June 03, 2005

A Posteriori

To the Google user who landed up here searching for a definition of 'gandu': I'm sorry you didn't find what you were looking for, but allow me to make amends. This is what my Hindi dictionary (Brihat Hindi Kosh, Gyan Mandal) has to offer:
Gandu, adj. One who is addicted to being sodomized (the original reads 'jise gudabhanjan karane ki lat ho'); weak-hearted; good-for-nothing; cowardly.
By the way, in your search did you come across this passage from Richard Burton's translation of the Arabian Nights?
Yet the Hindus, I repeat, hold pederasty in abhorrence and are as much scandalized by being called Gand-mara (anus-beater) or Gandu (anuser) as Englishmen would be.
Anuser? Tell me that's not a real word.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Why did you delete Part II (Tariq Rahman, speculating about Akbar’s proficiency in Indian dialects in Language, Ideology and Power,notes that the great Mughal used a Hindustani obscenity on at least one occasion...)? I was looking forward to reading it.