Chapter BARGEER to BASSEIN of B by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

BARRAMUHUL, n.p. H. Baramahall, ‘Twelve estates’; an old designation of a large part of what is now the district of Salem in the Madras Presidency. The identification of the Twelve Estates is not free from difficulty; [see a full note in Le Fanu’s Man. of Salem, i. 83, seqq.].

1881.—“The Baramahal and Dindigal was placed under the Government of Madras; but owing to the deficiency in that Presidency of civil servants possessing a competent knowledge of the native languages, and to the unsatisfactory manner in which the revenue administration of the older possessions of the Company under the Madras Presidency had been conducted, Lord Cornwallis resolved to employ military officers for a time in the management of the Baramahl.”—Arbuthnot, Mem. of Sir T. Munro, xxxviii.

. Prof. Max Müller notices this, but it would seem merely as a curious coincidence.—(See Pusey on Daniel, 567.) 1554.—“Hujusmodi Bassarum sermonibus reliquorum Turcarum sermones congruebant.”—Busbeq. Epist. ii. (p. 124).

1584.—

“Great kings of Barbary and my portly bassas.”

Marlowe, Tamburlane the Great, 1st Part, iii. 1.

c. 1590.—“Filius alter Osmanis, Vrchanis frater, alium non habet in Annalibus titulum, quam Alis bassa: quod bassae vocabulum Turcis caput significat.”—Lennclavius, Annales Sultanorum Othmanidarum, ed. 1650, p. 402. This etymology connecting basha with the Turkish bash, ‘head,’ must be rejected.

c. 1610.—“Un Bascha estoit venu en sa Cour pour luy rendre compte du tribut qu’il luy apportoit; mais il fut neuf mois entiers à attendre que celuy qui a la charge…eut le temps et le loisir de le compter…”Pyrard de Laval (of the Great Mogul), ii. 161.

1702.—“…The most notorious injustice we have suffered from the Arabs of Muscat, and the Bashaw of Judda.”—In Wheeler, ii. 7.

1727.—“It (Bagdad) is now a prodigious large City, and the Seat of a Beglerbeg…. The Bashaws of Bassora, Comera, and Musol (the ancient Nineveh) are subordinate to him.”—A. Hamilton, i. 78.

BASIN, s. H. besan. Pease-meal, generally made of Gram (q. v.) and used, sometimes mixed with ground orange-peel or other aromatic substance, to cleanse the hair, or for other toilette purposes.

[1832.—“The attendants present first the powdered peas, called basun, which answers the purpose of soap.”—Mrs. Meer Hassan Ali, Observations, i. 328.]

BASSADORE, n.p. A town upon the island of Kishm in the Persian Gulf, which belonged in the 16th century to the Portugue se. The place was ceded to the British Crown in 1817, though the claim now seems dormant. The permission for the English to occupy the place as a naval station was granted by Saiyyid Sultan bin Ahmad of ’Oman, about the end of the 18th century; but it was not actually occupied by us till 1821, from which time it was the depôt of our Naval Squadron in the Gulf till 1882. The real form of the name is, according to Dr. Badger’s transliterated map (in H. of Imâns, &c. of Omân), Basidu.

1673.—“At noon we came to Bassatu, an old ruined town of the Portugals, fronting Congo.”—Fryer, 320.

BASSAN, s. H. basan, ‘a dinner-plate’; from Port bacia (Panjab N. & Q. ii. 117).

BASSEIN, n.p. This is a corruption of three entirely different names, and is applied to various places remote from each other.

(1) Wasai, an old port on the coast, 26 m. north of Bombay, called by the Portuguese, to whom it long pertained, Baçaim (e.g. Barros, I. ix. 1).

c. 1565.—“Dopo Daman si troua Basain con molte ville…ne di questa altro si caua che risi, frumenti, e molto ligname.”—Cesare de’ Federici in Ramusio, iii. 387v.

1756.—“Bandar Bassai.”—Mirat-i-Ahmadi, Bird’s tr., 129.

1781.—“General Goddard after having taken the fortress of Bessi, which is one of the strongest and most important fortresses under the Mahratta power….”—Seir Mutaqherin, iii. 327.

(2) A town and port on the river which forms the westernmost delta-arm of the Irawadi in the Province of Pegu. The Burmese name Bathein, was, according to Prof. Forchammer, a change, made by the Burmese