banyan

name

1. A locality in the Shire of Buloke, north western Victoria, Australia

noun

Etymology: From Portuguese baniano, from Arabic بَنِيَان (baniyān), from Gujarati વાણિયો (vāṇiyo, “merchant”), from Sanskrit वाणिज (vāṇijá), from earlier वणिज् (vaṇíj, “merchant, trader”). The name appears to have been first bestowed popularly on a famous tree of this species growing near Bandar Abbas, under which the Bannians, or Hindu traders settled at that port, had built a little pagoda. Doublet of bunnia.

1. An Indian trader, merchant, cashier, or money changer.
2. A tropical Indian fig tree, Ficus benghalensis, that has many aerial roots.

   “When doubling a point, which was covered with a heavy growth of the banian mangrove, which extended into deep water, we discovered a party of Kubu Orangs fishing from off a pack of drift that had lodged against the inward trend of the northern shore.”

   “We climb and then descend; we pass by the great banyan which, like Atlas, settling himself powerfully on his contorted haunches, seems awaiting with knee and shoulder the burden of the sky.”

3. Various other trees of the Ficus subgenus Urostigma, especially Ficus pertusa (Central American banyan) and Ficus microcarpa (Chinese banyan or Malayan banyan).
4. A type of loose gown worn in India.
5. A vest; an undershirt; a singlet.

   “It was an honest letter, written by an honest man, then stewing in the Plains on two hundred rupees a month (for he allowed his wife eight hundred and fifty), and in a silk banian and cotton trousers.”

6. A camping excursion on shore, to give a ship's crew a break from shipboard routine.