History has vindicated Neel's optimistic evaluation of this word's future, but it remains true that he had in no way foreseen that the word's citizenship in the English language would be based on its culinary prowess; nor would he have imagined that on finding entrance into the Oracle this humblest of Portuguese objects would come to be defined as 'a style of cooking influenced by the cuisine of northern Pakistan'.

balwar (*Roebuck): 'Too close in sound to its synonym, "barber", to have any realistic chance of survival.'

bamba (*Roebuck): 'Why would anyone continue to use this Portuguese-derived term for an object which already has a simple and economical name in English: "pump"?'

banchoot/barnshoot/bahenchod/b'henchod etc (*The Glossary): In his treatment of this expression, Neel decisively parts company with his guru, Sir Henry, who gives this cluster of words short shrift, defining them merely as 'terms of abuse which we should hesitate to print if their odious meaning were not obscure "to the general." If it were known to the Englishmen who sometimes use the words, we believe there are few who would not shrink from such brutality'. But rare indeed was the European who shrank from mouthing this word: such was its popularity that Neel came to be convinced that 'it is one of the many delightful composite terms that have been formed by the pairing of Hind. and English elements. To prove this we need only break the word into its constituent parts: the first syllable "ban"/"barn" etc, is clearly a contraction of Hind. bahin, or sister. The second, variously spelled, is, in my opinion, a cognate of the English chute, with which it shares at least one aspect of its variegated meaning. Like many such words it derives, no doubt, from some ancient Indo-European root. It is curious to note that the word chute no longer figures as a verb in English, as its cognates do in many Indian languages. But there is some evidence to suggest that it was once so used in English too: an example of this is the word chowder, clearly derived from the Hind. chodo/chodna etc. The word is said to be still widely in use in America, being employed chiefly as a noun, to refer to a kind of soup or pottage. Although I have not had the good fortune to partake of this dish, I am told that it is produced by a great deal of grinding and pounding, which would certainly be consonant with some aspects of the ancient meaning that is still preserved in the usage of this root in Hind.'

+bandanna: The coolin status of this word would have amazed Neel, who gave it little chance of survival. That 'bandanna' has a place in the Oracle is not, of course, a matter that admits of any doubt – but it is true nonetheless that this was not the fate that Neel had foretold for it. His prediction was that the Hind. word bandhna would find its way into the English language in its archaic seventeenth-century form, bandannoe. Yet it is true also that Neel never doubted this word's destiny, a belief that was founded in part in the resilience and persistence of the ancient Indo-European root from which it is derived – a word that had already, in his lifetime, been Anglicized into bando/bundo (to tie or fasten). This beautiful and useful word is, alas, now only used as it pertains to embankments, although it was once widely used by speakers of English, especially in its imperative form: bando! (Neel even made a copy of the quote that Sir Henry used in his note on this term: 'This and probably other Indian words have been naturalized in the docks on the Thames frequented by Lascar crews. I have heard a London lighter-man, in the Victoria Docks, throw a rope ashore to another Londoner, calling out, "Bando!" [M.-Gen. Keatinge]).'

Neel's faith in bando/bundo was no doubt influenced by the root's uncommon fecundity, for he foresaw that it would give birth to a whole brood of + anointed derivatives – bund ('embankment' or 'dyke', the best known example of which is now in Shanghai, widely considered to be the single most valuable piece of land in the world); cummerbund (the fate of which Neel also failed to properly predict, for it never did replace 'belt' as he had thought it would); and finally bundobast (literally 'tying up' in the sense of 'putting into order' or 'making arrangements'). The passing away of this last into the limbo of the almost-dead Neel could never have foreseen and would have mourned more, perhaps, than any other entry in the Chrestomathy. (Of this too his anonymous descendant might well have written: 'Why? Why? Why this meaningless slaughter, this egregious waste, this endless logocide. Who will put an end to it? To whom can we appeal? Does it not call upon every conscience to rise in protest?') For it is true certainly that this is a word, an idea, of which English is sadly in need. Nor did the contributions of bando/bandh end there. Neel was persuaded that band in the sense of 'head-band' or 'rubber-band' was also a child of the Hind. term. This would mean that bando/bundo did indeed achieve the distinction of being raised to the Peerage of the Verb, through such usages as 'to band together'.

But to return to bandanna, Neel's own use of this term never came into conformity with its dictionary definition, for he continued, in his lifetime, to apply it to kerchiefs, handkerchiefs, gamchhas, and especially to the cummerbunds and head-cloths that lascars and other working people commonly wore in order to restrain their hair and their kameezes. His descendants, as was their custom, were even more conservative, and would vie among themselves to find uses for the originary forms. Well do I remember the response of an elderly uncle, who, when invited to join a family expedition to a well-reputed cowboy movie, cried out: 'Arre! You think I'd spend good money to watch a band of budmashes running around in dungris and bandhnas?'

+bandar: Neel was totally mistaken in his forecast of how the common Hind. word for monkey would fare in English. One of his pet theories was that migrant words must always be careful to stand apart from each other, in sound and appearance: uprooted homonyms and synonyms, he felt, had little chance of surviving in pairs – in every couple, one would perish. In this instance the beastly sense of bandar was, in his view, uncomfortably close in sound to an unrelated nautical term of Persian derivation: bander/bunder ('harbour' or 'port'). He was persuaded that of the two it was this latter form that would survive in English – partly because the use of bunder in the nautical sense had a very long pedigree in the language, going back to the seventeenth century, and partly because the root was uncommonly fecund in English derivatives. It was these derivatives, he felt, that were most vulnerable to the possibilities of confusion posed by the zoological sense of bandar. True enough that the frequently used term bander-/bunder-boat, ('harbour-boat') was in little danger of being mistaken for a simian conveyance, but there remained another word that might well be the cause of misunderstandings and confusion. This was the venerable sabander/shabander ('master of the harbour' or 'harbour-master'), a term which had so long a history as almost to be considered Middle English, and was thus possessed of a powerful claim to protection from the sort of abuse that might result from compounds like shah-bandar. As for the animal, there was another word that would serve it just as well, he felt, and this was wanderoo (from wanderu, the Sinhala cognate of Hind. bandar) which was also in wide circulation at the time, although it was generally used to mean langur. It was on wanderoo that Neel pinned his hopes while predicting doom for its synonym. Little did he know that both bandar and its collective +log would be given indefinite prolongations of life by a children's book, while the beautiful wanderoo would soon disappear into a pauper's grave. [See also gadda/gadha.]