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. paṇḍita, '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 Paṇḍit 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 Nānā 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 Himālayan 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,[[226]] 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.