Chapter PALAVERAM to PALI of P by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

PALAVERAM to PALI

PALAVERAM, n.p. A town and cantonment 11 miles S.W. from Madras. The name is Pallavaram probably Palla-puram, Pallavapura the ‘town of the Pallas’; the latter a caste claiming descent from the Pallavas who reigned at Conjeveram (Seshagiri Sastri). [The Madras Gloss. derives their name from Tam. pallam, ‘low land,’ as they are commonly employed in the cultivation of wet lands.]

PALE ALE. The name formerly given to the beer brewed for Indian use. (See BEER.)

1784.—“London Porter and Pale Ale, light and excellent, Sicca Rupees 150 per hhd.”—Advt. in Seton- Karr, i. 39.

1793.—“For sale…Pale Ale (per hhd.)…Rs. 80.”—Bombay Courier, Jan. 19.

[1801.—“1. Pale Ale; 2. strong ale; 3. small beer; 4. brilliant beer; 5. strong porter; 6. light porter; 7. brown stout.”—Advt. in Carey, Good Old Days, i. 147.]

1848.—“Constant dinners, tiffins, pale ale. and claret, the prodigious labour of cutchery, and the refreshment of brandy pawnee, which he was forced to take there, had this effect upon Waterloo Sedley.”—Vanity Fair, ed. 1867, ii. 258.

1853.—“Parmi les cafés, les cabarets, les gargotes, I’on rencontre çà et là une taverne anglaise placardée de sa pancarte de porter simple et double, d’old Scotch ale, d’East India Pale beer.”—Th. Gautier, Constantinople, 22.

1867.—

“Pain bis, galette ou panaton,
Fromage à la pie ou Stilton,
Cidre ou pale-ale de Burton,
Vin de brie, ou branne-mouton.”

Th. Gautier à Ch. Garnier.

PALEMPORE, s A kind of chintz bed-cover, sometimes made of beautiful patterns, formerly made at various places in India, especially at Sadras and Masulipatam, the importation of which into Europe has become quite obsolete, but under the greater appreciation of Indian manufactures has recently shown some tendency to revive. The etymology is not quite certain,—we know no place of the name likely to have been the eponymic,—and possibly it is a corruption of a hybrid (Hind. and Pers.) palangposh, ‘a bed-cover,’ which occurs below, and which may have been perverted through the existence of Salempore as a kind of stuff. The probability that the word originated in a perversion of palang-posh, is strengthened by the following entry in Bluteau’s Dict. (Suppt. 1727.)

“CHAUDUS or CHAUDEUS são huns panos grandes, que servem para cobrir camas e outras cousas. São pintados de cores muy vistosas, e alguns mais finos, a que chamão palangapuzes. Fabricão-se de algodão em Bengala e Choromandel,”—i.e. “Chaudus ou Chaudeus” (this I cannot identify, perhaps the same as Choutar among Piece-goods) “are a kind of large cloths serving to cover beds and other things. They are painted with gay colours, and there are some of a finer description which are called palang-poshes,” &c.

[For the mode of manufacture at Masulipatam, see Journ. Ind. Art. iii. 14. Mr. Pringle (Madras Selections, 4th ser. p. 71, and Diary Ft. St. Geo. 1st. ser. iii. 173) has questioned this derivation. The word may have been taken from the State and town of Palanpur in Guzerat, which seems to have been an emporium for the manufactures of N. India, which was long noted for chintz of this kind.]

1648.—“Int Governe van Raga mandraga…werden veel…Salamporij…gemaeckt.”—Van den Broecke, 87.

1673.—“Staple commodities (at Masulipatam) are calicuts white and painted, Palempores, Carpets.”—Fryer, 34.

1813.—

“A stain on every bush that bore
A fragment of his palampore,
His breast with wounds unnumber’d riven,
His back to earth, his-face to heaven…”

Byron, The Giaour.

1814.—“A variety of tortures were inflicted to extort a confession; one was a sofa, with a platform of tight cordage in network, covered with a palampore, which concealed a bed of thorns placed under it: the collector, a corpulent Banian, was then stripped of his jama (see JAMMA), or muslin robe, and ordered to lie down.”—Forbes, Or. Mem. ii. 429; [2nd ed. ii. 54].

1817.—“…these cloths…serve as coverlids, and are employed as a substitute for the Indian palempore.”—Raffles, Java, 171; [2nd ed. i. 191].

1855.—

“The jewelled amaun of thy zemzem is bare,
And the folds of thy plampore wave in the air.”