defined native languages—“the dialects commonly spokenin this part of India”—as “poor and rude” and containing “neither literary nor sci-entific information.” It was necessary to teach English and through this superiorlanguage to “educate India”. The final goal consistedof educating a nation that was, in Macaulay’s words,“comparatively ignorant”—not just to teach, but toeducate, because not only English language, but alsoEnglish culture was considered superior. Why then, somany Indian words have penetrated in English? It isevident that certain information was not present in thelanguage imposed by the British, that also Englishlacked some possibility to define concepts.

Fabio Luppi 23CROSS-LINGUISTIC DIMENSIONS

T. B. Macaulay

Speeches: with his Minute onIndian education


2. Trade through / with wordsMany different goods were imported from the colonies. Cotton, flax, hemp,

spices, rice, minerals… and words. Several words deriving from the differentlanguages spoken in the subcontinent entered the English vocabulary. Some ofthem directly, others via French or other European languages. Moreover, in thecolonies a certain number of neologisms were born out of necessity. In the em-pire a large amount of Indian words were commonly used by the British col-onizers. Texts commonly referred to as colonial and post-colonial abound withloanwords from indigenous languages. It is normal to find these words in fa-mous post-colonial novels written in English by non-English writers1, and it isnot surprising to find them also in most praised British writers who dealt withcolonial matters, such as Rudyard Kipling, George Orwell, E.M. Forster, PaulScott. Often modern editions of the works written by these authors present anappendix with a short dictionary of terms of Indian origin.

Fabio Luppi24 CROSS-LINGUISTIC DIMENSIONS

Rudyard Kipling George Orwell

E. M. Forster Paul Scott


However, besides these fictional texts, there is a series of many other pri-vate or public documents that bear witness of how Indian words were com-monly borrowed, often distorted and anglicized, by the British rulers in the EastIndies. The Archives of the British Empire contain hundreds of letters sent byBritish people in India, diaries written by the colonizers, official documents ofthe administration of the empire, guide books for newcomers with recom-mendation for a safe and healthy life in India, cookbooks with recipes con-taining dishes belonging to the British tradition with additions of orientaltastes. These materials, collected from the sixteenth century up to the final dis-engagement from the colonies, represent a huge corpus of information on lifehabits of those days. They deal with every aspect of private and public life: fromthe official administration of the country, to the etiquette adopted on formal oc-casions in the clubs of British India’s society, from clothes and food to the rightattitude towards the subaltern natives.

3. Days of the RajPramond K. Nayar (2009), professor in the department of English, Uni-

versity of Hyderabad (India) edited an anthology, Days of the Raj: Life andLeisure in British India, collecting extracts from this enormous amount of doc-uments. Due to the many loanwords found in these papers, not surprisingly atthe end of the volume there is an appendix with a short glossary of Anglo-In-dian words. In the present paper I focused on these loanwords dividing themaccording to their semantic fields, trying to understand their implicit culturalrelevance in the context and, consequently, the reason why they had been bor-rowed. It must be preliminarily stated that the occurrence of such words pro-gressively increases throughout the years. In thefirst extracts we hardly find a word of Indian ori-gin while in the years of the Empire (from 1876)the dictionary is considerably enriched by loan-words from Indian dialects.A first distinction can be made between words

with or without an English equivalent. Clearly, ifthere is no English equivalent the Indian wordmust be used. Sometimes an English word didnot correspond to a concept, but represented amisleading or confusing adaptation. In thesecases the Indian word could convey knowledge,



a new meaning unknown to the English lan-guage. However, if there is an equivalentword, the Indian borrowing is often preferred.This may depend on urgent necessities, in or-der to have an immediate, effective commu-nication of important information.

4. A first semantic distinctionMany loanwords refer to flora and fauna typical of that region of the

world2. Animals and plants that do not exist in Europe must be named withwords borrowed from the native languages. Many loanwords are also relatedto cooking or represent the ingredients of typical Eastern dishes. The Areca,the seed of the areca palm, used in paans3, is an example because it constitutesa specific ingredient of a particular preparation typical of India. Chewingpaans is a traditional habit—a popular activity—dating back centuries andspread all over South East Asian countries.Loanwords representing Indian cuisine are relevant from a cultural point of

view: they represent a specificity. Even today, if we see the Indian version ofa modern TV show produced in many different countries such as MasterChef,for a western audience not familiar with foreign tastes and culinarian traditionsit is sometimes very difficult to recognize their ingredients and dishes. Also thetools used in Asian kitchens are different from the Western ones. The oven usedto prepare Chapati4 is not comparable with the Western oven. Similarly, a cupof Masala Tea is very different from other ordinary teas we drink in Europe.All Eastern habits for lunch or dinner also differ from the Western ones—anda further distinction should be made confronting different social classes.

5. A further distinction of semantic fieldsThe excerpts collected in Days of the Raj—taken

from “official documents, memoirs, letters, reports, ex-tracts in contemporary periodicals, recipe / and cook-books, instruction manuals, and travelogues” (Nayar,2009: x)—are divided in four sections: Raj Travels, RajHomes, Raj Leisure e Raj Relations. Each section helpsus to group words in semantic fields.


Pramond K. Nayar


5.1 Raj travelsThanks to this distinction it is possible to notice that in the first section, for

instance, the occurrence of borrowings is less frequent and above all it is con-centrated on the more recent passages. Travels imply an impermanence andearly travels to India were first attempts to approach and discover a distantworld and to create provisional basis for commercial intercourses: there werenot proper settlements. This is why Indian culture and language could be seenwith different eyes and with a far different interest. However, in this sectionthere are several words concerning not only travels to India, but also travelsin the subcontinent. These travels were often particularly difficult and not com-fortable. A palankeen (or also palanquin sometimes also called doolie) was abox-litter used for travels. It was carried by four men, called bearer. A mus-sailchee5 was a servant with the function of running beside the palanquin atnight carrying a torch. A series of different words were used to indicate differentkinds of boats: boliah or bauleahwas a boat with a cabin, while the cargo boatwas called bora (or boora). All of these words were of some utility to travelthroughout the subcontinent.

5.2 Raj HomesThe other sections of the book are full of borrowings from Indian languages.

A house implies a settlement, a permanence. There are words describing fur-niture or rooms of the house. A part of the house where, according to Muslimcustoms,—that had been adopted by the Hindus of Bengal and the Mahrattas—women were secluded is called: zenana. It is a term describing a part of a na-tive House. A familiar borrowing from India describing a typically British housein the colonies is bungalow. It is worth noticing here that the two worlds, thenatives’ and the colonizers’, were distinct and kept separated, and many loan-words here have this precise function: keeping a distance between Indian andBritish people.From this perspective, there is a significant word that entered the European

vocabularies in the fifteenth century and whose occurrence in English datesback to the seventeenth century. A verandah is an external part of the house,surrounded by pillars. Usually it is a big open space placed before the entranceof the house. This loanword bears in itself the very essence of separation. Thefunction of this part of the house was fundamental:

The verandahwas an important space of interracial and intercultural



encounter during the Raj, and the Memsahib-trader negotiations werecentral to this. […] English women bought from boxwallahs and ven-dors who displayed their wares on the verandahs of the house (Nayar,2009: 124-5).

The boxwallah was an itinerant pedlar or travelling merchant who soldgoods door to door. Boxwallahswere not allowed into the house, but could en-ter the verandah6. Their function was crucial. It prevented British people to goto the markets, which were certainly picturesque and colorful, but also chaoticand unnerving. Furthermore, attending dirty, dusty, crowded and promiscuousplaces such as Indian markets was not considered convenient and decent forBritish women.

5.3 Raj LeisurePastimes indicates a necessity to go beyond simple business intercourse,

temporary jobs or a brief stay; British people had to find an occupation for theirspare time. The fact that this spare time was spent in India and not in GreatBritain, means that for many people the subcontinent represented the placewhere a man could live his entire life, or a large part of it.Needless to say, clothing was not just represented by military uniforms or

a strictly necessary wardrobe. Men and women carried to India every kind ofclothes, and their wardrobe included clothes for society happenings such as par-ties, dances or more informal meetings at the clubs. Everyone needed appro-priate dresses for different occasions. In the introduction to the book, Nayarrefers to treatises suggesting the most appropriate clothes a British personshould wear to face Indian weather. In particular, the heat of dry seasons anddamp air of monsoon seasons were not tolerated by the colonizers and sometips on the most common clothes to wear in order to avoid further nuisancesdue to this unbearable climate were needed.A complete list of such loanwords would be quite long. A choga, for in-

stance, was a long-sleeved garment and a topee was a helmet or hat. It is notby chance that fundamental accessories such as umbrellas and fans were de-fined through loanwords—umbrellas were called roundelwhile, much more in-teresting was the word used for ‘fan’: it was punkah wallahs or khas tattis thatactually describe not only the fan but also the servant, or punkah boy, who wassupposed to wave it in the house for the sahibs. Nayar correctly underlines thatthese ‘boys’ were not young Indians, but men that were at least thirty years old,



people accustomed to maintain a proper countenance in the presence of Britishpeople and who were allowed to enter the houses of the ‘white men’. Fur-thermore, it is understood that the word ‘boy’ was commonly used by Britishsettlers to indicate their adult male servants, and not young boys. The wordclearly implies a patronizing attitude with the subaltern.

5.4 Raj relationsRelations between people imply a constant presence, a structured society,

and, in this case, the idea of India as the place where to spend almost an en-tire life. Indeed, the ‘passage to India’ for many British was not just a passage.All borrowings found in Days of the Raj indicate essential concepts that in-fluenced a lifestyle. Common habits described in the documents collected inthe book clearly refer to a constant presence, a permanence in a reality whichneeded new names to indicate things and concepts. These loanwords helpedcolonizers to settle down in a new place which sometimes was to be consid-ered as ‘home’. In this context

the British relations with the natives, their experience of social andother interactions with Indians went through many phases and took manyforms. These were influenced by their own racial prejudices, the exi-gencies of the empire, the contexts of battle or social reform or admin-istration (Nayar, 2009: 213).

In order to understand the different social aspects of society in the Raj, itis useful to list the loanwords describing jobs and occupations. As it has alreadybeen pointed out, many of them described people who contributed to run thehouse: they were boxwallahs (not at the direct dependency of a single house),Mussailchee, chokra or chhokra (boys employed around the house) andBawarchi or Bobachee (cook). It is worth noticing that this last profession wasnot so common, because many cookbooks “designed to teach both basic andadvanced cooking for Indian conditions” (Nayar, 2009, p. 52) did not recom-mend native cooks, whose expertise was despised especially for the exagger-ated use of spices. On the other hand, a fundamental figure was the Ayah, anurse-maid who had to look after the children up to the age of seven. She helda considerably helpful and important position among the servants, and repre-sented an exception in the relations between the English and the female mem-bers of the colonized society. Other common borrowings in this semantic



field indicate hard jobs such as water carrier (bhishti), coolie or coolly (hiredlabourer), syce (horse keeper) and surwaun (camel man).In order to rule over such an immense empire, every single role of the bu-

reaucratic machine had to be defined and structured. Several loanwords ex-pressed the different positions in the British army or in the public administra-tion. Military hierarchies were constituted, for instance, by bahadur7, buxee (amilitary paymaster), killadar (commandant of a fort) and silladar (soldier ina regiment of irregular cavalry who brings his own arms and horse). Similarly,in the public administration there was a cazee, moonsiff or munsif (judge), acompetition-wallah8, a vakeel (attorney), and so forth. Significantly differentjobs were expressly intended for natives as British had to delegate on certaintasks. Easy obstacles in everyday administration could be overcome by alalla—a native clerk—or by a moonshee or munshi (secretary) while more dif-ficult linguistic barriers needed the presence of a specialized dubash—inter-preter.There are borrowings used for people belonging to important ranks of In-

dian or British society: a begum was a princess or a lady of rank, the Zamorinwas the title given to the king of Calicut while a meerassidar was a holder ofa hereditary property. On the other hand, there is also a long series of wordsindicating categories of thieves or criminals: budmash, (a rogue or petty thief),dacoit (robber), pindari (band of plunderers), thug (swindler, cheat9).Other borrowings describe groups of people: the word Bania, that originally

indicated a trader cast from Gujarat in early European writings on India, wasused with a metonymic sense to describe Hindus in general. Also the social ori-gin of people was categorized: a pariah was an outcast, while the half-casteor also (and even worst) a cheecheewas a person of European and native blood.The fact that the last words mentioned have derogatory connotations is symp-tomatic of an attitude diffused in the empire. Not only was the Indian societydivided in casts, the British organization, with its necessity to control, alsotended to maintain a strict class distinction where each member of the appa-ratus of the empire had his/her own private and public dimension, hierarchi-cally separated from the others.However, British people living in India for a long time felt they had become

different from other British citizens. India changed their lives, their behaviorsand their habits. This is why a word was coined to indicate Englishmen newlyarrived in India and unaccustomed to Indian ways and peculiarities. They werecalled Griffins. The origin of this expression is apparently unknown, but the



possible explanation found in the dictionary Hobson-Jobson is hilarious and worth being reported: “Therewas an admiral Griffin who commanded in the Indianseas from Nov. 1746 to June 1748, and was not veryfortunate.” (Yule & Burnell, 2013: 249)

6. CitiesAlso words used to name places are significant.

Even if many of them just constitute toponyms suchas Cashmere (Kasmir), Canara (Karnataka) andCawnpore (Kanpur), or public spaces such as gym-khana (a public facility for athletics and games), cutcherry (court-house, of-fice of administration) and punch-house (tavern, later taken to mean a meet-ing place of the Municipal Board in north India) or characteristic places of thesubcontinent such as chowk (open space in the middle of the city, usually wherethe market is held) and terai (marshy and jungle land north of the Ganga to thefoothills of Himalayas and into Nepal), yet other borrowings are of utter im-portance because, once again, they imply difference, separation and division.Big cities were divided into distinct areas: one was named Black town. It

was that part of the city occupied by native people, distinguished from otherareas occupied by English residents. There was also a further distinction be-tween Civil Lines and cantonments. The latter was

a peculiar institution seen only in the Indian subcontinent within theBritish empire. It was intended to separate the soldiers from the ‘regu-lar’ or civilian population of the town. Thus it was a town beside a town(Nayar, 2009: 306)

In smaller cities the situation was rather different. There were mofussil ar-eas, where life was conducted on a far more intimate basis with the natives. Thisword is highly significant even though it does not appear in the documents ofDays of the Raj, but is only reported by the editor. The word is defined as fol-lows:

‘The provinces’—the country stations and districts, as contra-dis-tinguished from ‘the Presidency’; or, relatively, the rural localities of adistrict as contra-distinguished from the sudder or chief station, which



is the residence of the district authorities. Thus if, in Calcutta, one talksof the Mofussil, he means anywhere in Bengal out of Calcutta; if one atBenares talks of going into the Mofussil, he means going anywhere inthe Benares division or district (as the case might be) out of the city andstation of Benares. And so over in India (Yule & Burnell, 2013: 346).

Although the British might live in these places, which implied a closer con-tact with the natives, it was important to know this distinction and be ready tobear a different life in the province. The etymology of the word is highly sig-nificant too: “The word (Hind. From Ar.) mufaṣṣal means properly ‘separate,detailed, particular’, and hence, ‘provincial’ […]” (Yule & Burnell, 2013:346). It expresses the idea of diversity and separation.These remarks remind us of an idea that we instinctively associate to Indian

society: the strict division in casts. However apparently the British operated aneven more severe restriction to the free social relations between men. Manyloanwords from Indian languages had the function to stress this order made upof divisions: division of gender, of race, of social class and position.

7. Absence of philosophical and abstract conceptsSignificantly and surprisingly in the extracts there are no words describing

religious or philosophical concepts. The only reported example is avatar.Words not functional to the most practical necessities of the empire were neg-lected and evidently used only by cultivated people interested in the study ofEastern philosophies—the study and understanding of native moral conceptsor abstract thoughts was a much more difficult task and implied the idea thatalso from an intellectual point of view India had something to teach.

8. Hobson-JobsonLoanwords from Indian dialects and colonial neologisms coined for specific

purposes can be found in a famous dictionary first published in 1886—one yearbefore the first Colonial and Indian Exhibition—and constantly re-issued everafter10. It is called Hobson-Jobson, The Definitive Glossary of Indian English.It represents “a glossary of colloquial Anglo-Indian words and phrases, and ofkindred terms etymological, historical, geographical and discursive. By ColonelHenry Yule and AC Burnell” (Campion, 2012). The dictionary’s title does notowe its name to its authors: it was chosen to help to sell. “It originates in thecries of Ya Hasan! Ya Hussain! uttered by Shia Muslims during the Muharram



procession”(Rushdie, 2010: 81), an expression de-scribing “a native festal excitement” (Yule & Bur-nell, 2013: 261). Salman Rushdie (2010) wondershow a similar distortion could be made, since theEnglish loanword sounds quite different from theoriginal cry. This is why the periphrasis “the law ofHobson-Jobson” is sometimes used in linguisticsdescribing the process of phonological change bywhich loanwords are adapted to the phonology ofthe new language, as in the archetypal example of“Hobson-Jobson” itself11. This expression was alsoused for a game: to play Hobson-Jobson consistedin “taking turns to make up sentences using as many Anglo-Indian words aspossible” (Teltscher, 2013: xxix)12.

On the occasion of the dictionary reissue contemporary writers such asAmitav Gosh and Salman Rushdie have expressed their views on this book.What they have stressed in their remarks is the fine, rich scholarly work done by the two Victorian authors and the old-fashioned familiar taste deriving froma period of history their parents and grandparents had seen, lived, and some-times narrated to their children. This is why Rushdie comments that “to spenda few days with Hobson-Jobson is, almost, to regret the passing of the intimateconnection that made the linguistic kedgeree possible” (Rushdie, 2010: 84).

As Teltscher (2013) acutely points out “Hobson-Jobson provides an unri-valled source; its eccentric, gentlemanly scholarship may well constitute theacceptable face of the Raj, for there is surely an element of the Raj nostalgiain the lexicon’s popularity, both in Britain and India” (p. xxviii). As a typicalproduct of the Victorian compromise and its hypocrite face, the dictionary doesnot report any of the many offensive and derogatory words used by the Eng-lish to address the natives—“No kaffir, no gully, not even a wog” (Rushdie,2010: 83). However, after the first nostalgia the dictionary might produce onthe reader who lived directly or indirectly the experience of colonialism, it mustbe recognized as a tool that contributed to build a divided hypocritical racistsociety. Thus, Rushdie concludes: “but then one remembers what sort of con-nection it was and is moved to remark—as Rhett Butler once said to ScarlettO’Hara—‘Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a small copper coin weighing one to-lah, eight mashas and seven surkhs, being the fortieth part of a rupee.’ Or, toput it more concisely, a dam” (Rushdie, 2010: 85).


Salman Rushdie


The point is that whether many words of this dictionary—and consequentlymany words found in the documents of the empire collected in Days of theRaj—were certainly just descriptive and ‘culture-free’, others were almost ob-sessively ‘culture-bound’, they were meant to produce a very precise effect.These terms had the function to create a neat division between the world of thewhite man and that of the native, an operation that usually implied a supposedsuperiority of the colonizers giving the British the right to behave as mastersof the land and of its inhabitants.

References

Campion, M. J., (2012). Hobson-Jobson: The Words English Owes to India. inBBC News Magazine, 11

July 2012, retrieved January 6, 2014 from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18796493

Coelho, G. M. (1997). Anglo-Indian English: A Nativized Variety of Indian Eng-lish. in Language

in Society Vol. 26, No. 4, pp. 561-589.King, R. E. (2000). The Lexical Basis of Grammatical Borrowings, Amsterdam:John Benjamins Publishing.

Haugen, E. (1950). The Analysis of Linguistic Borrowing. in Language Vol. 26,No. 2, pp. 210-231.

Macaulay, T. B., (1835). Minute by the Hon’ble T. B. Macaulay, dated the 2nd Feb-ruary 1835.

Retrieved January 6, 2014 fromhttp://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00generallinks/macaulay/txt_minute_education_1835.html

Nayar, P. N., (2009). Days of the Raj. Life and Leisure in British India. London:Penguin.

Rushdie, S. (2001). Hobson-Jobson in Rushdie, S. Imaginary Homelands, pp. 81-84, London: Vintage.

Yule, H. & Burnell, A.C., (2013). Hobson-Jobson, The definitive glossary ofBritish India, Oxford: Oxford University Press.



Notes

1 By authors such as Salman Rushdie, R.K. Narayan, Anita Desai, Aravind Adiga justto name a few.

2 A cheetah, for instance, is a leopard; a neelgye [nilgai] a species of antelope; a gavial(gharial) is a Gangetic alligator.

3 Paans are made of a betel leaf filled with powdered tobacco or spices, they arechewed and finally spat out or swallowed.

4 An unleavened flatbread, also known as roti.5 Corruption of the word Mashal-chi.6 Apparently this occupation keeps existing in Mumbay where deliverymen, or dabba

wallahs delivers hot meals door to door. This service has been implemented over theyears: at the beginning members of the family used to cook in private kitchens andask for a boxwallah to deliver the food; nowadays, there are also agencies provid-ing meals together with the delivery service.

7 “Literally, ‘brave’ or ‘champion’, in Anglo-India used by natives to describe Euro-pean officers. From 1837, was a part of honorific titles of 1st (Sirdar Bahadur) and2nd class (Bahadur) for native.” (Nayar 2009: 298).

8 “Members of the Indian Civil Service who entered the profession after qualifyingin a competitive examination” (Nayar 2009: 299).

9 “Mostly used to refer to a band of robbers who would accompany road travelers and,after winning their confidence, would strangle them at night with a hand-kerchif”(Nayar, 2009: 304)

10 It is not so wrong to consider the web-site samosapedia.com as the modern coun-terpart of that old book.

11 See the Oxford English Dictionary entry for Hobson-Jobson.12 A perfect example of such a practice (though it is not possible to name it Hobson-

Jobson because it would be an anachronism) is represented by the text of WilliamMackintosh ‘Travels in Europe, Asia and Africa’ (Nayar, 2009: 57).



Loanwords from Indian Languages in English Documents from the Empire

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