Note 74 — Chapter XI · MALABAR.

Paolino observes, that the term Malabar ought not to be deduced from the Arabic mala, a mountain, and bahr, a coast. And Paolino is right; neither of those vocables are Arabic at all. The word is of Sanscrit origin, derived from malya (मल्य a mountain generally, but particularly the ranges called by us the Western Ghauts), and var (वार, a multitude). The Persian word بار (bar), used in compounds, as Zang-bar, the region of blacks, or Zanguebar, is palpably a corruption of the said var. Thus the original Sanscrit term malaya-desha, the mountain land, became in Persian and Arabic Malbar, or Malibar, and hence our Malabar. A late editor of Marco Polo’s travels might have been more cautious than to assert that “the very term is Arabic.”