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Updated: May 31, 2025
Soon the steady tramp of boot-clad feet advancing at the double was heard on the shingle, and an officer's voice, speaking the crude Hindustani of the engine-room and forecastle, shouted to Mir Jan "Hi, you black fellow! Are there any white people here?" Jenks sang out "Yes, two of us! Perched on the rock over your heads. We are coming down." He cast loose the rope-ladder.
He could have told any number of stories if he had been able to speak anything but Hindustani. The Indian gentleman's real name was Mr. Carrisford, and Janet told Mr. Carrisford about the encounter with the little-girl-who-was-not-a-beggar. He was very much interested, and all the more so when he heard from Ram Dass of the adventure of the monkey on the roof.
Gilchrist has given some examples of it in his grammar of the Hindustani language, and numerous specimens of it are to be found in the Prem Sagar, and other works published more recently. Mahmud, the first monarch of the dynasty of Ghazni, was the son of the famous Sabaktagin. Ha invaded Hindustan in A.H. 392, or A.D. 1002.
With his pencil the agent taps the table, and the mudiliyar says something in Hindustani meaning "sold." The buyer was an Arab from Bombay, operating for a syndicate of rich Indians taking a flier in lottery tickets. In a manner almost, lordly he announces that he will take four hundred thousand oysters.
As I watched him an impression came over me that he must be an Italian. I scanned his appearance narrowly, and watched for a word that should betray his accent. He spoke to his servant in Hindustani, and I noticed at once the peculiar sound of the dental consonants, never to be acquired by a northern-born person. Before I go farther, let me try and describe Mr.
"You speak Hindustani with the bandaddy." It is true I had learnt a dozen phrases and had once or twice used them. To say I had learnt them in the ship was useless. "Oh, no, you have been in India. Why will you not tell me the truth, sahib? I am the only one from Pondicherry but you." He spoke mournfully. I was denying my own fatherland, denying help and comradeship to my own countryman!
Several hybrid derivations have been suggested, none of them probable, and I lean to the suggestion that the starting-point of the word may have been "jumkhana", a term which, though it is not in Forbes's Hindustani Dictionary, I have heard a native apply to a large cotton carpet, such as native acrobats, or wrestlers, might spread when about to give a performance.
I shouldn't wonder a bit when I go home and am ruffling it once more in Bond Street if, when told the price of a thing is a guinea, I laugh in a jocular way and say, "Oh! come now, I'll give you ten shillings." But to return to Hindustani. I haven't told you all I know. I can ask for tunda beef, which is cold beef, just as tunda pani is cold water, gurrum pani being hot!
Some of the things are quite unreadable to me though my family, with its Indian Civil Service associations, has kept up a knowledge of Hindustani from generation to generation and none are absolutely plain sailing. But I found the one that I knew was there soon enough, and sat on the floor by my safe for some time looking at it.
The boys stood still now, and Singh uttered a short, sharp order in Hindustani once more.
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