1817.—"'So desperate a malady,' said the President, 'requires a remedy that shall reach its source. And I have no hesitation in stating my opinion that there is no mode of eradicating the disease, but by removing the original cause; and placing these districts, which are pledged for the security of the Kists, beyond the reach of his Highness's management.'"—Mill, vi. 55.
KITMUTGAR, s. Hind. khidmatgār, from Ar.—P. khidmat, 'service,' therefore 'one rendering service.' The Anglo-Indian use is peculiar to the Bengal Presidency, where the word is habitually applied to a Musulman servant, whose duties are connected with serving meals and waiting at table under the [Consumah], if there be one. Kismutgar is a vulgarism, now perhaps obsolete. The word is spelt by Hadley in his Grammar (see under [MOORS]) khuzmutgâr. In the word khidmat, as in khil'at (see [KILLUT]), the terminal t in uninflected Arabic has long been dropt, though retained in the form in which these words have got into foreign tongues.
1759.—The wages of a Khedmutgar appear as 3 Rupees a month.—In Long, p. 182.
1765.—"... they were taken into the service of Soujah Dowlah as immediate attendants on his person; Hodjee (see [HADJEE]) in capacity of his first Kistmutgar (or valet)."—Holwell, Hist. Events, &c., i. 60.
1782.—"I therefore beg to caution strangers against those race of vagabonds who ply about them under the denomination of Consumahs and Kismutdars."—Letter in India Gazette, Sept. 28.
1784.—"The Bearer ... perceiving a quantity of blood ... called to the Hookaburdar and a Kistmutgar."—In Seton-Karr, i. 13.
1810.—"The Khedmutgar, or as he is often termed, the Kismutgar, is with very few exceptions, a Mussulman; his business is to ... wait at table."—Williamson, V. M. i. 212.
c. 1810.—"The Kitmutgaur, who had attended us from Calcutta, had done his work, and made his harvests, though in no very large way, of the 'Tazee Willaut' or white people."—Mrs. Sherwood, Autobiog. 283. The phrase in italics stands for tāzī Wilāyatī (see [BILAYUT]), "fresh or green Europeans"—[Griffins] (q.v.).
1813.—"We ... saw nothing remarkable on the way but a Khidmutgar of Chimnagie Appa, who was rolling from Poona to Punderpoor, in performance of a vow which he made for a child. He had been a month at it, and had become so expert that he went on smoothly and without pausing, and kept rolling evenly along the middle of the road, over stones and everything. He travelled at the rate of two coss a day."—Elphinstone, in Life, i. 257-8.
1878.—"We had each our own ... Kitmutgar or table servant. It is the custom in India for each person to have his own table servant, and when dining out to take him with him to wait behind his chair."—Life in the Mofussil, i. 32.