Chapter COLLECTOR to COLOMBO of C by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

COLLECTOR to COLOMBO

COLLECTOR, s. The chief administrative official of an Indian Zillah or District. The special duty of the office is, as the name intimates, the Collection of Revenue; but in India generally, with the exception of Bengal Proper, the Collector, also holding controlling magisterial powers, has been a small pro-consul, or kind of préfet. This is, however, much modified of late years by the greater definition of powers, and subdivision of duties everywhere. The title was originally no doubt a translation of tahsildar. It was introduced, with the office, under Warren Hastings, but the Collector’s duties were not formally settled till 1793, when these appointments were reserved to members of the covenanted Civil Service.

1772.—“The Company having determined to stand forth as dewan, the Supervisors should now be designated Collectors.”— Reg. of 14th May, 1772.

1773.—“Do not laugh at the formality with which we have made a law to change their name from supervisors to collectors. You know full well how much the world’s opinion is governed by names.”—W. Hastings to Josias Dupre, in Gleig, i. 267.

1785.—“The numerous Collectors with their assistants had hitherto enjoyed very moderate allowances from their employers.” —Letter in Colebrooke’s Life, p. 16.

1838.—“As soon as three or four of them get together they speak about nothing but ‘employment’ and ‘promotion’ … and if left to themselves, they sit and conjugate the verb ‘to collect’: ‘I am a Collector— He was a Collector—We shall be Collectors— You ought to be a Collector—They would have been Collectors.’ ”—Letters from Madras, 146.

1848.—“Yet she could not bring herself to suppose that the little grateful gentle governess would dare to look up to such a magnificent personage as the Collector of Boggleywallah.”—Thackeray, Vanity Fair, ch. iv.

1871.—“There is no doubt a decay of discretionary administration throughout India … it may be taken for granted that in earlier days Collectors and Commissioners changed their rules far oftener than does the Legislature at present.”—Maine, Village Communities, 214.

1876.—“These ‘distinguished visitors’ are becoming a frightful nuisance; they think that Collectors and Judges have nothing to do but to act as their guides, and that Indian officials have so little work, and suffer so much from ennui, that even ordinary thanks for hospitality are unnecessary; they take it all as their right.”—Ext. of a Letter from India.

COLLEGE-PHEASANT, s. An absurd enough corruption of kalij; the name in the Himalaya about Simla and Mussooree for the birds of the genus Gallophasis of Hodgson, intermediate between the pheasants and the Jungle-fowls. “The group is composed of at least three species, two being found in the Himalayas, and one in Assam, Chittagong and Arakan.” (Jerdon).

[1880.—“These, with kalege pheasants, afforded me some very fair sport.”—Ball, Jungle Life, 538.

[1882.—“Jungle- fowl were plentiful, as well as the black khalege pheasant.”— Sanderson, Thirteen Years among Wild Beasts, 147.]

COLLERY, CALLERY, &c. s. Properly Bengali khalari, ‘a salt-pan, or place for making salt.’

[1767.—“… rents of the Collaries, the fifteen Dees, and of Calcutta town, are none of them included in the estimation I have laid before you.”—Verelst, View of Bengal, App. 223.]

1768.—“… the Collector-general be desired to obtain as exact an account as he possibly can, of the number of colleries in the Calcutta purgunnehs.”—In Carraccioli’s L. of Clive, iv. 112.

COLLERY, n.p. The name given to a non-Aryan race inhabiting part of the conntry east of Madura. Tam. kallar, ‘thieves.’ They are called in Nelson’s Madura, [Pt. ii. 44 seqq.] Kallans; Kallan being the singular, Kallar plural.

1763.—“The Polygar Tondiman … likewise sent 3000 Colleries; these are a people who, under several petty chiefs, inhabit the woods between Trichinopoly and Cape Comorin; their name in their own language signifies Thieves, and justly describes their general character.”—Orme, i. 208.

c. 1785.—“Colleries, inhabitants of the woods under the Government of the Tondiman.”—Carraccioli, Life of Clive, iv. 561.

1790.—“The country of the Colleries … extends from the sea coast to the confines

of Madura, in a range of sixty miles by fifty-five.”—Cal. Monthly Register or India Repository, i. 7.