Baksheesh

Baksheesh (from Persian: بخشش bakhshesh[1]) is tipping, charitable giving, and certain forms of political corruption and bribery in the Middle East and South Asia.

In the Albanian, Arabic, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Indian, Macedonian, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, and Turkish languages, bakshish or бакшиш means "tip" in the conventional western sense.

[citation needed] When American mythologist Joseph Campbell travelled on his maiden visit to India in 1954, he encountered pervasive begging which he called the "Baksheesh Complex".

[4] Mark Twain, after riding through the Biblical town of Magdala in 1867, makes note of his encounter with beggars and the term bucksheesh in his published work The Innocents Abroad: "They hung to the horses' tails, clung to their manes and the stirrups, closed in on every side in scorn of dangerous hoofs—and out of their infidel throats, with one accord, burst an agonizing and most infernal chorus: 'Howajji, bucksheesh!

"[5] Leo Deuel, a writer on archaeology, sardonically described baksheesh as "lavish remuneration and bribes, rudely demanded but ever so graciously accepted by the natives in return for little or no services rendered".