Chapter MAJOON to MALABAR of M by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

MAJOON to MALABAR

MAJOON, s. Hind. from Ar. ma’-jun, lit. ‘kneaded,’ and thence what old medical books call ‘an electuary’ (i.e. a compound of medicines kneaded with syrup into a soft mass), but especially applied to an intoxicating confection of hemp leaves, &c., sold in the bazar. [Burton, Ar. Nights, iii. 159.] In the Deccan the form is ma’-jum. Moodeen Sheriff, in his Suppt. to the Pharmac. of India, writes maghjun. “The chief ingredients in making it are ganja (or hemp) leaves, milk, ghee, poppy-seeds, flowers of the thorn-apple (see DATURA), the powder of nux vomica, and sugar” (Qanoon-e-Islam, Gloss. lxxxiii).

1519.—“Next morning I halted…and indulging myself with a maajûn, made them throw into the water the liquor used for intoxicating fishes, and caught a few fish.”—Baber, 272.

1563.—“And this they make up into an electuary, with sugar, and with the things above-mentioned, and this they call maju.”—Garcia, f. 27v.

1781.—“Our ill-favoured guard brought in a dose of majum each, and obliged us to eat it…a little after sunset the surgeon came, and with him 30 or 40 Caffres, who seized us, and held us fast till the operation (circumcision) was performed.”—Soldier’s letter quoted in Hon. John Lindsay’s Journal of Captivity in Mysore, Lives of Lindsays, iii. 293.

1874.—“…it (Bhang) is made up with flour and various additions into a sweetmeat or majum of a green colour.”—Hànbury and Flückiger, 493.

MALABAR, n.p.

a. The name of the sea-board country which the Arabs called the ‘Pepper-Coast,’ the ancient Kerala of the Hindus, the [Greek Text] Limurikh, or rather [Greek Text] Dimurikh, of the Greeks (see TAMIL), is not in form indigenous, but was applied, apparently, first by the Arab or Arabo-Persian mariners of the Gulf. The substantive part of the name, Malai, or the like, is doubtless indigenous; it is the Dravadian term for ‘mountain’ in the Sanskritized form Malaya, which is applied specifically to the southern portion of the Western Ghauts, and from which is taken the indigenous term Malayalam, distinguishing that branch of the Dravidian language in the tract which we call Malabar. This name—Male or Malai, Maliah, &c.,—we find in the earlier post-classic notices of India; whilst in the great Temple- Inscription of Tanjore (11th century) we find the region in question called Malai-nadu (nadu, ‘country’). The affix bar appears attached to it first (so far as we are aware) in the Geography of Edrisi (c. 1150). This (Persian ?) termination, bar, whatever be its origin, and whether or no it be connected either with the Ar. barr, ‘a continent,’ on the one hand, or with the Skt. vara, ‘a region, a slope,’ on the other, was most assuredly applied by the navigators of the Gulf to other regions which they visited besides Western India. Thus we have Zangi-bar (mod. Zanzibar), ‘the country of the Blacks’; Kalahbar, denoting apparently the coast of the Malay Peninsula; and even according to the dictionaries, Hindu-bar for India. In the Arabic work which affords the second of these examples (Relation, &c., tr. by Reinaud, i. 17) it is expressly explained: “The word bar serves to indicate that which is both a coast and a kingdom.” It will be seen from the quotations below that in the Middle Ages, even after the establishment of the use of this termination, the exact form of the name as given by foreign travellers and writers, varies considerably. But, from the time of the Portuguese discovery of the Cape route, Malavar, or Malabar, as we have it now, is the persistent form. [Mr. Logan (Manual, i. 1) remarks that the name is not in use in the district itself except among foreigners and English-speaking natives; the ordinary name is Malayalam or Malayam, ‘the Hill Country.’]

c. 545.—“The imports to Taprobane are silk, aloeswood, cloves, sandalwood. … These again are passed on from Sielediba to the marts on this side, such as [Greek Text] Male, where the pepper is grown. … And the most notable places of trade are these, Sindu … and then the five marts of [Greek Text] Male, from which the pepper is exported, viz., Parti, Mangaruth, Salopatana, Nalopatana, and Pudopatana.”—Cosmas, Bk. xi. In Cathay, &c., p. clxxviii.

c. 645.—“To the south this kingdom is near the sea. There rise the mountains called Mo-la-ye (Malaya), with their precipitous sides, and their lofty summits, their dark valleys and their deep ravines. On these mountains grows the white sandalwood.”—Hwen Tsang, in Julien, iii. 122.

851.—“From this place (Maskat) ships sail for India, and run for Kaulam-Malai; the distance from Maskat to Kaulam-Malai is a month’s sail with a moderate wind.”—Relation, &c., tr. by Reinaud, i. 15. The same work at p. 15 uses the expression “Country of Pepper” (Balad-ul-falfal).

890.—“From Sindán to Malí is five days’ journey; in the latter pepper is to be found, also the bamboo.”—Ibn Khurdádba, in Elliot, i. 15.

c. 1030.—“You enter then on the country of Lárán, in which is Jaimúr (see under CHOUL), then Maliah, then Kánchí, then Dravira (see DRAVIDIAN).”—Al-Birúni, in Reinaud, Fragmens, 121.

c. 1150.—“Fandarina (see PANDARANI) is a town built at the mouth of a river which comes from Maníbár,