As a loanword, Sahib has passed into several languages, including Persian, Kurdish, Turkish, Azerbaijani, Kazakh, Uzbek, Turkmen, Tajik, Crimean Tatar,[1] Urdu, Hindi, Punjabi, Pashto, Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, Rohingya and Somali.
In the Tibeto-Burman language of Mizo, it is shorten as sâp, referring to people of European descent.
[2] This derivation using the Persian suffix -zada(h), literally 'born from' (or further male/female descendant; compare Shahzada) a Sahib, was also (part of) the formal style for some princes of the blood of Hindu and Muslim dynasties in the Indian sub-continent, e.g.: This could be further combined, e.g.: Sahib means "owner" in Arabic and was commonly used in the Indian Sub-continent as a courteous term in the way that "Mister" (also derived from the word "master") and "Mrs." (derived from the word "mistress") is used in the English language.
The term is used exclusively to refer to any white European on the Indian subcontinent, throughout Rudyard Kipling's 1901 novel Kim.
The term is used in a similar manner in George Orwell's essay "Shooting an Elephant", which is used to accentuate his isolation in Colonial Burma (now Myanmar), and throughout his novel Burmese Days.
In Herman Cyril McNeile's 1920 novel Bulldog Drummond, an Indian magician was performing tricks in front of a crowd and drew attention to a mysterious box.
His Anglo-Indian characters refer to the Collector as Burra Sahib, implying the respect felt for him.
[3] The following dialogue in Dorothy Sayers's 1926 novel Clouds of Witness shows what the term implied in British society at the time.
"It means," said Poirot, "that Miss Debenham's father and brothers were at the same kind of school as Colonel Arbuthnot."
In Bruce Marshall's The World, the Flesh and Father Smith, the protagonist serves as a military chaplain in the trenches of WWI and gives absolution to soldiers and officers about to go into battle.
Still, I am sure God's too much of a Sahib to run a fellow in for ever and ever just because he got messed up with a bit of fluff" (i.e. had casual affairs with women).
of to associate, or consort (with), means originally companion, associate, friend (the abstract term is musāhabat); not unlike the Hellenistic Greek Philos and the Latin Comes in the Roman empire, it became a title for a favourite (of a Sahib, especially a prince), and such 'personally close' positions as aide-de-camp, in some princely states even a Minister.