1727.—"And 4 Days Journey within Land, is the City of Laar, which according to their fabulous tradition is the Burying-place of Lot...."—A. Hamilton, i. 92; [ed. 1744].
LARĀĪ, s. This Hind. word, meaning 'fighting,' is by a curious idiom applied to the biting and annoyance of fleas and the like. [It is not mentioned in the dictionaries of either Fallon or Platts.] There is a similar idiom (jang kardan) in Persian.
LAREK, n.p. Lārak; an island in the Persian Gulf, not far from the island of Jerun or [Ormus].
[1623.—"At noon, being near Lareck, and no wind stirring, we cast Anchor."—P. della Valle, Hak. Soc. i. 3.]
1685.—"We came up with the Islands of Ormus and Arack ..." (called Lareck afterwards).—Hedges, Diary, May 23; [Hak. Soc. i. 202].
LARIN, s. Pers. lārī. A peculiar kind of money formerly in use on the Persian Gulf, W. Coast of India, and in the Maldive Islands, in which last it survived to the last century. The name is there retained still, though coins of the ordinary form are used. It is sufficiently described in the quotations, and representations are given by De Bry and Tavernier. The name appears to have been derived from the territory of Lar on the Persian Gulf. (See under that word, [and Mr. Gray's note on Pyrard de Laval, Hak. Soc. i. 232 seq.].)
1525.—"As tamgas larys valem cada hũa sesêmta reis...."—Lembrança, das Cousas da India, 38.
c. 1563.—"I have seen the men of the Country who were Gentiles take their children, their sonnes and their daughters, and have desired the Portugalls to buy them, and I have seene them sold for eight or ten larines apiece, which may be of our money x s. or xiii s. iiii d."—Master Caesar Frederike, in Hakl. ii. 343.
1583.—Gasparo Balbi has an account of the Larino, the greater part of which seems to be borrowed literatim by Fitch in the succeeding quotation. But Balbi adds: "The first who began to strike them was the King of Lar, who formerly was a powerful King in Persia, but is now a small one."—f. 35.
1587.—"The said Larine is a strange piece of money, not being round, as all other current money in Christianitie, but is a small rod of silver, of the greatnesse of the pen of a goose feather ... which is wrested so that two endes meet at the just half part, and in the head thereof is a stamp Turkesco, and these be the best current money in all the Indias, and 6 of these Larines make a duckat."—R. Fitch, in Hakl. ii. 407.