The word ''bhishti'' recently left a Scrabble-mad linguist friend of mine from Canada puzzled, as it has been transcribed (or spelt) in English in several ways. He asked me the reason. Thus reminded of Kipling's Gunga Din, the famous regimental bhishti, I made some search and found two links that show those great men in action: http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00glossarydata/titles/bhishti/bhishti.html http://www.christies.com/LotFinder/lot_details.aspx?intObjectID=1544078 And the following is John Feltham's input - *** Australia has its own famous bheesty-wallah. One John Simpson who did sterling work in Gallipoli with his donkey. See... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Simpson_Kirkpatrick Even today, there are still calls on the Government to award him a posthumous VC. *** The word is indeed Indian - a part of the essential Anglo-Indian glossary of the 18th and 19th centuries. The great Hobson-Jobson dictionary describes it thus: ''BHEESTY, The universal word in the Anglo-Indian households of North India for the domestic who supplies the family with water, carrying it in a mussuck or goatskin, slung on his back. The word is derived from Persian bihishti.'' Why those different spellings? Well, that was the fashion of that era. You spelt a foreign word as you heard it. So, bheestie, bheesty, bhisti,bhistie, bhishti, and bheesty. Hindustan, Hindostan, Hindoostan, Hindosthan ... There were no formal and universal rules of transliteration. The regimental bhisti was an angel of mercy for the wounded soldiers, bleeding, screaming, and slowly dying on the battelfields. Next to the Red Cross Florence-Nightingales, he was the most coveted man. Braving the arrows, lances, bullets or whatever missiles flying all around him, he used to run from soldier to soldier, pour water down their throats, and move on. Many a bhishti used to die if caught in a crossfire. The following is an entry from the book ''People of India'' by K Suresh Singh, Kumar Suresh Singh, B. V. Bhanu. http://books.google.com/books BHISHTI/BHISTI = The BHISHTIs are water carriers. The synonym or the group is Pakhali. The word BHISHTI is said to be derived from the Persian word 'behist' (paradise) and to have been given to them on account of the relief which their ancestors provided to thirsty soldiers. They are known for their leather waterbag. They are not aware of their origin and migration.Their mother tongue is Urdu and they use the Persian script. Apart from Urdu they can also speak Marathi and English and use the Devanagri and Roman scripts. ===== --- Harshawardhan_Bosham Nimkhedkar