trikat (*Roebuck): See dol.

tuckiah / tuckier (*The Glossary): 'Sir Henry claims that this common Hind. word for "pillow" or "bolster" is often used in the same sense as ashram. I am baffled by this, I must confess.'

+ tumasher / tamasha / tomashaw / tomascia: Being a contrarian, Neel had a particular fondness for the seventeenth-century English usage of this word, in which it was spelled tomashaw or even tomascia, and had the sense of 'spectacle' or 'show', being sometimes thus applied also to rituals. He deplored the gradual debasement of the word, whereby it 'can now scarcely be told apart from a petty goll-maul.'

tumlet (*The Glossary): 'Is it possible that this Hind. corruption of "tumbler" will reenter the English language and, like the notorious cuckoo, eject its parent from its nest? Would that it could be so!'

tuncaw (*The Glossary): 'The mystery of English turned this Hind. for "salary", tankha, into an almost derogatory term, used mainly for servant's wages.'

+turban: See seersucker.

turnee (*Roebuck): 'This (as also tarni and tanni), were the lascars' abbreviations of the word "attorney", and it was applied always to English supercargoes. Phaltu-tanni, however, was their word for the Flemish horse, a very curious element of a ship's tackle.'

udlee-budlee: See shoke.

upper-roger (*The Glossary, *The Barney-Book): 'A corruption of Skt. yuva-raja, "young king", says Sir Henry, to which the Barneymen add, apropos nothing, that the Nawab Siraj-uddowlah was similarly known to British wordy-wallahs as Sir Roger Dowler.'

+vakeel: Lawyer, pleader. 'One of the oldest mysteries of the courtroom, reputed to be a denizen of the English language since the early seventeenth century.'

+vetiver: See tatty.

+wanderoo: See bandar. In the margins of this a nameless relative has written: 'In the jungles of English, only a little less antique than vakeel, dating back to the 1680s, according to Oracle.'

woolock (*The Glossary): 'Boats of this name were often to be seen on the Hooghly, but I recall neither size nor any details of their construction.'

wordy-wallah (*The Glossary): This phrase, from Hind. vardi-wala, was used in English to mean 'wearer of a uniform'. Those especially gifted in this regard were known as wordy-majors (or woordy-majors). Neel's usage of these terms bore no resemblance to their proper definition.

zubben/zubán: 'Of this word,' writes Neel, 'I can find no evidence in any of my dictionaries. But I know I have heard it often used, and if it does not exist, it should, for no other expression could so accurately describe the subject of the Chrestomathy.'

Amitav Ghosh