c., n.p. The mountain ranges parallel to the western and eastern coasts of the Peninsula, through which the ghāts or passes lead from the table-lands above down to the coast and lowlands. It is probable that foreigners hearing these tracts spoken of respectively as the country above and the country below the Ghāts (see [BALAGHAUT]) were led to regard the word Ghāts as a proper name of the mountain range itself, or (like De Barros below) as a word signifying range. And this is in analogy with many other cases of mountain nomenclature, where the name of a pass has been transferred to a mountain chain, or where the word for 'a pass' has been mistaken for a word for 'mountain range.' The proper sense of the word is well illusstrated from Sir A. Wellesley, under b.
a.—
1809.—"The dandys there took to their paddles, and keeping the beam to the current the whole way, contrived to land us at the destined gaut."—Ld. Valentia, i. 185.
1824.—"It is really a very large place, and rises from the river in an amphitheatral form ... with many very fine ghâts descending to the water's edge."—Heber, i. 167.
b.—
c. 1315.—"In 17 more days they arrived at Gurganw. During these 17 days the Gháts were passed, and great heights and depths were seen amongst the hills, where even the elephants became nearly invisible."—Amīr Khusrū, in Elliot, iii. 86.
This passage illustrates how the transition from b to c occurred. The Ghāts here meant are not a range of mountains so called, but, as the context shows, the passes among the Vindhya and Sātpūra hills. Compare the two following, in which 'down the ghauts' and 'down the passes' mean exactly the same thing, though to many people the former expression will suggest 'down through a range of mountains called the Ghauts.'
1803.—"The enemy are down the ghauts in great consternation."—Wellington, ii. 333.
" "The enemy have fled northward, and are getting down the passes as fast as they can."—M. Elphinstone, in Life by Colebrooke, i. 71.
1826.—"Though it was still raining, I walked up the Bohr Ghât, four miles and a half, to Candaulah."—Heber, ii. 136, ed. 1844. That is, up one of the Passes, from which Europeans called the mountains themselves "the Ghauts."