koi-hain.

1816 ‘Quiz’ (title) The Grand Master, or Adventures of Qui Hi in Hindostan.

1822 Blackwood's Edinb. Mag. Aug. 133 So if you are neither a qu, hy [sic] nor a politician [etc.].

1834 T. Medwin Angler in Wales I. 7 An apparition..not unusual at that refuge for Indians, a ‘qui hi’.

1848 J. H. Stocqueler Oriental Interpreter 195/1 Qui-hye! qui-hi! or koee-hye! ‘Who is there?’ or ‘Who waits?’ In domestic establishments in Bengal..a servant..is summoned to the presence by the foregoing exclamations. Hence, the Europeans who reside in Bengal are called Qui-hyes, to distinguish them from the residents of Bombay, Madras, or Ceylon.

1858 G. F. Atkinson Curry & Rice Pref. The ‘Qui Hye’ of Bengal, the ‘Mull’ of Madras, and the ‘Duck’ of Bombay.

1864 G. O. Trevelyan Competition Wallah vii. 201 Old Quihyes, with clogged livers and shattered nerves.

1939 ‘E. Bell’ Memory be Good i. 15 I must have been a bit of a nuisance to the old quoi hais who wanted to read quietly in their deck-chairs [on an India-bound Anchor Line boat].

1960 M. Malgonkar Distant Drum ii. xxiii. 162 The very senior officers, right close to the top and steeped in the tradition of the old koi-hais.

1962 Listener 8 Nov. 776/1 There was dry knowing laughter among the Koi Hais in the shuttered clubs.

1965 B. Sweet-Escott Baker St. Irregular viii. 240 Most of Gavin's principal assistants were drawn from British business houses operating in the Far East... There was an inevitable tendency for some of them to regard themselves as old qua'hais.

1967 Listener 11 May 610/1 It is..almost a generation since the last of the koi hais packed up..and the ghosts of Poona are now faint indeed.

1973 Times 19 Feb. (India Suppl.) p. ix/2 The Koi Hais and ‘bottoms up, old boy’, are confined, in Britain, to the personal column of The Times, and in India, to a brittle crust of individuals who seem to prefer the caricature to the real thing.

1977 Times 25 June 15/4 An Old Quai Hai, as the diminishing band of servants of the Raj still living in this country [sc. India] are affectionately known.

1993 D. Burton Raj at Table i. 9 The British sahibs and memsahibs, especially in Bengal, came to be called qui hai, after the Urdu expression they constantly used for summoning a servant.

2005 Hindu (Nexis) 9 Dec. Crowds of peasants and old koi hais mill around the grounds leading to the gates.

1840 E. E. Napier Scenes & Sports Foreign Lands II. iv. 91 I sent to my Qui Hi friend an Arab pony.

1958 N. Sahgal Time to be Happy vii. 90 It was the place where the koi hai policies were made and from where the koi hai pattern had since the days of the East India Company flung its net across all British India to the smallest and remotest districts.

1971 Illustr. Weekly India 4 Apr. 22/3 On the boat, coming out to rejoin Maurice, I had learnt quite a lot of Hindustani, unfortunately from a very charming British army officer who had an atrociously koi hai accent which I never quite managed to shed.

2003 P. P. Barua Gentlemen of the Raj iv. 71 The new commanding officer (CO) and his second in command were the dreaded koi-hai (“anyone there”) type.