QUESTION = A one-storied
house. Derives from the Hindi word bangla meaning,
literally, in the style of or belonging to Bengal. The word bungalow in English
dates back to the 17th century when it was used to refer to a type of cottage
built in Bengal for early European settlers ?
ANSWER =Bungalow.
The history of the bungalow becomes both confused and interesting
from the later eighteenth century. After the Battle of Plassey (1757), when the
British really became masters of Bengal, new cantonments, or permanent military
camps, were established. Here, European officers were eventually housed in
thatched roofed bungalows with various devices for thermal control, such as the
jaump (a horizontally suspended screen over the verandah), adopted from the
local culture. William Hodges provided an accurate description in 1793. Bungalows
were
generally raised on a base of brick, one, two or three feet from
the ground, and consist of only one storey; the plan of them usually is a large
room in the centre for an eating and sitting room, and rooms at each corner for
sleeping; the whole is covered with one general thatch, which comes low to each
side; the spaces between the angle rooms are viranders or open porticos to sit
in during the evenings; the center hall is lighted from the sides with windows
and a large door in the center. Sometimes the center viranders at each end are
converted into rooms.
Today, the word has two or three common meanings. In Europe and
North America, it refers to a separate (or "detached") dwelling,
principally on one storey and meant for the permanent occupation of one
household or family. It can also describe a simple, lightly or self-built
shelter, perhaps by the beach or in the country, and meant for temporary or
holiday use. In Africa and India, it might refer to an older,
"colonial" type of house which, though perhaps with more than one
storey, is always detached, or even, in India at least, to any modern house in
contrast to more traditional types of dwelling. In all countries, its diffusion
is part of the cultural consequences of colonialism, though in the rich
industrial nations of the North, the bungalow, in the first two senses
suggested above, is part of two phenomena characteristic of modern,
urban-industrial and essentially free market societies: large-scale
sub-urbanisation and the growth of mass leisure.
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