pykar

English

Etymology

Borrowed from Bengali পাইকার (paikar), Hindustani پیکار (pekār) / पैकार (paikār), from Classical Persian پای کار (pāy-kār).

Noun

pykar (plural pykars) (British India, South Asia)

1. A broker dealing directly with a manufacturer of goods.
   • 1892, Sir George Watt, A Dictionary of the Economic Products of India:

     There were also smaller dealers, known by the names of Pykars, resident throughout the country at large who made purchases and prepared the opium in their houses from 10 to 50 maunds, but the commodity thus received from the Pykars was never genuine.

   • 1961, Narendra Krishna Sinha, The Economic History of Bengal:

     In Dacca before Plassey only 9 dalals and 11 pykars were permitted in the cloth trade. Any other person calling himself a dalal or a pykar was liable to be punished by Nawab's Daroga of Mulmul Khas Kuthee.

   • 1995, Studies in History, volume 11, page 197:

     The Council of Revenue wrote to the CCC in 1772 that the Company's pykars were procuring cocoons through debt-bondage and coercion and that 'the riots and chassars are reduced to a state of actual slavery."

Anagrams

• parky