CAEL, n.p. Properly Kāyal [Tam. kāyu, 'to be hot'], 'a lagoon' or 'backwater.' Once a famous port near the extreme south of India at the mouth of the Tamraparni R., in the Gulf of Manaar, and on the coast of Tinnevelly, now long abandoned. Two or three miles higher up the river lies the site of Korkai or Kolkai, the Κόλχοι ἐμπόριον of the Greeks, each port in succession having been destroyed by the retirement of the sea. Tutikorin, six miles N., may be considered the modern and humbler representative of those ancient marts; [see Stuart, Man. of Tinnevelly, 38 seqq.].
1298.—"Cail is a great and noble city.... It is at this city that all the ships touch that come from the west."—Marco Polo, Bk. iii. ch. 21.
1442.—"The Coast, which includes Calicut with some neighbouring ports, and which extends as far as Kabel (read Ḳāyel) a place situated opposite the Island of Serendib...."—Abdurrazzāk, in India in the XVth Cent., 19.
1444.—"Ultra eas urbs est Cahila, qui locus margaritas ... producit."—Conti, in Poggius, De Var. Fortunae.
1498.—"Another Kingdom, Caell, which has a Moorish King, whilst the people are Christian. It is ten days from Calecut by sea ... here there be many pearls."—Roteiro de V. da Gama, 108.
1514.—"Passando oltre al Cavo Comedi (C. Comorin), sono gentili; e intra esso e Gael è dove si pesca le perle."—Giov. da Empoli, 79.
1516.—"Further along the coast is a city called Cael, which also belongs to the King of Coulam, peopled by Moors and Gentoos, great traders. It has a good harbour, whither come many ships of Malabar; others of Charamandel and Benguala."—Barbosa, in Lisbon Coll., 357-8.
CAFFER, CAFFRE, COFFREE, &c., n.p. The word is properly the Ar. Kāfir, pl. Kofra, 'an infidel, an unbeliever in Islām.' As the Arabs applied this to Pagan negroes, among others, the Portuguese at an early date took it up in this sense, and our countrymen from them. A further appropriation in one direction has since made the name specifically that of the black tribes of South Africa, whom we now call, or till recently did call, Caffres. It was also applied in the Philippine Islands to the Papuas of N. Guinea, and the Alfuras of the Moluccas, brought into the slave-market.
In another direction the word has become a quasi-proper name of the (more or less) fair, and non-Mahommedan, tribes of Hindu-Kush, sometimes called more specifically the Siāhposh or 'black-robed' Cafirs.
The term is often applied malevolently by Mahommedans to Christians, and this is probably the origin of the mistake pervading some of the early Portuguese narratives, especially the Roteiro of Vasco da Gama, which described many of the Hindu and Indo-Chinese States as being Christian.[[53]]