Dictionary

dak bungalow en · NOUN

Etymology

From Hindi डाक बंगला (ḍāk baṅglā) under influence from Gujarati ડાકબંગલો (ḍākbaṅglo).

Meanings

1. (India, historical) A posthouse of the old Indian postal service (dak), used as lodging by itinerant British officials and other travellers and as a make-shift courthouse in rural areas.
   • Care was taken not to interfere with Europeans, for the twofold reason, that they seldom carried about with them anything more valuable than their firearms, and that they would certainly be missed, and close inquiries instituted to account for their disappearance. Besides, there was little chance of persuading a European to accept their company, or to rest anywhere save in his own tent, or in a Dakh bungalow. 1875 December 25, "Some Bad Old Indian Customs", part II,, in Charles Dickens, Jr. (editor), All the Year Round, number 369, page 298
   • There is a good sarái or inn for native travellers, and a dák bangalow or resting-place for Europeans. 1878, Encyclopaedia Britannica, 9th ed., "Badnur"
   • The Dak Bungalow of Chandrapore was below the average, and certainly servantless. 1924, EM Forster, A Passage to India, Penguin, published 2005, page 229:
   • The life of the Anglo-Indian officials is not all jam. In comfortless camps, in sweltering offices, in gloomy dakbungalows smelling of dust and earth-oil, they earn, perhaps, the right to be a little disagreeable. 1934, George Orwell, chapter 2, in Burmese Days:
   • Seeing that a fair proportion of the tragedy of our lives out here acted itself in dâk-bungalows, I wondered that I had met no ghosts. A ghost that would voluntarily hang about a dâk-bungalow would have to be mad course; but so many men have died mad in dâk-bungalows, that there must be a fair percentage of lunatic ghosts. 1888, Rudyard Kipling, "My Own True Ghost Story", The Phantom 'Rickshaw and other Eerie Tales, page 34
   • On the veranda of a Dak bungalow two men attired in khaki shirts and sweaters, sat smoking. 1936, F.J. Thwaites, chapter XIV, in The Redemption, Sydney: H. John Edwards, published 1940, page 147:

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