Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(Anglo-Ind.) a brand of cigar or cheroot.

1852		Reports by the Juries 60/2: Lunka cheroots, made from tobacco grown on the banks of the Godavery and Mahanuddy rivers.
1874		Accounts and Papers of the House of Commons XLVIII 140: At the Madras exhibition of 1855, samples were exhibited of [...] a large stock of Lunka cigars (made from the leaves of the N. rustica, grown on the islets of the Godavari delta).
1878		Farmer’s Mag. 268: The chances generally are that at least half of every bundle of ‘Lunkas,’ or ‘Trichies,’ will have to be thrown away, owing to the impossibility of making them ‘draw’.
1883		Frank Leslie’s Popular Mthly 747/2: Cheroots and cigars of every price brand or make are at hand and available, from the venerable Trichy to the well-known Lunka, and an American need never miss the taste of his own native Virginny.
1884		Kipling ‘Himalayan (Joachim Miller)’ in Early Prose (1900) 99: Fly from the land that is parched and dead, / To Simla or Murree or Naini Tal, / With a limber lunkah thrust in your mouth, / And a solahtopee to guard your head.
1886		Yule & Burnell Hobson-Jobson 401/1: Lunkas [...] A kind of strong cheroot much prized in the Madras Presidency, and so called from being made of tobacco grown in the ‘islands’ (the local term for which is lañka) of the Godavery Delta.
1890		A. Conan Doyle Sign of the Four 10: ‘If you can say definitely, for example, that some murder has been done by a man who was smoking an Indian lunkah, it obviously narrows your field of search’.
1894		Civil & Milit. Gaz. (Lahore) 10 July 11: [advert] BEST CHEROOTS / BEST DINDIGIL TOBACCO / AND / BEST LUNKAH TOBACCO .