1836.—"The district called the Circars, in India, is part of the coast which extends from the Carnatic to Bengal.... The domestic economy of the people is singular; they inhabit villages (!!), and all labour is performed by public servants paid from the public stock."—Phillips, Million of Facts, 320.
1878.—"General Sir J. C., C.B., K.C.S.I. He entered the Madras Army in 1820, and in 1834, according to official despatches, displayed 'active zeal, intrepidity, and judgment' in dealing with the savage tribes in Orissa known as the Circars"(!!!).—Obituary Notice in Homeward Mail, April 27.
CIVILIAN, s. A term which came into use about 1750-1770, as a designation of the covenanted European servants of the E. I. Company, not in military employ. It is not used by Grose, c. 1760, who was himself of such service at Bombay. [The earliest quotation in the N.E.D. is of 1766 from Malcolm's L. of Clive, 54.] In Anglo-Indian parlance it is still appropriated to members of the covenanted Civil Service [see [COVENANTED SERVANTS]]. The Civil Service is mentioned in Carraccioli's L. of Clive, (c. 1785), iii. 164. From an early date in the Company's history up to 1833, the members of the Civil Service were classified during the first five years as [Writers] (q.v.), then to the 8th year as [Factors] (q.v.); in the 9th and 11th as Junior Merchants; and thenceforward as Senior Merchants. These names were relics of the original commercial character of the E. I. Company's transactions, and had long ceased to have any practical meaning at the time of their abolition in 1833, when the Charter Act (3 & 4 Will. IV. c. 85), removed the last traces of the Company's commercial existence.
1848.—(Lady O'Dowd's) "quarrel with Lady Smith, wife of Minos Smith the puisne Judge, is still remembered by some at Madras, when the Colonel's lady snapped her fingers in the Judge's lady's face, and said she'd never walk behind ever a beggarly civilian."—Vanity Fair, ed. 1867, ii. 85.
1872.—"You bloated civilians are never satisfied, retorted the other."—A True Reformer, i. 4.
CLASSY, CLASHY, s. H. khalāṣī, usual etym. from Arab khalāṣ. A tent-pitcher; also (because usually taken from that class of servants) a man employed as chain-man or staff-man, &c., by a surveyor; a native sailor; or [Matross] (q.v.). Khalāṣ is constantly used in Hindustani in the sense of 'liberation'; thus, of a prisoner, a magistrate says 'khalāṣ karo,' 'let him go.' But it is not clear how khalāṣī got its ordinary Indian sense. It is also written khalāshī, and Vullers has an old Pers. word khalāsha for 'a ship's rudder.' A learned friend suggests that this may be the real origin of khalāṣī in its Indian use. [Khalāṣ also means the 'escape channel of a canal,' and khalāṣī may have been originally a person in charge of such a work.]
1785.—"A hundred clashies have been sent to you from the presence."—Tippoo's Letters, 171.
1801.—"The sepoys in a body were to bring up the rear. Our left flank was to be covered by the sea, and our right by Gopie Nath's men. Then the clashies and other armed followers."—Mt. Stewart Elphinstone, in Life, i. 27.
1824.—"If the tents got dry, the clashees (tent-pitchers) allowed that we might proceed in the morning prosperously."—Heber, ed. 1844, i. 194.
CLEARING NUT, WATER FILTER NUT, s. The seed of Strychnos potatorum, L.; a tree of S. India; [known in N. India as nirmalā, nirmalī, 'dirt-cleaner']. It is so called from its property of clearing muddy water, if well rubbed on the inside of the vessel which is to be filled.