Chapter MALADOO to MALDIVES of M by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

Moors, Malauares, Achems, Jaos, and Malayos.”—Ibid. p. 279.

1553.—“And so these Gentiles like the Moors who inhabit the sea-coasts of the Island (Sumatra), although they have each their peculiar language, almost all can speak the Malay of Malacca as being the most general language of those parts.”— Barros, III. v. 1.

„ “Everything with them is to be a gentleman; and this has such prevalence in those parts that you will never find a native Malay, however poor he may be, who will set his hand to lift a thing of his own or anybody else’s; every service must be done by slaves.”—Ibid. II. vi. 1.

1610.—“I cannot imagine what the Hollanders meane, to suffer these Malaysians, Chinesians, and Moores of these countries, and to assist them in their free trade thorow all the Indies, and forbid it their owne seruants, countrymen, and Brethern, upon paine of death and losse of goods.”—Peter Williamson Floris, in Purchas, i. 321.

[Mr. Skeat writes: “The word Malaya is now often applied by English writers to the Peninsula as a whole, and from this the term Malaysia as a term of wider application (i.e. to the Archipelago) has been coined (see quotation of 1610 above). The former is very frequently miswritten by English writers as ‘Malay,’ a barbarism which has even found place on the title-page of a book— ‘Travel and Sport in Burma, Siam and Malay, by John Bradley, London, 1876.’ ”] MALAYALAM. This is the name applied to one of the cultivated Dravidian languages, the closest in its relation to the Tamil. It is spoken along the Malabar coast, on the Western side of the Ghauts (or Malaya mountains), from the Chandragiri River on the North, near Mangalore (entering the sea in 12° 29’), beyond which the language is, for a limited distance, Tulu, and then Canarese, to Trevandrum on the South (lat. 8° 29’), where Tamil begins to supersede it. Tamil, however, also intertwines with Malayalam all along Malabar. The term Malayalam properly applies to territory, not language, and might be rendered “Mountain region” [See under MALABAR, and Logan, Man. of Malabar, i. 90.]

MALDIVES, MALDIVE ISLDS., n.p. The proper form of this name appears to be Male-diva; not, as the estimable Garcia de Orta says, Nale-diva; whilst the etymology which he gives is certainly wrong, hard as it may be to say what is the right one. The people of the islands formerly designated themselves and their country by a form of the word for ‘island’ which we have in the Skt. dvipa and the Pali dipo. We find this reflected in the Divi of Ammianus, and in the Diva and Diba-jat (Pers. plural) of old Arab geographers, whilst it survives in letters of the 18th century addressed to the Ceylon Government (Dutch) by the Sultan of the Isles, who calls his kingdom Divehi Rajjé, and his people Divehe mihun. Something like the modern form first appears in Ibn Batuta. He, it will be seen, in his admirable account of these islands, calls them, as it were, Mahal-dives, and says they were so called from the chief group Mahal, which was the residence of the Sultan, indicating a connection with Mahal, ‘a palace.’ This form of the name looks like a foreign ‘striving after meaning.’ But Pyrard de Laval, the author of the most complete account in existence, also says that the name of the islands was taken from Malé, that on which the King resided. Bishop Caldwell has suggested that these islands were the dives, or islands, of Malé, as Malebar (see MALABAR) was the coast-tract or continent, of Malé. It is, however, not impossible that the true etymology was from mala, ‘a garland or necklace,’ of which their configuration is highly suggestive. [The Madras Gloss. gives Malayal. mal, ‘black,’ and dvipa, ‘island,’ from the dark soil. For a full account of early notices of the Maldives, see Mr. Gray’s note on Pyrard de Laval, Hak. Soc. ii. 423 seqq.] Milburn (Or. Commmerce, i. 335) says: “This island was (these islands were) discovered by the Portuguese in 1507.” Let us see!

A.D. 362.—“Legationes undique solito ocius concurrebant; hinc Transtigritanis pacem obsecrantibus et Armeniis, inde nationibus Indicis certatim cum donis optimates mittentibus ante tempus, ab usque Divis et Serendivis.”—Ammian. Marcellinus, xxii. 3.

c. 545.—“And round about it (Sielediba or Taprobane, i.e. Ceylon) there are a number of small islands, in all of which you find fresh water and coco-nuts. And these are almost all set close to one another.”— Cosmas, in Cathay, &c., clxxvii.

851.—“Between this Sea (of Horkand) and the Sea called Laravi there is a great number of isles; their number, indeed, it is said, amounts to 1,900; … the distance from island to island is 2, 3, or 4 parasangs. They are all inhabited, and all produce coco-palms.… The last of these islands is Serendib, in the Sea of Horkand; it is the chief of all; they give the islands the name of Dibajat” (i.e. Dibas).—Relation, &c., tr. by Reinaud, i. 4–5.

c. 1030.—“The special name of Diva is given to islands which are formed in the sea, and which appear above water in the form of accumulations of sand; these sands continually augment, spread, and unite, till they present a firm aspect … these islands are divided into two classes, according to the nature of