1522.—"... Patolos of silk, which are cloths made at Cambaya that are highly prized at Malaca."—Correa, Lendas, ii. 2, 714.
1545.—"... homems ... enchachados com patolas de seda."—Pinto, ch. clx. (Cogan, p. 219).
1552.—"They go naked from the waist upwards, and below it they are clothed with silk and cotton which they call patolas."—Castanheda, ii. 78.
[1605.—"Pattala."—Birdwood, Letter Book, 74.]
1614.—"... Patollas...."—Peyton, in Purchas, i. 530.
PATTAMAR, PATIMAR, &c. This word has two senses:
a. A foot-runner, a courier. In this use the word occurs only in the older writers, especially Portuguese.
b. A kind of lateen-rigged ship, with one, two, or three masts, common on the west coast. This sense seems to be comparatively modern. In both senses the word is perhaps the Konkani path-mār, 'a courier.' C. P. Brown, however, says that patta-mar, applied to a vessel, is Malayāl. signifying "goose-wing." Molesworth's Mahr. Dict. gives both patemārī and phatemārī for "a sort of swift-sailing vessel, a pattymar," with the etym. "tidings-bringer." Patta is 'tidings,' but the second part of the word so derived is not clear. Sir. J. M. Campbell, who is very accurate, in the Bo. Gazetteer writes of the vessel as pātimār, though identifying, as we have done, both uses with pathmār, 'courier.' The Moslem, he says, write phatemārī quasi fatḥ-mār, 'snake of victory'(?). [The Madras Gloss. gives Mal. pattamāri, Tam. pāttimār, from patār, Hind. 'tidings' (not in Platts), māri, Mahr. 'carrier.'] According to a note in Notes and Extracts, No. 1 (Madras, 1871), p. 27, under a Ft. St. Geo. Consultation of July 4, 1673, Pattamar is therein used "for a native vessel on the Coromandel Coast, though now confined to the Western Coast." We suspect a misapprehension. For in the following entry we have no doubt that the parenthetical gloss is wrong, and that couriers are meant:
"A letter sent to the President and Councell at Surratt by a Pair of Pattamars (native craft) express...."—Op. cit. No. ii. p. 8. [On this word see further Sir H. Yule's note on Linschoten, Hak. Soc. ii. 165.]
a.—