1780.—"Price Current. Country Produce: Bable Trees, large, 5 pc. each tree."—Hickey's Bengal Gazette, April 29. [This is bāblā, the Bengali form of the word.]
1824.—"Rampoor is ... chiefly remarkable for the sort of fortification which surrounds it. This is a high thick hedge ... of bamboos ... faced on the outside by a formidable underwood of cactus and bâbool."—Heber, ed. 1844, i. 290.
1849.—"Look at that great tract from Deesa to the Hāla mountains. It is all sand; sometimes it has a little ragged clothing of bābul or milk-bush."—Dry Leaves from Young Egypt, 1.
BABOON, s. This, no doubt, comes to us through the Ital. babuino; but it is probable that the latter word is a corruption of Pers. maimūn ['the auspicious one'], and then applied by way of euphemism or irony to the baboon or monkey. It also occurs in Ital. under the more direct form of maimone in gatto-maimone, 'cat-monkey,' or rather 'monkey-cat.' [The N.E.D. leaves the origin of the word doubtful, and does not discuss this among other suggested derivations.]
BACANORE and BARCELORE, nn.pp. Two ports of Canara often coupled together in old narratives, but which have entirely disappeared from modern maps and books of navigation, insomuch that it is not quite easy to indicate their precise position. But it would seem that Bacanore, Malayāl. Vakkanūr, is the place called in Canarese Bārkūr, the Barcoor-pettah of some maps, in lat. 13° 28½′. This was the site of a very old and important city, "the capital of the Jain kings of Tulava ... and subsequently a stronghold of the Vijiyanagar Rajas."—Imp. Gazet. [Also see Stuart, Man. S. Canara, ii. 264.]
Also that Barcelore is a Port. corruption of Basrūr [the Canarese Basarūru, 'the town of the waved-leaf fig tree.' (Mad. Adm. Man. Gloss., s.v.).] It must have stood immediately below the 'Barsilur Peak' of the Admiralty charts, and was apparently identical with, or near to, the place called Seroor in Scott's Map of the Madras Presidency, in about lat. 13° 55′. [See Stuart, ibid. ii. 242. Seroor is perhaps the Shirūr of Mr Stuart (ibid. p. 243).]
c. 1330.—"Thence (from Hannaur) the traveller came to Bāsarūr, a small city...."—Abulfeda, in Gildemeister, 184.
c. 1343.—"The first town of Mulaibār that we visited was Abu-Sarūr, which is small, situated on a great estuary, and abounding in coco-nut trees.... Two days after our departure from that town we arrived at Fākanūr, which is large and situated on an estuary. One sees there an abundance of sugar-cane, such as has no equal in that country."—Ibn Batuta, iv. 77-78.
c. 1420.—"Duas praeterea ad maritimas urbes, alteram Pachamuriam ... nomine, xx diebus transiit."—Conti, in Poggius de Var. Fort. iv.
1501.—"Bacanut," for Bacanur, is named in Amerigo Vespucci's letter, giving an account of Da Gama's discoveries, first published by Baldelli Boni, Il Milione, pp. liii. seqq.