Chapter CORGE to COROMANDEL of C by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

CORLE, s. Singh. korale, a district.

1726.—“A Coraal is an overseer of a Corle or District.…”—Valentijn, Names of Native Officers in the Villages of Ceylon, 1.

CORNAC, s. This word is used, by French writers especially, as an Indian word, and as the equivalent of Mahout (q.v.), or driver of the elephant. Littré defines: “Nom qu’on donne dans les Indes au conducteur d’un eléphant,” &c., &c., adding: “Etym. Sanskrit karnikin, éléphant.” “Dans les Indes” is happily vague, and the etymology worthless. Bluteau gives Cornâca, but no etymology. In Singhalese Kurawa=‘Elephant Stud.’ (It is not in the Singhalese Dict., but it is in the official Glossary of Terms, &c.), and our friend Dr. Rost suggests Kurawa-nayaka, ‘Chief of the Kurawa’ as a probable origin. This is confirmed by the form Cournakea in Valentijn, and by another title which he gives as used for the head of the Elephant Stable at Matura, viz. Gaginaicke (Names, &c., p. 11), i.e. Gajinayaka, from Gaja, ‘an elephant.’ [The N.E.D. remarks that some authorities give for the first part of the word Skt. kari, ‘elephant.’] 1672.—“There is a certain season of the year when the old elephant discharges an oil at the two sides of the head, and at that season they become like mad creatures, and often break the neck of their carnac or driver.”—Baldaeus, Germ. ed. 422. (See MUST.)

1685.—“O cornaca q estava de baixo delle tinha hum laço que metia em hua das mãos ao bravo.”—Ribeiro, f. 49b.

1712.—“The aforesaid author (P. Fr. Gaspar de S. Bernardino in his Itinerary), relates that in the said city (Goa), he saw three Elephants adorned with jewels, adoring the most Holy Sacrament at the Sè Gate on the Octave of Easter, on which day in India they make the procession of Corpus Domini, because of the calm weather. I doubt not that the Cornacas of these animals had taught them to perform these acts of apparent adoration. But at the same time there appears to be Religion and Piety innate in the Elephant.”¹—In Bluteau, s.v. Elephante.

1726.—“After that (at Mongeer) one goes over a great walled area, and again through a gate, which is adorned on either side with a great stone elephant with a Carnak on it.”—Valentijn, v. 167.

“Cournakeas, who stable the new-caught elephants, and tend them.”—Valentijn, Names, &c., 5 (in vol. v.).

1727.—“As he was one Morning going to the River to be washed, with his Carnack or Rider on his Back, he chanced to put his Trunk in at the Taylor’s Window.”—A. Hamilton, ii. 110; [ed. 1744, ii. 109]. This is the only instance of English use that we know (except Mr. Carl Bock’s; and he is not an Englishman, though his book is in English). It is the famous story of the Elephant’s revenge on the Tailor.

[1831.—“With the same judgment an elephant will task his strength, without human direction. ‘I have seen,’ says M. D’Obsonville, ‘two occupied in beating down a wall which their cornacs (keepers) had desired them to do.…’”—Library of Entertaining Knowledge, Quadrupeds, ii. 157.]

1884.—“The carnac, or driver, was quite unable to control the beast, which roared and trumpeted with indignation.”—C. Bock, Temples and Elephants, p. 22.

COROMANDEL, n.p. A name which has been long applied by Europeans to the Northern Tamil Country, or (more comprehensively) to the eastern coast of the Peninsula of India from Pt. Calimere northward to the mouth of the Kistna, sometimes to Orissa. It corresponds pretty nearly to the Maabar of Marco Polo and the Mahommedan writers of his age, though that is defined more accurately as from C. Comorin to Nellore.

Much that is fanciful has been written on the origin of this name. Tod makes it Kuru-mandala, the Realm of the Kurus (Trans. R. As. Soc. iii. 157). Bp. Caldwell, in the first edition of his Dravidian Grammar, suggested that European traders might have taken this familiar name from that of Karumanal (‘black sand’), the name of a small village on the coast north of Madras, which is habitually pronounced and written Coromandel by European residents at Madras. [The same suggestion was made earlier (see Wilks, Hist. Sketches, ed. 1869, i. 5, note)]. The learned author, in his second edition, has given up this suggestion, and has accepted that to which we adhere. But Mr. C. P. Brown, the eminent Telugu scholar, in repeating the former suggestion, ventures positively to assert: “The earliest Portuguese sailors pronounced this Coromandel, and called the whole coast by this name, which was unknown to the Hindus”;² a passage containing in three lines several errors. Again, a writer in the Ind. Antiquary (i. 380) speaks of this supposed origin of the name as “pretty generally accepted,” and proceeds to give an imaginative explanation of how it was propagated. These etymologies are founded on a corrupted form of the name, and the same remark would apply to Kharamandalam, the ‘hot country,’ which Bp. Caldwell mentions as one of the names given, in Telugu, to the eastern coast. Padre Paolino gives