Hobson-Jobson: A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases, and of Kindred Terms, Etymological, Historical, Geographical and Discursive c10.9037

c10.9037

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, *Tula*, 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.]