1685.—"O cornaca q̃ estava de baixo delle tinha hum laço que metia em hũa das mãos ao bravo."—Ribeiro, f. 49b.
1712.—"The aforesaid author (P. Fr. Gaspar de S. Bernardino in his Itinerary), relates that in the said city (Goa), he saw three Elephants adorned with jewels, adoring the most Holy Sacrament at the Sè Gate on the Octave of Easter, on which day in India they make the procession of Corpus Domini, because of the calm weather. I doubt not that the Cornacas of these animals had taught them to perform these acts of apparent adoration. But at the same time there appears to be Religion and Piety innate in the Elephant."[[84]]—In Bluteau, s.v. Elephante.
1726.—"After that (at Mongeer) one goes over a great walled area, and again through a gate, which is adorned on either side with a great stone elephant with a Carnak on it."—Valentijn, v. 167.
" "Cournakeas, who stable the new-caught elephants, and tend them."—Valentijn, Names, &c., 5 (in vol. v.).
1727.—"As he was one Morning going to the River to be washed, with his Carnack or Rider on his Back, he chanced to put his Trunk in at the Taylor's Window."—A. Hamilton, ii. 110; [ed. 1744, ii. 109]. This is the only instance of English use that we know (except Mr. Carl Bock's; and he is not an Englishman, though his book is in English). It is the famous story of the Elephant's revenge on the Tailor.
[1831.—"With the same judgment an elephant will task his strength, without human direction. 'I have seen,' says M. D'Obsonville, 'two occupied in beating down a wall which their cornacs (keepers) had desired them to do....'"—Library of Entertaining Knowledge, Quadrupeds, ii. 157.]
1884.—"The carnac, or driver, was quite unable to control the beast, which roared and trumpeted with indignation."—C. Bock, Temples and Elephants, p. 22.
COROMANDEL, n.p. A name which has been long applied by Europeans to the Northern Tamil Country, or (more comprehensively) to the eastern coast of the Peninsula of India from Pt. Calimere northward to the mouth of the Kistna, sometimes to Orissa. It corresponds pretty nearly to the Maabar of Marco Polo and the Mahommedan writers of his age, though that is defined more accurately as from C. Comorin to Nellore.
Much that is fanciful has been written on the origin of this name. Tod makes it Kūrū-mandala, the Realm of the Kūrūs (Trans. R. As. Soc. iii. 157). Bp. Caldwell, in the first edition of his Dravidian Grammar, suggested that European traders might have taken this familiar name from that of Karumaṇal ('black sand'), the name of a small village on the coast north of Madras, which is habitually pronounced and written Coromandel by European residents at Madras. [The same suggestion was made earlier (see Wilks, Hist. Sketches, ed. 1869, i. 5, note)]. The learned author, in his second edition, has given up this suggestion, and has accepted that to which we adhere. But Mr. C. P. Brown, the eminent Telugu scholar, in repeating the former suggestion, ventures positively to assert: "The earliest Portuguese sailors pronounced this Coromandel, and called the whole coast by this name, which was unknown to the Hindus";[[85]] a passage containing in three lines several errors. Again, a writer in the Ind. Antiquary (i. 380) speaks of this supposed origin of the name as "pretty generally accepted," and proceeds to give an imaginative explanation of how it was propagated. These etymologies are founded on a corrupted form of the name, and the same remark would apply to Khara-maṇḍalam, the 'hot country,' which Bp. Caldwell mentions as one of the names given, in Telugu, to the eastern coast. Padre Paolino gives the name more accurately as Ciola (i.e. Chola) maṇḍalam, but his explanation of it as meaning the Country of Cholam (or juwārī—Sorghum vulgare, Pers.) is erroneous. An absurd etymology is given by Teixeira (Relacion de Harmuz, 28; 1610). He writes: "Choromãdel or Choro Bãdel, i.e. Rice Port, because of the great export of rice from thence." He apparently compounds H. chaul, chāwal, 'cooked rice' (!) and bandel, i.e. [bandar] (q.v.) 'harbour.' This is a very good type of the way etymologies are made by some people, and then confidently repeated.
The name is in fact Chôṛamaṇḍala, the Realm of Chôṛa; this being the Tamil form of the very ancient title of the Tamil Kings who reigned at Tanjore. This correct explanation of the name was already given by D'Anville (see Éclaircissemens, p. 117), and by W. Hamilton in 1820 (ii. 405), by Ritter, quoting him in 1836 (Erdkunde, vi. 296); by the late M. Reinaud in 1845 (Relation, &c., i. lxxxvi.); and by Sir Walter Elliot in 1869 (J. Ethnol. Soc. N.S. i. 117). And the name occurs in the forms Cholamaṇḍalam or Solamaṇḍalam on the great Temple inscription of Tanjore (11th century), and in an inscription of A.D. 1101 at a temple dedicated to Varāhasvāmi near the Seven Pagodas. We have other quite analogous names in early inscriptions, e.g. Īlamaṇḍalam (Ceylon), Cheramaṇḍalam, Tondaimaṇḍalam, &c.