Babu
This article is an extract from
THE TRIBES and CASTES of BENGAL. Ethnographic Glossary. Printed at the Bengal Secretariat Press. 1891. . |
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Babu
Also called Babu Paliya, a group of the Paliya sub-caste of Kochha in Northern Bengal .A title of Rajput in Behar and Chota Nagpur,importing descent from one of the leading families of the locality , and not unfrequently carrying with it the right to hold land on favourable terms by the priviledged tenure known as babuan. Colonel Yule gives the following note on the word in his Anglo-Indian Glossary:-“Properly a term of respect attached to a name , like Master or Mr, and formally applied in some parts of Hindustan.its application as a term of respect is now almost or altogether confined to Lower Bengal (though C.P. Brown states that it is also used in Southern India for ‘Sir, My Lord , Your Honours’). In Bengal and else where, among Anglo-Indians, it is often used with a slight savour of disparagement., as characterising a superficially-cultivated, but too often effeminate, Bengali; and from the extensive employment of the class, to which the term was applied as a title, in the capacity of clerks in Engli.h offices, the word has come often to signify 'a native clerk who writes English.'
