Chapter BLACK ACT. to BOBACHEE of B by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

Town…”—Munro’s Narrative, 22.

1782.—“When Mr. Hastings came to the government he added some new regulations … divided the black and white town (Calcutta) into 35 wards, and purchased the consent of the natives to go a little further off.”—Price, Some Observations, &c., p. 60. In Tracts, vol. i.

[1813.—“The large bazar, or the street in the Black Town, (Bombay) … contained many good Asiatic houses.”—Forbes, Or. Mem., 2nd ed., i. 96. Also see quotation (1809) under BOMBAY.]

1827.—“Hartley hastened from the Black Town, more satisfied than before that some deceit was about to be practised towards Menie Gray.”—Walter Scott, The Surgeon’s Daughter, ch. xi.

BLACK WOOD. The popular name for what is in England termed ‘rose-wood’; produced chiefly by several species of Dalbergia, and from which the celebrated carved furniture of Bombay is made. [The same name is applied to the Chinese ebony used in carving (Ball, Things Chinese, 3rd ed., 107).] (See SISSOO.)

[1615.—“Her lading is Black Wood, I think ebony.”—Cocks’s Diary, Hak. Soc. i. 35.

[1813.—“Black wood furniture becomes like heated metal.”—Forbes, Or. Mem., 2nd ed., i. 106.]

1879.—(In Babylonia). “In a mound to the south of the mass of city ruins called Jumjuma, Mr. Rassam discovered the remains of a rich hall or palace … the cornices were of painted brick, and the roof of rich Indian blackwood.”—Athenaeum, July 5, 22.

BLANKS, s. The word is used for ‘whites’ or ‘Europeans’ (Port. branco) in the following, but we know not if anywhere else in English:

1718.—“The Heathens … too shy to venture into the Churches of the Blanks (so they call the Christians), since these were generally adorned with fine cloaths and all manner of proud apparel.”—(Ziegenbalg and Plutscho), Propagation of the Gospel, &c. Pt. I., 3rd ed., p. 70.

[BLATTY, adj. A corr. of wilayati, ‘foreign’ (see BILAYUT, BILLAIT). A name applied to two plants in S. India, the Sonneratia acida, and Hydrolea zeylanica (see Mad. Admin. Man. Gloss. s. v.). In the old records it is applied to a kind of cloth. Owen (Narrative, i. 349) uses Blat as a name for the land-wind in Arabia, of which the origin is perhaps the same. [1610.—“Blatty, the corge Rs. 060.”— Dancers, Letters, i. 72.]

BLIMBEE, s. Malayal. vilimbi; H. belambu [or bilambu;] Malay. balimbing or belimbing. The fruit of Averrhoa bilimbi, L. The genus was so called by Linnæus in honour of Averrhoes, the Arab commentator on Aristotle and Avicenna. It embraces two species cultivated in India for their fruits; neither known in a wild state. See for the other CARAMBOLA.

BLOOD-SUCKER, s. A harmless lizard (Lacerta cristata) is so called, because when excited it changes in colour (especially about the neck) from a dirty yellow or grey, to a dark red.

1810.—“On the morn, however, I discovered it to be a large lizard, termed a blood-sucker.”—Morton’s Life of Leyden, 110.

[1813.—“The large seroor, or lacerta, commonly called the bloodsucker.”—Forbes, Or. Mem. i. 110 (2nd ed.).]

BOBACHEE, s. A cook (male). This is an Anglo-Indian vulgarisation of bawarchi, a term originally brought, according to Hammer, by the hordes of Chingiz Khan into Western Asia. At the Mongol Court the Bawarchi was a high dignitary, ‘Lord Sewer or the like (see Hammer’s Golden Horde, 235, 461). The late Prof. A. Schiefner, however, stated to us that he could not trace a Mongol origin for the word, which appears to be Or. Turki. [Platts derives it from P. bawar, ‘confidence.’]

c. 1333.—“Chaque émir a un bâwerdjy, et lorsque la table a éte dressée, cet officier s’assied devant son maître … le bâwerdjy coupe la viande en petits morceaux. Ces gens-là possèdent une grande habileté pour dépecer la viande.”—Ibn Batuta, ii. 407.

c. 1590.—Bawarchi is the word used for cook in the original of the Ain (Blochmann’s Eng. Tr. i. 58).

1810.—“… the dripping … is returned to the meat by a bunch of feathers … tied to the end of a short stick. This little neat, cleanly, and cheap dripping ladle, answers