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MARCH, 1879.]
MISCELLANEA.
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have had a special training, our European paintings, prints, drawings, and photographs, plain or coloured, if they are landscapes, are absolutely unintelligible."-Yulés Mission to Ada, p. 89.
1858 -"The Aryan tribes--for that is the name they gave themselves, both in their old and new homes-brought with them institutions of a simplicity almost primitive."-Whitney, Oriental Studies, vol. II. p. 5.
1859:-"Quoiqu'il en soit, ce qui précède me semble justifier suffisamment l'emploi du nom de Arya pour désigner, dans son unité, le peuple père de la grande famille appelée jusqu'à présent indoeuropéenne."-Pictet, I. 34.
1861 :-" Latin, again, with Greek, and the Celtic, the Teutonic, and Slavonic languages, together with likewise the ancient dialects of India and Persia, must have sprung from an earlier language, the mother of the whole IndoEuropean or Aryan family of speech."-Max Müller, Lectures, Ist Series, p. 32.
The verb ARYANIZE has also been formed from this word :
1858:-" Thus all India was brought under the sway, physical or intellectual and moral, of the alien race; it was thoroughly Aryanized."-Whitney, as above, p. 7.
BOBBERY-BOB ! interj. The Anglo-Indian colloquial representation of an exclamation common among Hindus, when in surprise or grief-Bap-re! or, redoubled, Bdpre-bdp! O father!' (We have known a friend from the north of the Tweed whose ordinary interjection was my great grandmother !"):
Hence :
BOBBERY, 8. A noise, a disturbanoe, a row; and further
BOBBERY PACK, B. A pack of hounds of different breeds, or (oftener) of no breed at all, wherewith young officers hunt jackals or the like; presum. ably so called from the noise and disturbance that such a pack are apt to raise. See a quotation under Випар..
1878:- ... "on the mornings when the babbera' pack went out, of which Macpherson was master and I'whip,' we used to be up by 4 A.M." -Life in the Mofussil, vol. I. p. 142.
BRINJAUL, 8. The name of a vegetable, more commonly called by the English in Bengal bangun. It is the egg-plant or Solanum melongena, very common in India, as it is on the shores of the Mediterranean. The word in this form is from the Portuguese (see further on). Probably one original word has seldom undergone such an extraordinary variety of modifications, whilst re- taining the same meaning, as this. Sansk. bhan-
tákt; Pers. badingan; Arab. badinjan ; Hind. bhanta, baigan, baingan; Sp. alberengena, berengena; Port. beringela, bringiela, bringella; Low Lat. melangolus, merangolus ; Ital. melangola melanzana, mela insana (see P. della Valle below); Fr. aubergine, melongène, merangène, and provin. cially belingene, albergaine, albergine, albergame.
Melongena is no real word, but a factitious Latinizing of melanzana, or, as Devic says, "Latin du botaniste."
It looks as if the Sanskrit word were the original of all. The Hind. baingan, again, which gives the common Bengal form, seems to be 'identical with the Arabic word, and the latter to be the direct original of the Spanish, and so of all the other European names. The Italian mela insana is the most curious of these corruptions, framed by the usual "strung-after meaning," and connects itself with the somewhat indigestible character of the vegetable as it is eaten in Italy, which is a fact. When cholera is about, it is considered an act of insanity to eat the melanzana. There is, however, also in Egypt a notion connecting the badinjan with madness (see Lane, quoted below). It would seem that old Arabic medical writers also give it a bad character as an article of diet.
The word has been carried, with the vegetable, to the Archipelago, probably by the Portuguese, for the Malays call it berinjala.
1611 :-"We had a market there, kept upon the strand, of diuers sorts of prouisions, to wit...... Pallingenies, cucumbers". ....-N. Dounton in Purchas, vol. I. p. 298.
1616 :-" It seems to me to be one of those fruits which are called in good Tuscan petronciani, but which by the Lombards are called melanzane, and by the vulgar at Rome marignani ; and, if my memory does not deceive me, by the Neapolitans in their patois molegnano."-P. della Valle, vol. I. p. 197.
1698:-" The Garden ... planted with Potatoes, Yawms, Berenjaws, both hot plants." ...-Fryer, p. 104.
1792:-Forrest spells brinjalles.--Voyage to Mergui, &c. p. 40.
1810 :-Williamson has bringal.-Vade Mecum, vol. I. p. 133.
1812 :-"I saw last night at least two acres covered with brinjaal, a species of Solanum."Maria Graham, p. 24.
1885:-" The neighbours unanimously declared that the husband was mad...One exclaimed: * There is no strength nor power but in God! God restore thee!' Another said: 'How sad! He was really a worthy man.' A third remarked : Badingans are very abundant just now.'"-Lane's Modern Egyptians, ed. 1860, p. 299.
