Comments on: Vilayat

By: A shufti in Blighty « Kafr al-Hanadwa

A shufti in Blighty « Kafr al-Hanadwa — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 11:39:16 +0000

[...] the origin of “Blighty” in “vilayati” (also pronounced “belayti”) is pretty funny, because “vilayati” [...]

By: sepoy

sepoy — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

bulleyah: OED credits Rudyard Kipling with the first usage in 1886: “From Sea to Sea (1899) II. 358 Let the town hear of the wonders which I have seen in Belait.”

By: nomadica

nomadica — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Wilayat is a very common word in Oman. It means town/province. Once you drive out of Muscat, the capital city, you’ll find it appearing on sign boards a lot as you drive through different towns. The signs will say ‘Wilayat (Nameoftown) Welcomes You’.

By: Umar

Umar — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

And (what appears to me to be) the plural of the word, Awliyaat, or however you pronounce it, is used to refer to the States that make up the US… at least in all the Arabic news bulletins I’ve seen…

By: dacoit

dacoit — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

b: Fascinating philological investigations, it never occurred to me that blighty and vilayat were related. I always thought calling England ol’ blighty was based on the same principle as the word we use for decaying cities - urban blight - and the degenerative disease that hits orange orchards - citrus blight. Little did I know that this was my own personal folk etymology (England was certainly a blight on South Asia for a while there though, so it works).

Funnily enough, the title of my last post includes another related word, Wali (or Vali, ‘w’ and ‘v’ are pretty much interchangable), which taken literally means the person who has the Vilayat (or power). In the Sufi context the appellation means someone who is sort of a spiritual governor (mapping political upon religious authority), or also a friend or dear one (Valiullah=friend of God).

If you check out Hobson-Jobson, in addition to Bilayut, they also have an entry for Bilayutee Pawnee, which literally means ‘water from Vilayat’, but refers specifically to soda water, which presumably was not in India before the limeys came over from blimey. (This all makes me thing of the fine institution of marble soda that continues in South Asia, upon which I will write a post at some point).

By: samir

samir — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

A godown is a warehouse or store for goods, from the Malay gadong.
Ref:
http://www.worldwidewords.org/articles/malay.htm

By: poorva

poorva — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

All this from watching K N Singh in one of his best villain performances (matched only by his stint as the evil Jack in An Evening in Paris)! Sachmuch, yahaan jo chalti hai use gaadi kehte hain pyaare! Wonderful post, from blighty to vilayat to valiullah and back.

By: bulleyah

bulleyah — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

thanks for the fascinating link, samir. i was under the misapprehension, thanks to a teacher in junior school, that ‘godown’ actually came from the english ‘go down’, when they told the ntaives to get stuff up which was stored in the teh-khanas…

it’s wrong i know, but very very charming.

further on malaysia, i just finished reading this fascinatingbook called ‘the consumption of kuala lumpur’, by ziauddin sardar. you might like…

By: Knightmare

Knightmare — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

There is nothing wrong with a smile and they could certainly use lots of them back home. It took me some time to learn to smile back. But, I still find it creepy even to the point of feeling dirty when a complete unkown whitey smiles at me for no good reason. And knowing they are all fake smiles(at least most of them), I even get a little pissed because I have to show the same fakeness back.

Seriously, It’s bad enough enduring their oppresive ways and now they want us to smile at them? We’re not your monkies! We don’t dance for no one White-Devil! ;-)

freedomshock.blogspot.com

By: El Savior

El Savior — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

All that from a boring old hindi movie?!!!