Chapter COMOTAY to COMPOUND of C by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

quarter or subdivision of a town.”

Favre (1875): “Maison avec un terrain qui l’entoure.”

Pijnappel (1875), Maleisch-Hollandisch Woordenboek: “Kampoeng— Omheind Erf, Wijk, Buurt, Kamp,” i.e. “Ground hedged round, village, hamlet, camp.”

And also, let it be noted, the Javanese Dict. of P. Jansz (Javaansch- Nederlandsch Woordenboek, Samarang, 1876): “Kampoeng—Omheind erf van Woningen; wijk die onder een hoofd staat,” i.e. “Enclosed ground of dwellings; village which is under one Headman.”

Marre, in his Kata-Kata Malayou (Paris, 1875), gives the following expanded definition: “Village palissadé, ou, dans une ville, quartier séparé et généralement clos, occupé par des gens de même nation, Malays, Siamois, Chinois, Bouguis, &c. Ce mot signifie proprement un enclos, une enciente, et par extension quartier clos, faubourg, ou village palissadé. Le mot Kampong désigne parfois aussi une maison d’une certaine importance avec le terrain clos qui en dépend, et qui l’entoure” (p. 95).

We take Marsden last (Malay Dictionary, 1812) because he gives an illustration: “Kampong, an enclosure, a place surrounded with a paling; a fenced or fortified village; a quarter, district, or suburb of a city; a collection of buildings. Membûat [to make] rumah [house] serta dañgan [together with] kampong-nia [compound thereof], to erect a house with its enclosure … Ber-Kampong, to assemble, come together; meñgampong, to collect, to bring together.” The Reverse Dictionary gives: “YARD, alaman, Kampong.” [See also many further references much to the same effect in Scott, Malayan Words, page 123 seqq.]

In a Malay poem given in the Journal of the Ind. Archipelago, vol i. page 44, we have these words:—

“Trúsláh ka kampong s’orange Saudágar.”

[“Passed to the kampong of a Merchant.”]

and

“Titáh bágindú rajá sultání

Kámpong siápá garángun íní.”

[“Thus said the Prince, the Raja Sultani, Whose kampong may this be?”]

These explanations and illustrations render it almost unnecessary to add in corroboration that a friend who held office in the Straits for twenty years assures us that the word kampung is habitually used, in the Malay there spoken, as the equivalent of the Indian compound. If this was the case 150 years ago in the English settlements at Bencoolen and elsewhere (and we know from Marsden that it was so 100 years ago), it does not matter whether such a use of kampung was correct or not, compound will have been a natural corruption of it. Mr. E. C. Baber, who lately spent some time in our Malay settlements on his way from China, tells me (H. Y.) that the frequency with which he heard kampung applied to the ‘compound,’ convinced him of this etymology, which he had before doubted greatly.

It is not difficult to suppose that the word, if its use originated in our Malay factories and settlements, should have spread to the continental Presidencies, and so over India.

Our factories in the Archipelago were older than any of our settlements in India Proper. The factors and writers were frequently moved about, and it is conceivable that a word so much wanted (for no English word now in use does express the idea satisfactorily) should have found ready acceptance. In fact the word, from like causes, has spread to the ports of China and to the missionary and mercantile stations in tropical Africa, East and West, and in Madagascar.

But it may be observed that it was possible that the word kampung was itself originally a corruption of the Port. campo, taking the meaning first of camp, and thence of an enclosed area, or rather that in some less definable way the two words reacted on each other. The Chinese quarter at Batavia— Kampong Tzina—is commonly called in Dutch ‘het Chinesche Kamp’ or ‘het Kamp der Chinezen.’ Kampung was used at Portuguese Malacca in this way at least 270 years ago, as the quotation from Godinho de Eredia shows. The earliest Anglo-Indian example of the word compound is that of 1679 (below). In a quotation from Dampier (1688) under Cot, where compound would come in naturally, he says ‘yard.’

1613.—(At Malacca). “And this settlement is divided into 2 parishes, S. Thomé and S. Stephen, and that part of S. Thomé called Campon Chelim extends from the shore of the Jaos bazar to N.W., terminating at the Stone Bastion; and in this dwell the Chelis of Coromandel… And the other part of S. Stephen’s, called Campon China, extends from the said shore of the Jaos Bazar, and mouth of the river to the N.E., … and in this part, called Campon China, dwell the Chincheos … and foreign traders, and native fishermen.”—Godinho, de Eredia, i. 6. In the plans given by this writer, we find different parts of the city marked accordingly, as Campon Chelim, Campon China, Campon Bendara (the quarter where the native magistrate, the Bendâra lived). [See also CHELING and CAMPOO.]

1679.—(At Pollicull near Madapollam), “There the Dutch have a Factory of a large Compounde, where they dye much blew cloth, having above 300 jars set in the ground for that work; also they make many of their best paintings there.”—Fort St. Geo. Consns. (on Tour), April 14. In Notes and Extracts, Madras 1871.

1696.—“The