Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(Anglo-Ind.) any country area, typically viewed as backward; also attrib.

1776		Report from Cttee to whom the petition of J. Touchet and J. Irving [etc.] (1781) appendix xv: We are sensible the general Regulations have directed, that no Individual indebted to Government, shall be called on in the Mofussul for private Engagements, until those of the Public are discharged.
[1781		Hicky’s Bengal Gaz. 24-31 Mar. n.p.: A Gentleman lately arrived from the Moussel].
1781		Hicky’s Bengal Gaz. 23-30 June n.p.: A Gentleman in the Mofussil Mr P fell out of his Chaise and broke his Leg .
1782		Sixth Report from Select Cttee appendixxv: I have not yet required these Mofussul Accounts from the Mofussul Officers; from whom then can I have required the Jumna Kurch?
1828		[C. D’Oyly] Tom Raw, The Griffin 196: He set about, in a prodigious bustle, / To make his preparations – with a lesson / From his friend Randy – though ‘twas yet a puzzle, / How he should fairly get up into the Mofussil.
1837		[E. Thornton] Hist. & Practices of Thugs 39: On being taken up in the Mofussil he denied; but when examined by me, though he denied all knowledge of the Dacca case, he confessed [etc].
1843		Bellew Memoirs of a Griffin I 17: Recollections of aristocratic association, &c., for mofussil consumption.
1844		J.W. Kaye Peregrine Pultuney II 5: He was from head to foot a thorough Orientalist [...] always talking about the ‘Upper Provinces’ and the ‘Mofussil’.
1861		Times of India 25 May 2/6: [T]hat healthy circulation between town and country, which is the only means of conveying European civilisation to the mofussil.
1870		Times of India 10 Jan. 2/2: Mr. Ellis’s [...] reliance on his own practical acquaintance with the work of mofussil administration.
1877		Times of India 3 Jan. 2/3: For the examination of 1878 [...] 845 [candidates] came up from the various schools of the mofussil—the whole length and breadth of Western India being represented.
1880		G. Aberigh-Mackay Twenty-one Days in India (2 edn) 103: There is no city in India, no mofussil-station, no little settlement of officials far-up country in which the chuprassie does not find sworn brothers and confederates.
1890		Dead Bird (Sydney) 22 Feb. 5/2: [from Planters’ Gaz. (India)] A planter living in the mofussil [...] had a pony that refused to move in harness .
1893		J.D. Gordon Work and Play in India & Kashmir 277: And yet the ordinary Mofussal Club is not a very formidable affair, being much in the nature of a respectable pothouse, where village wights meet to exchange – ‘Heaven save the mark’ – their ideas.
1911		S. Bradley Amer. Girl in India 282: A lord, the son of a Duke, is a rarity in an Indian Mofussil station, and Slumpanugger was as anxious to see him as Berengaria was to show him off.
1913		‘Simla Sounds’ in J.M. Symms Songs of a Desert Optimist n.p.: I have heard the bbreezes rsulte / o’er a precipice of pines, / and the half of a mofussil / shiver at a jackal’s whines.