Chapter CABAYA to CABUL of C by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

salt, and Kian, fried in ghee, to be ate with rice and dholl.”—Forbes. Or. Mem. ii. 480; [2nd ed. ii. 82; in i. 315 he writes Kebabs].

[1876.—“… kavap (a name which is naturalised with us as Cabobs), small bits of meat roasted on a spit.…”—Schuyler, Turkistan, i. 125.]

CABOOK, s. This is the Ceylon term for the substance called in India Laterite (q.v.), and in Madras by the native name Moorum (q.v.). The word is perhaps the Port. cabouco or cavouco, ‘a quarry.’ It is not in Singh. Dictionaries. [Mr. Ferguson says that it is a corruption of the Port. pedras de cavouco, ‘quarry-stones,’ the last word being by a misapprehension applied to the stones themselves. The earliest instance of the use of the word he has met with occurs in the Travels of Dr. Aegidius Daalmans (1687- 89), who describes kaphok stone as ‘like small pebbles lying in a hard clay, so that if a large square stone is allowed to lie for some time in the water, the clay dissolves and the pebbles fall in a heap together; but if this stone is laid in good mortar, so that the water cannot get at it, it does good service’ (J. As. Soc. Ceylon, x. 162). The word is not in the ordinary Singhalese Dicts., but A. Mendis Gunasekara in his Singhalese Grammar (1891), among words derived from the Port., gives kabuk-gal (cabouco), cabook (stone), ‘laterite.’]

1834.—“The soil varies in different situations on the island. In the country round Colombo it consists of a strong red clay, or marl, called Cabook, mixed with sandy ferruginous particles.”—Ceylon Gazetteer, 33.

„ “The houses are built with cabook, and neatly whitewashed with chunam.”— Ibid. 75.

1860.—“A peculiarity which is one of the first to strike a stranger who lands at Galle or Colombo is the bright red colour of the streets and roads … and the ubiquity of the fine red dust which penetrates every crevice and imparts its own tint to every neglected article. Natives resident in these localities are easily recognisable elsewhere by the general hue of their dress. This is occasioned by the prevalence … of laterite, or, as the Singhalese call it, cabook.”— Tennent’s Ceylon, i. 17.

CABUL, CAUBOOL, &c., n.p. This name (Kabul) of the chief city of N. Afghanistan, now so familiar, is perhaps traceable in Ptolemy, who gives in that same region a people called [Greek Text] Kabolitai, and a city called [Greek Text] Kaboura. Perhaps, however, one or both may be corroborated by the [Greek Text] nardoz Kabalith of the Periplus. The accent of Kabul is most distinctly on the first and long syllable, but English mouths are very perverse in error here. Moore accents the last syllable:

“… pomegranates full
Of melting sweetness, and the pears
And sunniest apples that Caubul
In all its thousand gardens bears.”

Light of the Harem.

Mr. Arnold does likewise in Sohrab and Rustam:

“But as a troop of pedlars from Cabool,
Cross underneath the Indian Caucasus.…”

It was told characteristically of the late Lord Ellenborough that, after his arrival in India, though for months he heard the name correctly spoken by his councillors and his staff, he persisted in calling it Cabool till he met Dost Mahommed Khan. After the interview the Governor-General announced as a new discovery, from the Amir’s pronunciation, that Cabul was the correct form.

1552.—Barros calls it “a Cidade Cabol, Metropoli dos Mogoles.”—IV. vi. 1.

[c. 1590.—“The territory of Kabul comprises twenty Tumáns.”—Áin, tr. Jarrett, ii. 410.]

1856.—

“Ah Cabul! word of woe and bitter shame;
Where proud old England’s flag, dishonoured, sank
Beneath the Crescent; and the butcher knives
Beat down like reeds the bayonets that had flashed
From Plassey on to snow-capt Caucasus,
In triumph through a hundred years of war.”

The Banyan Tree, a Poem.

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