Chapter PUNCH-HOUSE to PUNDIT of P by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

Defects of Indian Government, 69.

1873.—“The Council of an Indian Village Community most commonly consists of five persons…the panchayet familiar to all who have the smallest knowledge of India.”—Maine, Early Hist. of Institutions, 221.

PUNDIT, s. Skt. pandita ‘a learned man.’ Properly a man learned in Sanskrit lore. The Pundit of the Supreme Court was a Hindu Law-Officer, whose duty it was to advise the English Judges when needful on questions of Hindu Law. The office became extinct on the constitution of the ‘High Court,’ superseding the Supreme Court and Sudder Court, under the Queen’s Letters Patent of May 14, 1862.

In the Mahratta and Telegu countries, the word Pandit is usually pronounced Pant (in English colloquial Punt); but in this form it has, as with many other Indian words in like case, lost its original significance, and become a mere personal title, familiar in Mahratta history, e.g. the Nana Dhundopant of evil fame.

Within the last 30 or 35 years the term has acquired in India a peculiar application to the natives trained in the use of instruments, who have been employed beyond the British Indian frontier in surveying regions inaccessible to Europeans. This application originated in the fact that two of the earliest men to be so employed, the explorations by one of whom acquired great celebrity, were masters of village schools in our Himalayan provinces. And the title Pundit is popularly employed there much as Dominie used to be in Scotland. The Pundit who brought so much fame on the title was the late Nain Singh, C.S.I. [See Markham, Memoir of Indian Surveys, 2nd ed. 148 seqq.]

1574.—“I hereby give notice that…I hold it good, and it is my pleasure, and therefore I enjoin on all the pandits (panditos) and Gentoo physicians (phisicos gentios) that they ride not through this City (of Goa) or the suburbs thereof on horseback, nor in andors and palanquins, on pain of paying, on the first offence 10 cruzados, and on the second 20, pera o sapal,¹ with the forfeiture of such horses, andors, or palanquins, and on the third they shall become the galley-slaves of the King my Lord….”—Procl. of the Governor Antonio Moriz Barreto, in Archiv. Port. Orient. Fascic. 5, p. 899.

1604.—“…llamando tãbien en su compania los Põditos, le presentaron al Nauabo.”—Guerrero, Relaçion, 70.

1616.—“…Brachmanae una cum Panditis comparentes, simile quid iam inde ab orbis exordio in Indostane visum negant.”—Jarric, Thesaurus, iii. 81–82.

1663.—“A Pendet Brachman or Heathen Doctor whom I had put to serve my Agah…would needs make his Panegyrick…and at last concluded seriously with this: When you put your Foot into the Stirrup, My Lord, and when you march on Horseback in the front of the Cavalry, the Earth trembleth under your Feet, the eight Elephants that hold it up upon their Heads not being able to support it.”—Bernier, E.T., 85; [ed. Constable, 264].

1688.—“Je feignis donc d’être malade, et d’avoir la fièvre on fit venir aussitôt un Pandite ou médicin Gentil.”—Dellon, Rel. de l’Inq. de Goa, 214.

1785.—“I can no longer bear to be at the mercy of our pundits, who deal out Hindu law as they please; and make it at reasonable rates, when they cannot find it ready made.”—Letter of Sir W. Jones, in Mem. by Ld. Teignmouth, 1807, ii. 67.

1791.—“Il était au moment de s’embarquer pour l’Angleterre, plein de perplexité et d’ennui, lorsque les brames de Bénarés lui apprirent que le brame supérieur de la fameuse pagode de Jagrenat…était seul capable de resoudre toutes les questions de la Société royale de Londres. C’était en effet le plus fameux pandect, ou docteur, dont on eût jamais oui parler.”—B. de St. Pierre, La Chaumière Indienne. The preceding exquisite passage shows that the blunder which drew forth Macaulay’s flaming wrath, in the quotation lower down, was not a new one.

1798.—“…the most learned of the Pundits or Bramin lawyers, were called up from different parts of Bengal.”—Raynal, Hist. i. 42.

1856.—“Besides…being a Pundit of learning, he (Sir David Brewster) is a bundle of talents of various kinds.”—Life and Letters of Sydney Dobell, ii. 14.

1860.—“Mr. Vizetelly next makes me say that the principle of limitation is found ‘amongst the Pandects of the Benares….’ The Benares he probably supposes to be some Oriental nation. What he supposes their Pandects to be I shall not presume to guess…. If Mr. Vizetelly had consulted the Unitarian Report, he would have seen that I spoke of the Pundits of Benares, and he might without any very long and costly research have learned where Benares is and what a Pundit is.”—Macaulay, Preface to his Speeches.

1877.—“Colonel Y—. Since Nain Singh’s absence from this country precludes my having the pleasure of handing to him in person, this, the Victoria or Patron’s Medal, which has been awarded to him,…I beg to place it in your charge for transmission to the Pundit.”—Address by Sir R. Alcock, Prest. R. Geog. Soc., May 28.

“Colonel Y—in reply, said:…Though I do not know Nain Singh personally, I know his work…. He is not a topographical automaton, or merely one of a great multitude of native employés with an average qualification. His observations have added a larger amount of important knowledge to the map of Asia