"... Lightly latticed in
With odoriferous woods of Comorin."
Lalla Rookh, Mokanna.
This probably is derived from D'Herbelot, and involves a confusion often made between Comorin and Comar—the land of aloes-wood.
COMOTAY, COMATY, n.p. This name appears prominently in some of the old maps of Bengal, e.g. that embraced in the Magni Mogolis Imperium of Blaeu's great Atlas (1645-50). It represents Kāmata, a State, and Kāmatapur, a city, of which most extensive remains exist in the territory of Koch Bihār in Eastern Bengal (see [COOCH BEHAR]). These are described by Dr. Francis Buchanan, in the book published by Montgomery Martin under the name of Eastern India (vol. iii. 426 seqq.). The city stood on the west bank of the River Darlā, which formed the defence on the east side, about 5 miles in extent. The whole circumference of the enclosure is estimated by Buchanan at 19 miles, the remainder being formed by a rampart which was (c. 1809) "in general about 130 feet in width at the base, and from 20 to 30 feet in perpendicular height."
1553.—"Within the limits in which we comprehend the kingdom of Bengala are those kingdoms subject to it ... lower down towards the sea the kingdom of Comotaij."—Barros, IV. ix. 1.
[c. 1596.—"Kamtah." See quotation under COOCH BEHAR.]
1873.—"During the 15th century, the tract north of Rangpúr was in the hands of the Rájahs of Kámata.... Kámata was invaded, about 1498 A.D., by Husain Sháh."—Blochmann, in J. As. Soc. Bengal, xiii. pt. i. 240.
COMPETITION-WALLAH, s. A hybrid of English and Hindustani, applied in modern Anglo-Indian colloquial to members of the Civil Service who have entered it by the competitive system first introduced in 1856. The phrase was probably the invention of one of the older or Haileybury members of the same service. These latter, whose nominations were due to interest, and who were bound together by the intimacies and esprit de corps of a common college, looked with some disfavour upon the children of Innovation. The name was readily taken up in India, but its familiarity in England is probably due in great part to the "Letters of a Competition-wala," written by one who had no real claim to the title, Sir G. O. Trevelyan, who was later on member for Hawick Burghs, Chief Secretary for Ireland, and author of the excellent Life of his uncle, Lord Macaulay.
The second portion of the word, wālā, is properly a Hindi adjectival affix, corresponding in a general way to the Latin -arius. Its usual employment as affix to a substantive makes it frequently denote "agent, doer, keeper, man, inhabitant, master, lord, possessor, owner," as Shakespear vainly tries to define it, and as in Anglo-Indian usage is popularly assumed to be its meaning. But this kind of denotation is incidental; there is no real limitation to such meaning. This is demonstrable from such phrases as Kābul-wālā ghoṛā, 'the Kabulian horse,' and from the common form of village nomenclature in the Panjāb, e.g. Mīr-Khān-wālā, Ganda-Singh-wālā, and so forth, implying the village established by Mir-Khan or Ganda-Singh. In the three immediately following quotations, the second and third exhibit a strictly idiomatic use of wālā, the first an incorrect English use of it.