pindaree

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A member of a horde of mounted robbers in India, notorious for their atrocity and rapacity. They first appeared about the end of the seventeenth century, and infested the possessions of the East India Company and the surrounding country in the eighteenth century. They were disorderly and mercenary horsemen, organized for indiscriminate raiding and looting. They were dispersed in 1817 by the Marquis of Hastings, then governor-general.