Chapter COMOTAY to COMPOUND of C by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

alluded to in the preceding quotation was authorised by 7 Geo. IV. cap. 56. But it did not involve competition; it only authorised a system by which writerships could be given to young men who had not been at Haileybury College, on their passing certain test examinations, and they were ranked according to their merit in passing such examinations, but below the writers who had left Haileybury at the preceding half-yearly examination. The first examination under this system was held 29th March, 1827, and Sir H. M. Elliot headed the list. The system continued in force for five years, the last examination being held in April, 1832. In all 83 civilians were nominated in this way, and, among other well-known names, the list included H. Torrens, Sir H. B. Harington, Sir R. Montgomery, Sir J. Cracroft Wilson, Sir T. Pycroft, W. Tayler, the Hon. E. Drummond.

1878—“The Competition-Wallah, at home on leave or retirement, dins perpetually into our ears the greatness of India. … We are asked to feel awestruck and humbled at the fact that Bengal alone has 66 millions of inhabitants. We are invited to experience an awful thrill of sublimity when we learn that the area of Madras far exceeds that of the United Kingdom.”— Sat. Rev., June 15, page 750.

COMPOUND, s. The enclosed ground, whether garden or waste, which surrounds an Anglo-Indian house. Various derivations have been suggested for this word, but its history is very obscure. The following are the principal suggestions that have been made:—¹

(a.) That it is a corruption of some supposed Portuguese word.

(b.) That it is a corruption of the French campagne.

(c.) That it is a corruption of the Malay word Kampung, as first (we believe) indicated by Mr. John Crawfurd.

(a.) The Portuguese origin is assumed by Bishop Heber in Passages quoted below. In one he derives it from campaña (for which, in modern Portuguese at least, we should read campanha); but campanha is not used in such a sense. It seems to be used only for ‘a campaign,’ or for the Roman Campagna. In the other passage he derives it from campao (sic), but there is no such word.

It is also alleged by Sir Emerson Tennent (infra), who suggests campinho; but this, meaning ‘a small plain,’ is not used for compound. Neither is the latter word, nor any word suggestive of it, used among the Indo-Portuguese.

In the early Portuguese histories of India (e.g. Castanheda, iii 436, 442; vi. 3) the words used for what we term compound, are jardim, patio, horta. An examination of all the passages of the Indo-Portuguese Bible, where the word might be expected to occur, affords only horta.

There is a use of campo by the Italian Capuchin P. Vincenzo Maria (Roma, 1672), which we thought at first to be analogous: “Gionti alla porta della città (Aleppo) … arrivati al Campo de’ Francesi; doue è la Dogana …” (p. 475). We find also in Rauwolff’s Travels (c. 1573), as published in English by the famous John Ray: “Each of these nations (at Aleppo) have their peculiar Champ to themselves, commonly named after the Master that built it …”; and again: “When … the Turks have washed and cleansed themselves, they go into their Chappells, which are in the Middle of their great Camps or Carvatschars …” (p. 84 and page 259 of Ray’s 2nd edition). This use of Campo, and Champ, has a curious kind of analogy to compound, but it is probably only a translation of Maidan or some such Oriental word.

(b.) As regards campagne, which once commended itself as probable, it must be observed that nothing like the required sense is found among the seven or eight classes of meaning assigned to the word in Littré.

The word campo again in the Portuguese of the 16th century seems to mean always, or nearly always, a camp. We have found only one instance in those writers of its use with a meaning in the least suggestive of compound, but in this its real meaning is ‘site’: “queymou a cidade toda ate não ficar mais que ho campo em que estevera.” (“They burned the whole city till nothing remained but the site on which it stood”—Castanheda, vi. 130). There is a special use of campo by the Portuguese in the Further East, alluded to in the quotation from Pallegoix’s Siam, but that we shall see to be only a representation of the Malay Kampung. We shall come back upon it. [See quotation from Correa, with note, under FACTORY.]

(c.) The objection raised to kampung as the origin of compound is chiefly that the former word is not so used in Java by either Dutch or natives, and the author of Max Havelaar expresses doubt if compound is a Malay or Javanese word at all (pp. 360–361). Erf is the usual word among the Dutch. In Java Kampung seems to be used only for a native village, or for a particular ward or quarter of a town.

But it is impossible to doubt that among the English in our Malay settlements compound is used in this sense in speaking English, and kampung in speaking Malay. Kampung is also used by the Malays themselves, in our settlements, in this sense. All the modern dictionaries that we have consulted give this sense among others. The old Dictionarium Malaico-Latinum of David Haex (Romae, 1631) is a little vague:

“Campon, coniunctio, vel conuentus. Hinc viciniae et parua loca, campon etiam appellantur.”

Crawfurd (1852): “Kampung … an enclosure, a space fenced in; a village; a