[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.'">[
MALAYĀLAM. 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 Malāya 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 Malayālam all along Malabar. The term Malayālam 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-dīva; not, as the estimable Garcia de Orta says, Nale-dīva; 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. dvīpa and the Pali dīpo. We find this reflected in the Divi of Ammianus, and in the Dīva and Dība-jāt (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 mīhun. 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 Malebār (see [MALABAR]) was the coast-tract or continent, of Malé. It is, however, not impossible that the true etymology was from mālā, 'a garland or necklace,' of which their configuration is highly suggestive. [The Madras Gloss. gives Malayāl. māl, 'black,' and dvīpa, '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 Lāravi 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 Serendīb, in the Sea of Horkand; it is the chief of all; they give the islands the name of Dībajāt" (i.e. Dības).—Relation, &c., tr. by Reinaud, i. 4-5.
c. 1030.—"The special name of Dīva 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 their staple product. Those of one class are called Dīva-Kūzah (or the Cowry Divahs), because of the cowries which are gathered from coco-branches planted in the sea. The others are called Dīva-Kanbar, from the word kanbar (see [COIR]), which is the name of the twine made from coco-fibres, with which vessels are stitched."—Al-Birūnī, in Reinaud, Fragmens, 124.
1150.—See also Edrisi, in Jaubert's Transl. i. 68. But the translator prints a bad reading, Raibiḥāt, for Dībajāt.
c. 1343.—"Ten days after embarking at Calecut we arrived at the Islands called Dhībat-al-Mahal.... These islands are reckoned among the wonders of the World; there are some 2000 of them. Groups of a hundred, or not quite so many, of these islands are found clustered into a ring, and each cluster has an entrance like a harbour-mouth, and it is only there that ships can enter.... Most of the trees that grow on these islands are coco-palms.... They are divided into regions or groups ... among which are distinguished ... 3o Mahal, the group which gives a name to the whole, and which is the residence of the Sultans."—Ibn Batuta, iv. 110 seqq.
1442.—Abdurrazzak also calls them "the isles of Dīva-Mahal."—In Not. et Exts. xiv. 429.