Chapter MAMLUTDAR to MANDARIN of M by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

son of my friendly host accompanied me to the Mandalay Hill, on which there stands in a gilt chapel the image of Shwesayatta, pointing down with outstretched finger to the Palace of Mandalay, interpreted as the divine command there to build a city … on the other side where the hill falls in an abrupt precipice, sits a gigantic Buddha gazing in motionless meditation on the mountains opposite. There are here some caves in the hard rock, built up with bricks and whitewashed, which are inhabited by eremites. …”—Bastian’s Travels (German), ii. 89–90.

MANDARIN, s. Port. Mandarij, Mandarim. Wedgwood explains and derives the word thus: “A Chinese officer, a name first made known to us by the Portuguese, and like the Indian caste, erroneously supposed to be a native term. From Portuguese mandar, to hold authority, command, govern, &c.” So also T. Hyde in the quotation below. Except as regards the word having been first made known to us by the Portuguese, this is an old and persistent mistake. What sort of form would mandarij be as a derivative from mandar? The Portuguese might have applied to Eastern officials some such word as mandador, which a preceding article (see MANDADORE) shows that they did apply in certain cases. But the parallel to the assumed origin of mandarin from mandar would be that English voyagers on visiting China, or some other country in the far East, should have invented, as a title for the officials of that country, a new and abnormal derivation from ‘order,’ and called them orderumbos.

The word is really a slight corruption of Hind. (from Skt.) mantri, ‘a counsellor, a Minister of State,’ for which it was indeed the proper old pre-Mahommedan term in India. It has been adopted, and specially affected in various Indo-Chinese countries, and particularly by the Malays, among whom it is habitually applied to the highest class of public officers (see Crawfurd’s Malay Dict. s.v. [and Klinkert, who writes manteri, colloquially mentri]). Yet Crawfurd himself, strange to say, adopts the current explanation as from the Portuguese (see J. Ind. Archip. iv. 189). [Klinkert adopts the Skt. derivation.] It is, no doubt, probable that the instinctive “striving after meaning” may have shaped the corruption of mantri into a semblance of mandar. Marsden is still more oddly perverse, videns meliora, deteriora secutus, when he says: “The officers next in rank to the Sultan are Mantree, which some apprehend to be a corruption of the word Mandarin, a title of distinction among the Chinese” (H. of Sumatra, 2nd ed. 285). Ritter adopts the etymology from mandar, apparently after A. W. Schlegel.¹ The true etymon is pointed out in Notes and Queries in China and Japan, iii. 12, and by one of the present writers in Ocean Highways for Sept. 1872, p. 186. Several of the quotations below will show that the earlier applications of the title have no references to China at all, but to officers of state, not only in the Malay countries, but in Continental India. We may add that mantri (see MUNTREE) is still much in vogue among the less barbarous Hill Races on the Eastern frontier of Bengal (e.g. among the Kasias (see COSSYA) as a denomination for their petty dignitaries under the chief. Gibbon was perhaps aware of the true origin of mandarin; see below.

c. A.D. 400 (?).—“The King desirous of trying cases must enter the assembly composed in manner, together with Brahmans who know the Vedas, and mantrins (or counsellors).”—Manu, viii. 1.

[1522.—“… and for this purpose he sent one of his chief mandarins (mandarim).”— India Office MSS. in an Agreement made by the Portuguese with the “Rey de Sunda,” this Sunda being that of the Straits.]

1524.—(At the Moluccas) “and they cut off the heads of all the dead Moors, and indeed fought with one another for these, because whoever brought in seven heads of enemies, they made him a knight, and called him manderym, which is their name for Knight.”—Correa, ii. 808.

c. 1540.—“… the which corsairs had their own dealings with the Mandarins of those ports, to whom they used to give many and heavy bribes to allow them to sell on shore what they plundered on the sea.”—Pinto, cap. 1.

1552.—(At Malacca) “whence subsist the King and the Prince with their mandarins, who are the gentlemen.”—Castanheda, iii. 207.

„ (In China). “There are among them degrees of honour, and according to their degrees of honour is their service; gentlemen (fidalgos) whom they call mandarins ride on horseback, and when they pass along the streets the common people make way for them.”—Ibid. iv. 57.

1553.—“Proceeding ashore in two or three boats dressed with flags and with a grand blare of trumpets (this was at Malacca in 1508–9).… Jeronymo Teixeira was received by many Mandarijs of the King, these being the most noble class of the city.” —De Barros, Dec. II. liv. iv. cap. 3.

„ “And he being already known to the Mandarijs (at Chittagong, in Bengal), and held to be a man profitable to the country, because of the heavy amounts of duty that he paid, he was regarded like a native.”—Ibid. Dec. IV. liv. ix. cap. 2.

„ “And from these