Chapter BABA to BABOOL of B by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

Pliny below, or the name and drawing given by Cosmas, to any other animal. The 4-horned swine of Aelian is more probably the African Wart-hog, called accordingly by F. Cuvier Phacochoerus Aeliani.

c. a.d. 70.—“The wild bores of India have two bowing fangs or tuskes of a cubit length, growing out of their mouth, and as many out of their foreheads like calves hornes.”— Pliny, viii. 52 (Holland’s Tr. i. 231).

c. 250. “LÎgÎi dÎ Dinwn În ’Aiqiwpia ginÎsqai.…us tÎtrakÎrws.”— Aelian, De Nat. Anim. xvii. 10.

c. 545.—“The Choirelaphus (‘Hog-stag’) I have both seen and eaten.”— Cosmas Indicopleustes, in Cathay, &c., p. clxxv.

1555.—“There are hogs also with hornes, and parats which prattle much which they call noris (Lory).”— Galvano, Discoveries of the World, Hak. Soc. 120.

1658.—“Quadrupes hoc inusitatatae figurae monstrosis bestiis ascribunt Indi quod adversae speciei animalibus, Porco scilicet et Cervo, pronatum putent.… ita ut primo intuitu quatuor cornibus juxta se positis videatur armatum hoc animal Baby-Roussa.”— Piso, App. to Bontius, p. 61.

[1869.—“The wild pig seems to be of a species peculiar to the island (Celebes); but a much more curious animal of this family is the Babirusa or Pig-deer, so named by the Malays from its long and slender legs, and curved tusks resembling horns. This extraordinary creature resembles a pig in general appearance, but it does not dig with its snout, as it feeds on fallen fruits..… Here again we have a resemblance to the Wart-hogs of Africa, whose upper canines grow outwards and curve up so as to form a transition from the usual mode of growth to that of the Babirusa. In other respects there seems no affinity between these animals, and the Babirusa stands completely isolated, having no resemblance to the pigs of any other part of the world.”— Wallace, Malay Archip. (ed. 1890), p. 211, seqq.

BABOO, s. Beng. and H. Babu [Skt. vapra, ‘a father’]. Properly a term of respect attached to a name, like Master or Mr., and formerly in some parts of Hindustan applied to certain persons of distinction. Its application as a term of respect is now almost or altogether confined to Lower Bengal (though C. P. Brown states that it is also used in S. India for ‘Sir, My lord, your Honour’). In Bengal and elsewhere, among Anglo-Indians, it is often used with a slight savour of disparagement, as characterizing a superficially cultivated, but too often effeminate, Bengali. And from the extensive employment of the class, to which the term was applied as a title, in the capacity of clerks in English offices, the word has come often to signify ‘a native clerk who writes English.’

1781.—“I said … From my youth to this day I am a servant to the English. I have never gone to any Rajahs or Bauboos nor will I go to them.”— Depn. of Dooud Sing, Commandant. In Narr. of Insurn. at Banaras in 1781. Calc. 1782. Reprinted at Roorkee, 1853. App., p. 165.

1782.—“Cantoo Baboo” appears as a subscriber to a famine fund at Madras for 200 Sicca Rupees.— India Gazette, Oct. 12.

1791.

“Here Edmund was making a monstrous ado, About some bloody Letter and Conta Bah-Booh.”² Letters of Simkin the Second, 147.

1803.—“… Calling on Mr. Neave I found there Baboo Dheep Narrain, brother to Oodit Narrain, Rajah at Benares.”— Lord Valentia’s Travels, i. 112.

1824.—“… the immense convent-like mansion of some of the more wealthy Baboos…”— Heber, i. 31, ed. 1844.

1834.—“The Baboo and other Tales, descriptive of Society in India.”— Smith & Elder, London. (By Augustus Prinsep.)

1850.—“If instruction were sought for from them (the Mohammedan historians) we should no longer hear bombastic Baboos, enjoying under our Government the highest degree of personal liberty … rave about patriotism, and the degradation of their present position.”— Sir H. M. Elliot, Orig. Preface to Mahom. Historians of India, in Dowson’s ed., I. xxii.

c. 1866.

“But I’d sooner be robbed by a tall man
who showed me a yard of steel,
Than be fleeced by a sneaking Baboo, with
a peon and badge at his heel.”

Sir A. C. Lyall, The Old Pindaree.

1873.—“The pliable, plastic, receptive Baboo of Bengal eagerly avails himself of this system (of English education) partly from a servile wish to please the Sahib logue, and partly from a desire to obtain a Government appointment.”— Fraser’s Mag., August, 209.

[1880.—“English officers who have become de-Europeanised from long residence among undomesticated natives.… Such officials are what Lord Lytton