My presentation is about the essay Hobson Jobson

1. • Topic : Rushdie’s view in his essay “Hobson-
Jobson”
• Name : Urvi Bhatt
• Paper Name: The Postcolonial Literature
• Paper No: 11
• Sem : 3
• Roll No: 31
• Enrolment no: PG13101005
• Submitted to: Department of English
Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar
University.

2. Salman Rushdie
• Born on 19th June, 1947 in
Bombay.
• Kashmiri Indian who is British
citizen
• Genre is Magic realism,
Satire, Post colonialism.
• Subject of writing are
Historical criticism and Travel
writing.
• Famous for his essay and
novels.

3. Rushdie’s works
“Midnight’s Children”(1981)
“The Satanic Verses”(1988)
“Haroun and the Sea of Stories”(1990)
“Joseph Anton: A Memoir”(2012)
“The Ground Beneath Her Feet”(1999)
“The Moor’s Last Sing”(1995)
“Imaginary Homelands”(1991)
“ The Enchantress of Horence”(2008)

4. Essay Hobson - Jobson
• Yule and Burnell looking for
their dictionary
• Assimilation of adopted
foreign words to the sound –
pattern of the adopting
language
• Henry Yule was a retired
Bengali engineer and the other
is Arthur Coke Burnell was an
English scholar in Sanskrit.

5. Meaning and origin
• The shorter title of “
Hobson – Jobson: A
glossary of colloquial
Anglo- Indian words
and phrases, and of
Kindred Terms,
Etymological,
historical,
geographical and
discursive….”

6. A historical
dictionary of
Anglo-Indian
words
Terms from
Indian
Languages
Hobson
– Jobson
is

7. About the essay
• First publish in 1886
• Edited by William
Crooke in 1903
• Holds over 2000
words

8. Title of the essay
• Referred to the
ceremonies of the
Morning of Maharram.
• Origin its corrupted
by British of “ Ya asan! Ya
o Sain!”
• Cried by Shia Muslims

9. Hobsseen
Gossen
“ Ya asan!
Ya o
Sain!”
Hossy
Gossy
Hossein
jossen
Hobson
-
jobson

10. A Migrant
Rushdie
compares
to

11. Rushdie’s problem
The Migrant A Muslim in India
An Indian in
Pakistan
A Brown man in
Britain
He has been in the
unique position of
forever being

12. “Sometimes we[migrant
writers] feel we straddle two
cultures, at other times, that
we fall between two stools.”
-Rushdie
• Imaginary Homelands is being engaged in a
personal conversation by the author.
• Postcolonial writer
• Criticizes colonial mindset of British
• Prophetic vision makes him a global person.

13. Content in essay
• This essay Rushdie tells us how a
dictionary with Indian words for
colonizers use came into existence.
• Conversing face to face with us.
• English and Indian languages words
mingled with each other.

14. “These thousand-add
pages bear
eloquent
testimony to the
unparalled
intermingling…”
Rushdie
considers the
matter of
dictionary like
this
Testimony

15. Mixed words
• Rushdie also talks about Marathi, Hindi,
Gujarati and Sanskrit based in English
words. E.g.
Shampoo Massage Champo Chapna

16. Chief interest in
Hobson- Jobson
“The chief interest of Hobson-
Jobson… in the richness of what
one must call the Anglo-Indian
language… that language which
was in regular use just forty tears
and which is now dead.”

17. Some interesting origin of words:
Macheen
Maha-
Cheen
Great
China
Chiz
Cheese

18. Some distorted words:
Snowrupee • Authority
Poggle • A Madman
Dam In India comes
from Damri

19. British India had absorbed some
Indian words like:
Jadoogars
Puckerow
Sorcerers
Samjao
Look out
To make
understand

20. Some examples Mixture of Indian and
English words- Hinglish are;
• “While having tiffin
at the veranda of my
bungalow I spilled
kedgree on my
daungarees and had
to go to gymkhana
in my pyjamas
looking like a
Coolie.”
• “I was buying Chutney
in the bazaar when a
fhug who had escaped
from the Comskey ran
amok and killed a box-wallah
for his loot,
creating a hallabaloo
and landing himself in
the mulligatawny.”

22. Conclusion
• Rushdie seems against the distortion of
words.
• He gave us some interesting notions behind
the word formation in English and Indian
languages.
Email ID: bhatt.urvi22@gmail.com