Chapter IX: Preface (3)

The name _jack_, which we give to the tree and its fruits, is one of that large class of words which are neither English nor Hindustani, but _Anglo-Indian_, and the origin of which is often very difficult to trace. Drury gives _Pilavoo_ as the Malayalim name, but I find that Rheede (_Hortus Malabaricus_, vol. iii.) gives also _Tsjaka_; and Linschoten, too, says that the jack is in Malabar called Iaca: so here we have doubtless the original.

I was long puzzled by the two species of our author, _Chaqui_ and _Bloqui_. There are, indeed, two well-known species of artocarpus giving fruits which are both edible, and have a strong external resemblance, the jack and the breadfruit. But the breadfruit is _not_ as big, _not_ as sweet, and does _not_ bear its fruit from the trunk and roots, but from twigs. Nor is it grown in Malabar, though sometimes, Ainslie says (_Materia Medica_), imported from Ceylon for sale. No _modern_ authors that I can find make a clear distinction of kinds of jack. But, on referring back, we find that all the old authors, who really seem to have gone into these practical matters with more freshness and sympathy in native tastes, do so. Thus Linschoten says, “There are two sorts of them: the best are called _Girasal_, and the common or least esteemed _Chambasal_, though in fashion and trees there is no difference, save that the Girasals have a sweeter taste;” and his old commentator, “the learned Doctor Paludanus, of Enckhuysen,” says, also, there are “two sorts, and the best is called _Barca_, the other _Papa_, which is not so good, and yet in handling is soft like the other.” Nearly three hundred years earlier Ibn Batuta had said, that of the fruits of India “are those termed _Shaki_ and _Barki_, ... the fruit grows out from the bottom of the tree, and that which grows nearest to the earth is called the Barki; it is extremely sweet and well-flavoured in taste; what grows above this is called the Shaki,” etc. Lastly, we have Rheede, speaking with authority, “Ceterum arboris hujus ultra triginta numerantur species ratione fructuum distinctæ, _quæ tamen omnes ad duo referentur genera_; quorum alterius fructus qui carne succulentâ, gratissimi, mellinique saporis turgent, _varaka_; at alterius, qui carne flaccidâ, molliori et minus sapidâ referti sunt, _Tsjakapa_ nuncupantur.” (iii. p. 19.) Drury, indeed, says, “There are several varieties, but what is called the Honeyjack is by far the sweetest and best.”

To conclude this long discourse on a short text, it seems certain that the _Bloqui_ of our author is the _Barki_ of Ibn Batuta, the _Barka_ of Paludanus, the _Varaka_ “mellini saporis” of Rheede, and the Honeyjack of Drury. “He that desireth to see more hereof let him reade _Lodouicus Romanus_, in his fifth Booke and fifteene Chapter of his Nauigatiouns, and _Christopherus a Costa_ in his Cap. of _Iaca_, and _Gracia ab Horto_, in the second Booke and fourth Chapter,” saith the learned Paludanus,—and so say I, by all means!

[77] _Amba_ (Pers.), the Mango. Ibn Batuta writes it _’anbâ_ with an _’ain_, as appears from Lee’s note (p. 104), and the latter translates it “grape,” which is the meaning of that word I believe in _Arabic_. Our author’s just description of the flavour of the mango is applicable, however, only to the finer stocks, and seems to show that the “Bombay mango” already existed in the thirteenth century. The mango is commonly believed in Anglo-India to produce boils, which I see was also the belief in Linschoten’s day. But I agree with his commentator, that, at the time when the fruit is ripe, “by reason of the great heate and season of the yeare—many doe fall into the forenamed diseases, although they eate none of this fruite.”

[78] This would seem to imply that the orange was not known in Southern Europe in the author’s time; though there are such things as sweet lemons.

[79] The Persian name for the coco-nut, and coco-palm.

[80] So Ibn Batuta—“Of this sort of trees the palm will produce fruit twelve times in the year, each month supplying a fresh crop: so that you will see upon the trees the fruit of some large, of others small, of others dry, and of others green. And this is the case always.” (See p. 176.)

The account of the coco-palm, though slightly mythicized, is substantially correct. In the third year of the palm’s growth the fronds begin to fall, a new frond appearing at the end of every month. Of these there are twenty-eight, more or less, on a full-grown tree. On a single tree there are about twelve branches, or spadices, of nuts. Most of the young fruit falls off, only a few coming to perfection; but as from ten to fifteen nuts _on an average_ are produced on one branch, a single tree may produce eighty to one hundred nuts every year. (_Drury’s Useful Plants of India._)

[81] This is the _jaggeri_, or palm-sugar, used extensively in southern India. It is made by boiling down the fresh toddy over a slow fire. The description of the extraction of the toddy, etc., is substantially correct.

[82] “_Omni tempore mundi, et hoc sicut venit._”

[83] “The leaves are employed for thatching houses, especially in Malabar.” (_Drury_, p. 152.)

[84] The well known _coir_. The native practice is to steep the husk in salt water for eighteen months or two years before beating out the _coir_; but this has been proved to be injurious. The virtues of _coir_ are strength, lightness, elasticity, durability, power of standing sea-water. It is now largely used in England for brushes, mats, carpets, etc. (_Drury._)

[85] Persian _Tár_. _Tádí_ is the Teloogoo name, according to Drury; in Hindustani, _tár_ and _tál_. It is the palmyra (_Borassus flabelliformis_), a tree found from Malabar along the coast to Bengal, and thence down the transgangetic coast through Burma and the great islands, and also up the Ganges to Cawnpore, a little above which it ceases. The fruit is of no value. The wood is much used for rafters, etc., and it is better than that of any other Indian palm; but the tree is chiefly used for the derivation of the liquor to which, as taken from this and other palms, we give the slightly corrupted name of _toddy_, a name which in Scotland has received a new application. It is the tree from which palm-sugar is most generally made. The leaves are used for making fans (the typical fan being evidently a copy of this leaf), for writing on, and in some places for thatching, etc.

[86] _Belluri_ I conceive to be the _Caryota urens_, which, according to Rheede (_Hortus Malabar._, i.), is called by the Brahmans in Malabar _birala_. Most of our author’s names seem to be Persian in form; but there is probably no Persian name for this palm. Richardson, however, has “_barhal_, name of a tree and its fruit.” This tree yields more toddy than any other palm, as much as a hundred pints in twenty-four hours. Much sugar is made from it, especially in Ceylon. It also affords a sago, and a fibre for fishing lines, known in England as “Indian gut.” A woolly stuff found at the springing of the fronds, is said by Drury to be used for caulking. I may add that it makes an excellent _amadou_ for smokers; but the specific name does not come from this fact, as I have heard suggested, but from the burning acridity of the fruit when applied to the tongue. The _caryota_, with its enormous jagged fronds, and huge pendulous bunches of little bead-like berries, is a very beautiful object. The fruit is actually used for beads by the Mahomedans. Buchanan (_Mysore_, etc., ii, 454) says its leaves are the favourite food of the elephant, and that its sugar is superior to that of the palmyra, but inferior to that of the cocoa nut.

[87] The banyan:

“Such as at this day, to Indians known
In Malabar or Decan, spreads her arms
Branching so broad and long, that in the ground
The bended twigs take root, and daughters grow
About the mother-tree, a pillared shade
High over-arched, and echoing walks between:
There oft the Indian herdsman, shunning heat,
Shelters in cool, and tends his pasturing herds
At loopholes cut through thicket shade.”

(_Paradise Lost_, b. ix.)

Which noble lines are almost an exact versification of Pliny’s description (xii, 11). Drury quotes Roxburgh as mentioning banyans, the vertical shadow of which had a circumference of five hundred yards. Just about half this size is the largest I have seen, near Hushyárpúr in the Northern Punjab. It is remarkable in some of the largest of these trees, that you cannot tell which has been the original and “mother-tree,” that having probably decayed and disappeared. The age of these trees is sometimes by no means so great as first impressions suggest. There is a very fine one in the Botanic Garden at Calcutta, (its exact size I do not remember, but the shade is not less than a hundred and eighty to two hundred feet across), whereof the garden tradition runs, that it originated in Roxburgh’s time, _i.e._, eighty or ninety years ago. It has, however, been carefully tended and _ex_tended, the vertical fibres being protected by bamboo tubes when young. It is said to have grown originally in the crown of a date tree, as often happens.

[88] True in a general way, but with exceptions, specific and local.

[89] _Siya-gosh_ (black-ear), the Persian name of the lynx. I have not been able to hear of a _white_ lynx. The lynx of the Dekkan, which is probably meant (_felis caracal_), has only the under part white, the back being a pale reddish brown. Its tenacity is a noted feature.

[90] “_Quod vocatur rinocerunta_”! The rhinoceros is not now, I believe, found in any part of India south (or west) of the Ganges; but it has become extinct in my own time in the forests of Rajmahl, on the right bank of that river; and very possibly extended at one time much further west, though our author’s statement is too vague to build upon, and scarcely indicates personal knowledge of the animal.

[91] Two-headed and even three-headed serpents might be suggested by the portentous appearance of a cobra with dilated hood and spectacles, especially if the spectator were (as probably would be the case) in a great fright. But for _five_ heads I can make no apology.

[92] This has puzzled me sorely, and I sought it vainly among Tamul and Malayalim synonyms. At the last moment the light breaks in upon me. It is, Fr., _cocatrix_; Ital., _calcatrice_; Anglicè, a _cockatrice_!

[93] Polo says: “Here and throughout all India the birds and beasts are different from ours, except one bird, which is the quail.” (iii, 20.)

[94] A literally accurate description of the great Indian bat, or flying fox. They generally cluster on some great banyan tree. These, I presume, are what Marco Polo quaintly calls “bald owls which fly in the night: they have neither wings (?) nor feathers, and are as large as an eagle.” (iii, 20.) There is a good account of the flying fox, and an excellent cut, in Tennent’s _Nat. History of Ceylon_. On the Indiarubber trees at the Botanic Gardens near Kandy, they “hang in such prodigious numbers that frequently large branches give way beneath their accumulated weight.” (p. 16.) Shall I be thought to be rivalling my author in the recital of marvels, if I say that in 1845 I saw, near Delhi, large branches which had been broken off by the accumulated weight—of _locusts_ a few days before? So all the peasantry testified.

[95] Probably some kind of jungle-fowl, such as _Gallus Sonneratii_. Pheasants are not found in southern India.

[96] _Spatham_, a straight sword (?); but a contemptuous expression is evidently intended. Polo says: “The people go to battle with lance and shield, entirely naked; yet are they not valiant and courageous, but mean and cowardly.”

[97] Is not this short and accurate statement the first account of the Parsis in India, and of their strange disposal of the dead?

[98] The _Domra_ or _Dóm_, one of the lowest Indian castes, and supposed to represent one of the aboriginal races. They are to this day, in Upper India, the persons generally employed to remove carcases, and to do the like jobs; sometimes also as hangmen. In the Dekkan they seem, according to Dubois (p. 468), who calls them _Dumbars_, to be often tumblers, conjurors, and the like.

[99] Ginger is cultivated in all parts of India. That of Malabar is best. (_Drury._)

[100] _Carrobiæ_,—referring, I presume, to the carob of the Mediterranean (_Ceratonia siliqua_). I do not know what he means unless it be tamarinds, which are leguminous pods with some analogy to the carobs of the Mediterranean. The _trees_ may often be called stupendous; but this seems scarcely to be his meaning. The European name is Arabic, _támar-ul-Hind_ (date of India), as Linschoten long ago pointed out.

[101] _Cassia fistula_ of Linnæus, if that be what is meant, is found in the Travancore forests, and probably all over India. Its beautiful, pendulous racemes of yellow flowers, shewing something like a Brobdignag laburnum, make it a favourite in the gardens of Upper India. It affords a laxative medicine, and is given by Milburn among the exports of western India. The long, cylindrical pods, sometimes two feet long, probably give the specific name. It is possible, however, that the bishop did not mean _C. fistula_, but _cassia lignea_, an inferior cinnamon, which grows in Malabar forests, and was at one time largely exported from Calicut and the other ports. Barbosa mentions it as _canella selvatica_. Linschoten says that it was worth only about one-fifth of the Ceylon cinnamon. It is perhaps the cassia of Pliny. It is remarkable however that he says the choice cassia was called by the barbarians by the name of _lada_; and _lada_ is the generic name which the Malays give to all the species of pepper, the word signifying _pungent_. (See _Drury_; _Crawfurd’s Malay Dict._; and _Bohn’s Pliny_, xii, 43.)

[102] This is a remarkable testimony to the character of the Hindus when yet uninjured by foreign domination or much foreign intercourse. M. Polo says the Abraiamain (Brahmans) “are the best and most honest of all merchants, and would not on any account tell a lie” (p. 304). Rabbi Benjamin says also, “This nation is very trustworthy in matters of trade, and whenever foreign merchants enter their port, three secretaries of the king immediately repair on board their vessels, write down their names, and report them to him. The king thereupon grants them security for their property, which they may even leave in the open fields without any guard” (_Asher’s Itinerary_ of R. Benj. of Tud., p. 138 _et seq._). There are many other passages, both in ancient and mediæval writers, giving an extravagantly high character for integrity and veracity to the Hindus, a character not very often deserved by them, and never ascribed to them, now-a-days. See some remarks on this subject in _Elphinstone’s History_, book iii. ch. xi.

It is curious, however, that, with reference to the very district of Travancore, which now includes Quilon, where the bishop’s experience must have chiefly lain, two English Residents have borne testimony lamentably opposed to his account of the character of the people in former times. One of these declares that “he never knew a people so destitute of truth and honesty, or so abandoned to vice and corruption”; the other asserts that “in no part of the world are men to be found to whose habits and affections the practice of vice is so familiar” (_Hamilton’s Desc. Hindost._, ii. 315).

[103] Says Marco, “The heat of the sun can scarcely be endured; if you put an egg into any river, it will be boiled before you have gone any great distance.” (iii. 25.)

[104] The reason of the reference to Multán is obscure. The allusion would seem to be to the conquest of the Carnatic and Malabar by the generals of the Khilji sovereigns of Delhi, Alá-ud-din and Mubárik (A.D. 1310-1319). The Khiljis were Turks by descent. Mooltan was at this time subject to Delhi (_Elphinstone’s History_, pp. 343, 348, and _Briggs’s Ferishta_). But, perhaps, the “not long since” has a wider import, and refers to the conquests and iconoclasms of the great Mahmúd of Ghazni, 300 years before. Indeed, he is here speaking of the Lesser India, _i.e._ of Sindh, Gujerat, and the Konkan, the scene of some of Mahmúd’s most memorable expeditions. Mahmúd coming from Ghazni would come _through_ Multán, and indeed he took that city several times.

[105] Perhaps a reference to the notions of Mahomedans about the latter days. But I think I have read of indications of this belief among Hindus, though I cannot quote them. This one is remarkable at so early a date.

[106] I need scarcely say that by Saracens he means Mahomedans, just as these were called _Moors_ by our people in India in the last century, and by some classes of Europeans perhaps to our own day. So also the Prayer-book, in the collect for Good Friday, speaks of “Jews, TURKS, infidels, and heretics.”

[107] “_Planeta._”

[108] Somewhat obscure. “_Isti faciunt idola ferè ad similitudinem omnium rerum idolotrarum animantium; habent desuper deum suum, ad similitudinem suam._”

[109] Apart from the Brahminical theosophies, the expressions of Hindus generally, when _religious_ (not superstitious) feeling or expression is drawn out, by sorrow or the like, are often purely Theistic. _Parmeswar_ or _Bhagwán_ in such cases is evidently meant to express the One Almighty, and no fabled divinity. But the old geographer in Ramusio makes the singular assertion that “all the country of Malabar believes in the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and this beginning at Cambay and ending at Bengal”. Conti says the same at Ava, but _he_ was doubtless misled by the Buddhist triad, _Buddha_, _Dharma_, _Sangha_—the Divine person, the Law, and the Congregation.

[110] This does not agree in any way with any version of the Hindu mythical chronology that I know of.

[111] It would go hard with a man yet in a Hindu state who should kill an ox. It was capital under the Sikhs.

[112] “Whoever is most deeply tinted is honoured in proportion” (_M. Polo_, p. 304). So, among the flat-nosed Mongols, Rubruquis says, “_et quæ minus habet de naso, illa pulchrior reputatur!_”

[113] Than the bishop’s description thus far I doubt if a better is to be found till long after his time. The numbers of men represented to be carried on the _hauda_ seem not very credible to us and must be exaggerated, but all ancient accounts do speak of much larger numbers than we now-a-days are accustomed to put upon elephants under any circumstances.

[114] “A very pious animal,” as a German friend in India said to me, misled by the double sense of his vernacular _fromm_.

[115] _Brazil._ This is the sappan-wood, affording a red dye, from a species of _cæsalpina_ found in nearly all tropical Asia, from Malabar eastward. The name of brazil wood is now appropriated to that (derived from another species of caesalpina) which comes from Brazil, and which, according to Macculloch, gives twice as much dye from the same weight of wood. The history of the names here is worthy of note. First, _brazil_ is the name of the Indian wood in commerce. Then the great country is called _Brazil_, because a somewhat similar wood is found abundantly there. And now the Indian wood is robbed of its name, which is appropriated to that found in a country of the New World, and is supposed popularly to be derived from the name of that country. I do not know the origin of the word _brazil_. Sappan is from the Malay name (_sapang_).

[116] “_Lambruscæ._”

[117] The black pepper vine is indigenous in the forests of Malabar and Travancore (the districts which the Bishop has in his eye); and the Malabar pepper is acknowledged to be the best that is produced. The vines are planted at the base of trees with rough bark, the mango and others, and will climb twenty or thirty feet if allowed. After being gathered, the berries are dried on mats in the sun, turning from red to black. Pepper was for ages _the_ staple article of export to Europe from India, and it was with it that Vasco de Gama loaded his ships on his first voyage. A very interesting article on pepper will be found in that treasury of knowledge, Crawfurd’s _Dictionary of the Archipelago_.

The Bishop’s mention of “long pepper” shews confusion, probably in his amanuensis or copyist; for long pepper is the produce of a different genus (_Chavica_), which is _not_ a vine, but a shrub, whose stems are annual. The chemical composition and properties are nearly the same as those of black pepper. Crawfurd draws attention to the fact that, by Pliny’s account, _piper longum_ bore between three and four times the price of black pepper in the Roman market. (_Drury_ in voc.—_Crawfurd’s Dict._) Though long pepper is now cultivated in Malabar, it was not so, or at least not _exported_, in the sixteenth century. Linschoten says expressly that the “long pepper groweth onely in Bengala and Java.” (p. 111.) Its price at Rome was probably therefore a fancy one, due to its rarity. It is curious that Pliny supposed pepper to grow in pods, and that the long pepper was the immature pod picked and prepared for the market. He corrects a popular error that ginger was the root of the pepper tree (bk. xii). Ibn Batuta, like our Bishop, contradicts what “some have said, that they boil it in order to dry it,” as without foundation. But their predecessor, R. Benjamin, says—“the pepper is originally white, but when they collect it, they put it in basins and pour hot water upon it; it is then exposed to the heat of the sun,” etc.

[118] The cinnamon must have been the wild cinnamon or cassia. There is an article in Indian commerce called “cassia buds,” bearing some resemblance to cloves, and having the flavour of cinnamon. It is said by some to be the unexpanded flower of the Laurus cassia, but, strange to say, this seems still undetermined. (See _Penny Cyc._)

[119] Polo says the islands of India are estimated at 12,700 inhabited and uninhabited (iii, 37), and those of the China Sea at 7,448 (iii, 5). The Lakkadives are supposed to derive their name from Laksha or Lakh = 100,000.

[120] Ceylon, called by Polo Seilan, and the same by Ibn Batuta.

[121] The gorgeous lories of the Archipelago must have been imported to Quilon, and have been here in the Bishop’s remembrance.

[122] No doubt the large flying squirrel, which is found in Malabar and Ceylon as well as in Eastern India.

[123] The bandicoot; _Mus Malabaricus_, or _Mus giganticus_. The name is said by Sir E. Tennent (_Nat. Hist. of Ceylon_, p. 44) to be from the Teloogoo _Pandi-koku_, “Pig-rat.” “This rat is found in many places on the coast of Coromandel, in Mysore, and in several parts of Bengal between Calcutta and Hurdwar. It is a most mischievous animal, burrows to a great depth, and will pass under the foundations of granaries and store-houses if not carefully laid.” (_General Hardwicke_ in _Linnæan Trans._, vii., quoted in _Pen. Cyc._, article _Muridæ_.) The animal figured by Hardwicke was a female; its total length was 26¼ inches, of which the tail was 13 inches; and the weight was 2 pounds 11½ ounces. This is not quite so big as a fox, though the foxes in India _are_ very small. As an exaggeration, it is far from a parallel to that of Herodotus, who speaks (bk. iii.) of _ants_ in India as big as foxes. A story which reminds one of the question of a young Scotch lady just arrived in the Hoogly, when she saw an elephant for the first time, “Wull yon be what’s called a _musqueetae_?”

[124] The Talipat (_Corypha umbraculifera_), or great fan-palm, abundant in Ceylon, and found in the southern part of the peninsula, in Burma, and in the Malay islands, but scarcely known in Bengal. The leaves, according to Sir J. E. Tennent, have sometimes an area of two hundred square feet.

[125] “The King [of Ceylon] has the most beautiful ruby that ever was or can be in the whole world. It is the most splendid object on earth, and seems to glow like fire; it is of such value as money could scarcely purchase.” (_Polo_, iii. 17).

“I also saw in the possession of the King [of Ceylon] a saucer made of ruby, as large as the palm of the hand, in which he kept oil of aloes. I was much surprised at it, when the king said to me, ‘We have much larger than this.’” (_Ibn Batuta_, p. 187).

[126] “_De pannis quos emunt faciunt ad modum cortinarum parietes._”

[127] “_Jana_,” by mistranscription doubtless.

[128] His Java vaguely represents the Archipelago generally, with some special reference to Sumatra.

[129] Polo, in one chapter on Sumatra, tells how stuffed pygmies were manufactured for the western markets by shaving monkeys, “for neither in India, nor in any other country however savage, are there men so small as these pretended ones.” Yet, in another chapter, his incredulity gives way, and he tells of hairy men with tails, who remain in the mountains, never visiting the towns. No doubt the orang-utang, which exists in Sumatra, is at the bottom of these pygmy stories. The pygmies and cannibals together identify Sumatra as the scene of one of Sindbad’s adventures; not the Andamans, as a reviewer in the _Athenæum_ lately said.

[130] This seems to be a jumble of the myths about the spice-groves and the upas tree.

[131] The cubeb (_Piper cubeba_ and _P. caricum_) is the only one of the spices named which grows in Java proper. In those days it was probably exported as a condiment chiefly. This statement that pepper was not produced in the islands confirms the inference of the sagacious Crawfurd, that it is exotic in Sumatra. (See his _Dict. of the Archip._, article _Pepper_.)

[132] In Sumatra, we read, “Man’s flesh, if it be fat, is eaten as ordinarily there as beefe in our country. Marchants comming vnto this region for traffique do vsually bring to them fat men, selling them vnto the inhabitants as we sel hogs, who immediately kil and eate them.” (_Odoricus_, in Hakluyt, vol. ii.)

“In one part of the island, called _Batech_, the inhabitants eat human flesh,” etc. (_Conti_ in _India in the Fifteenth Century_, p. 9.) The cannibalism of certain tribes in Sumatra is noticed with more or less exaggeration by several other old travellers, and has been confirmed in the present century. The tribe is that of the Battas or Battaks, as correctly named by Conti, a race presenting the singular anomaly of Anthropophagi with a literature. Some have supposed that they may be the cannibal _Paddaei_ of Herodotus (iii. 99). It is not impossible, for the more we learn the further goes back the history of Eastern navigation.

[133] “Now, in all this province of Maabar, there is not a tailor, for the people go naked at every season. The air is always so temperate, that they wear only a piece of cloth round the middle. The king is dressed just like the others, except that his cloth is finer, and he wears a necklace full set with rubies, etc. He wears also round three parts both of his arms and legs, bracelets of gold, full of goodly stones and pearls.” (_Polo_, iii. 20.)

[134] For the continued existence of this remarkable custom of inheritance among the Nairs of Malabar, and for a description of the singular relations of the sexes out of which it springs, see a statement in Mr. Markham’s late _Travels in Peru and India_, p. 345. I am collecting, for another paper, the various examples of this law of inheritance in detail, and will only here mention that it exists, or has existed, also in Canara, (but there derived from the Nairs); among the aborigines of Hispaniola, and tribes of New Granada and Bogota; among negro tribes of the Niger; among certain sections of the Malays of Sumatra; in the royal family of Tipura, and among the Kasias of the Sylhet mountains (both east of Bengal); in a district of Ceylon adjoining Bintenne; in Madagascar; in the Fiji islands; and among the Hurons and Natchez of North America.

[135] Barbosa says that the King of Quilacare (Coilacaud), a city near Cape Comorin, after reigning twelve years, always sacrificed himself to an idol. See also _Odoricus_, in Hakluyt, ii. 161. The singular narrative in the text reminds us of Sir Jonah Barrington’s story of the Irish mower, who, making a dig at a salmon in a pool with the butt end of his scythe, which was over his shoulder, dropt his own head into the water. There is a remarkably parallel story in _Ibn Batuta_. When he was at the court of the pagan king of Mul-Java (which is certainly not Java, as the editors make it, but, as I hope to show elsewhere, Cambodia, or some country on the main in that quarter), he says, “I one day saw, in the assembly of this prince, a man with a long knife in his hand, which he placed upon his own neck; he then made a long speech, not a word of which I could understand; he then firmly grasped the knife, and its sharpness, and the force with which he urged it, were such that he severed his head from his body, and it fell on the ground. I was wondering much at the circumstance, when the king said to me: ‘Does any one among you do such a thing as this?’ I answered, ‘I never saw one do so.’ He smiled, and said: ‘These, our servants, do so out of their love to us.’ One who had been present at the assembly, told me that the speech he made was a declaration of his love to the sultan, and that on this account he had killed himself, just as his father had done for the father of the present king, and his grandfather for the king’s grandfather.” (_Lee’s Ibn Batuta_, p. 205.) Also we are told by Abu Zaid al Hasan, in Reinaud’s _Relation des Voyages faits par les Arabes_, etc. (Paris, 1845), how a young man of India, tying his hair to a great elastic bamboo stem, which was pulled down to the ground, cut his own head off, telling his friends to watch that they might see and hear how the head would _laugh_, as it sprung aloft with the resilient bamboo (i. 124). I wish I could relate, with the interesting detail with which it was told to me, a narrative which I heard from my friend Lieut.-Colonel Keatinge, V.C., of the Bombay Artillery. When encamped near a certain sacred rock on the Nerbudda, in the province of Nimar which was under his charge, a stalwart young man was brought to him, who had come thither from a distance, for the purpose of sacrificing himself by casting himself from the cliff, in fulfilment of a vow made by his own mother before his birth, in case she should, after long sterility, have a living son. After long remonstrance Colonel Keatinge at last succeeded in convincing him that it would be quite lawful to sacrifice a goat instead, and this having been done he departed with a relieved mind.

[136] As Quilon is between 8° and 9° of north latitude this is somewhat overstated.

[137] So Polo says that at Guzerat “the north star rose to the apparent height of six cubits”. This way of estimating celestial declinations appears to convey some distinct meaning to simple people, and even to some by no means illiterate Europeans. I remember once in India, when looking out for Venus, which was visible about two p.m., a native servant directed me to look “about one bamboo length from the moon;” and a young Englishman afterwards told me that he had seen it “about five feet from the moon.”

[138] “_Ibi videntur influentiæ oculo ad oculum, ita quod de nocte respicere est gaudiosum._”

[139] “_Astrologo._”

[140] Perhaps the good bishop by _infernales_ does not mean _infernal_, but only _inferior_. Yet the expression reminds us of the constant strain of oriental tradition, which represents the aborigines under the aspect of _Rakshasas_ or Demons. The reference is to the various forest tribes of the Peninsula, who represent either the Dravidian races unmodified by civilization, (whether Hindu or pre-Hindu), or some yet antecedent races. Dubois, speaking generally of the wild forest tribes of the south, says, “In the rainy season they shelter themselves in caverns, hollow trees, and clefts of the rocks; and in fine weather they keep the open field. They are almost entirely naked. The women wear nothing to conceal their nakedness but some leaves of trees stitched together, and bound round their waists,” etc. (473.) And Mr. Markham describes the Poliars, a race of wild and timid men of the woods in the Pulney Hills, east of Cochin, who are possibly the very people whom Jordanus had in his eye, as being said to have no habitations, but to run through the jungle from place to place, to sleep under rocks, and live on wild honey and roots. They occasionally trade with the peasantry, who place cotton and grain on some stone, and the wild creatures, as soon as the strangers are out of sight, take these and put honey in their place. But they will let no one come near them. (_Peru and India_, p. 404.) These wild races were no doubt in the mind’s eye of a little Hindu, who, during the examination of a native school by a late governor of Madras (now again occupying an eminent position in India), on being asked what became of the original inhabitants of Britain at the Saxon conquest? replied, “They fled into Wales and Cornwall, and other remote parts, where they exist as a wild and barbarous people to this day!” The little Hindu was not aware that—

“By Pol, _Tre_, and Pen
You may know the Cornish men.”

[141] This is the practice of certain solitary wasps and kindred species, both in Europe and India (see _Kirby and Spence_, Letter xi., etc.). The spiders, etc., form a store of food for the use of the larvæ when hatched.

[142] “_Venas lapidum._”

[143] The most remarkable operation of white ants that I have heard of was told me by a scientific man, and I believe may be depended on. Having a case of new English harness, which he was anxious to secure from the white ants, he moved it about six inches from the wall, and placed it on stone vessels filled with water (as is often done), so that he considered it quite isolated and safe. On opening the case some time after he found the harness ruined, and on looking behind he saw that the white ants had actually projected their “crust” across the gap from the wall, so as to reach their prey by a tubular bridge. Here is engineering design as well as execution! The ants have apparently a great objection to working under the light of day, but that they “incontinently die” is a mistake.

[144]? “_Et sic se ingerunt sicut canes._” This appears to refer to the common rufous kite, abundant all over India. Of this, or a kindred kite, Sir J. E. Tennent says, “The ignoble birds of prey, the kites, keep close by the shore, and hover round the returning boats of the fishermen, to feast on the fry rejected from the nets” (_Nat. Hist. of C._, p. 246). The action described in the text is quite that of the Indian kite. I recollect seeing one swoop down upon a plate, which a servant was removing from the breakfast table in camp, and carry off the top of a silver muffineer, which however it speedily dropped.

[145] This may be the bird spoken of in the latter part of the next note, but I think it is probably the _Kulang_ (of Bengal), or great crane (_Grus cinerea_), which does travel at night, with a wailing cry during its flight.

[146] “_Ut ego audivi._” Ambiguum est, an ipse episcopus D⸺m loquentem audivisset? Not many years ago, an eccentric gentleman wrote from Sikkim to the secretary of the Asiatic Society in Calcutta, stating that, on the snows of the mountains there, were found certain mysterious footsteps, _more than thirty or forty paces asunder_, which the natives alleged to be _Shaitan’s_. The writer at the same time offered, if Government would give him leave of absence for a certain period, etc., to go and trace the author of these mysterious vestiges, and thus this strange creature would be discovered _without any expense to Government_. The notion of catching Shaitan without any expense to Government was a sublime piece of Anglo-Indian tact, but the offer was not accepted. Our author had, however, in view probably the strange cry of the Devil-bird, as it is called in Ceylon. “The Singhalese regard it literally with horror, and its scream by night in the vicinity of a village is bewailed as the harbinger of impending calamity.” “Its ordinary note is a magnificent clear shout, like that of a human being, and which can be heard at a great distance, and has a fine effect in the silence of the closing night. It has another cry like that of a hen just caught; but the sounds which have earned for it its bad name, and which I have heard but once to perfection, are indescribable, the most appalling that can be imagined, and scarcely to be heard without shuddering; I can only compare it to a boy in torture, whose screams are stopped by being strangled.” Mr. Mitford, from whom Sir E. Tennent quotes the last passage, considers it to be a _Podargus_ or night-hawk, rather than the brown owl as others have supposed. (_Tennent’s Nat. Hist. of Ceylon_, 246-8.)

[147] Champa is the Malay name of the coast of Cambodia, and appears in some form in our maps. Jordanus may have derived his information about those countries from his brother friar, Odoricus, who visited Champa, and mentions the king’s having 10,004 elephants. Late travellers in Cambodia use almost the expression in the text in speaking of the habitual employment of elephants in that country (_e.g._, see Mr. King, in _Jour. Geog. Soc._ for 1860, p. 178).

[148] This is evidently drawn from the life. Compare the account of elephant taming in Burma in the _Mission to Ava in 1855_, pp. 103-5, and the authors there quoted.

[149] The number _twelve_ is only general and conventional. Ibn Batuta says there were twelve kings in Malabar alone, and even a greater number are alluded to by some of the old travellers. It is extremely difficult to trace these kingdoms, both from the looseness of the statements and want of accessible histories of the states of Southern India, and from that absence of any distinction between really substantial monarchies and mere principalities of small account, which may be noticed in Polo and the other travellers of the time as well as in our author.

Telenc, however, he speaks of as a potent and great kingdom. This must have been the kingdom of interior Telingana, called _Andra_, the capital of which was Warangól, eighty miles north-east of Hyderabad, and which was powerful and extensive at the end of the thirteenth century. It was shortly afterwards invaded by the armies of the king of Delhi; the capital was taken in 1332, and the sovereignty at a later date merged in the Mussulman kingdom of Golkonda.

There does not seem to have been any very great kingdom in the MAHRATTA country at this time, and perhaps this is the reason why he there speaks of the kingdom, not of the king. The most powerful princes were the rajas of Deogiri (afterwards Daulutabad), of the Yadu family. Their dynasty was subverted by the Mahommedans in 1317. I believe there is no mention of the Mahrattas by the Mussulman historians till just about our author’s time.

COLUMBUM, or Kulam, we have disposed of in the preface. We see here that the kingdom included (part at least of) MOHEBAR, the Maabar of Marco Polo and of Ibn Batuta, _i.e._, the southern regions of the Coromandel coast; (see Preface, p. xvi). The name is apparently Arabic (_Ma’abar_—a ferry), in reference to the passage or ferry to Ceylon. The king, whose name was _Lingua_, may probably have been connected with the sect of the _Lingáyets_ still existing in Southern India, whose members wear a representation of the Lingam or Sivaite emblem round their necks, and have many peculiar practices. He was certainly a Nair, as appears from what Jordanus has said of the law of succession. And among the rajas of Coorg, who were both Nairs and Lingáyets, we find the name Linga borne by several during the last century. (Compare _Markham’s Peru and India_; _Hamilton’s Hindostan_, ii. 288, etc.)

I cannot trace any particulars of a king of Molepoor or Molepatam. But the only pearl fishery on the Indian main is at _Tuticorin_, about ninety miles north-east of Cape Comorin, and near this there is a place given by Hamilton, called Mooloopetta (= Mooloopatam), which may probably be the seat of the king alluded to. He was most likely the same as the king of Cail, spoken of by Marco Polo; that place being apparently now represented by Coilpatam, a small seaport of Tinnevelly, in this immediate vicinity. This appears from Barbosa, who, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, states precisely that Cail was ninety miles from Cape Comorin, and that it was the seat of a great pearl market and fishery.

BATIGALA, or Batikala, which, he says, had a Saracen king, is a port of Canara, fifty-five miles north of Mangalore; it is called Batcul, or Batcole, in English maps. It is not mentioned by Ibn Batuta, the nearest authority in time; but he does state that at Hinaur (Hunáwur or Onore), a port a little to the north of Baticala, the people were Moslem, and their king “one of the best of princes,” one _Jamál ad-Dín Mahommed Ibn Hasan_, to whom Malabar generally paid tribute, dreading his bravery by sea, (which means, I suppose, that this excellent prince was a pirate). Very probably this was the king of Batigala to whom Jordanus refers. He was, however, himself “subject to an infidel king, whose name was Horaib” (_Lee’s Ibn Batuta_, p. 166), doubtless the king of Narsinga or Bisnagur, whom Jordanus omits to mention. Two centuries later Barbosa describes Batticala as a great place, where many merchants trafficked, and where were many _Moors_ and Gentiles, great merchants. And the “_Summary of Kingdoms_,” in _Ramusio_, says the king of Baticula was then a Gentile Canarese, “greater than him of Honor;” the governor, however, being a Moorish eunuch, named Caipha. Later in the sixteenth century, Vincent Le Blanc describes it as still a fine place, and one of great trade.

The great king of Molebar, or MALABAR, is, I suppose, the Samudra Raja, or Zamorin of the Portuguese, whose capital was at Calicut.

_Singuyli_ is a nut hard to crack. Our friar’s contemporary, Odoricus, calls the two chief ports of the pepper country in his day _Flandrina_ and _Cyncilim_. The former is no doubt the _Fandaraina_ of Ibn Batuta, “a large and beautiful place,” the Colam Pandarani of Ramusio’s Geographer, lying a little north of Calicut, but not marked in our modern maps. (The lying Mandevill says it was called Flandrina after Flanders by Ogero the Dane, who conquered those parts!) Cyncilim I suspect to be _Kain Kulam_ or _Cai Colam_, one of the old ports a few miles north of Quilon, and formerly a little kingdom. Singuyli is not very like Kain Kulam, but Cyncilim is somewhat like both; and the position in which he mentions it, between Calicut and Quilon, would suit.

As for _Chopa_, I suspect it to be a misreading (Chãpa, read as Chopa), for CHAMPA, whereby he seems to mean hazily India ultra Gangem in general, though the name belongs to Cambodia.

[150] India Tertia is apparently Eastern Africa, south of Abyssinia.

[151] So far we have the old Herodotean myth (_Her._, iii. 116), which Milton has rendered into stately verse—

“As when a gryphon in the wilderness
With winged course, o’er hill or moory dale,
Pursues the Arimaspian, who by stealth
Had from his wakeful custody purloined
The guarded gold”⸺

But the scene has been transferred from the north of Europe to Æthiopia. The rest of the fable I cannot trace.

[152] A dissertation on Prester John, and the confusions which transferred a Christian prince of Central Asia to Central Africa, will be found in M. D’Avezac’s preface to _Carpini_, in the volume from which we are translating.

[153] For the Roc see _Marco_, iii. 35; _Ibn Batuta_ (in _Lee_), p. 222; Sindbad the Sailor, and Aladdin! See also Mr. Major’s preface to _India in the Fifteenth Century_.

[154] “_Etiam et medullâ._”

[155] “_Istud ales_”!

[156] _Viverra Indica_, the civet cat, seems to be found over a great part of Asia and Africa. The perfume is secreted from very peculiar glands, existing in both sexes; and in North Africa, where the animals are kept for the purpose, the secretion is scraped from the pouch with an iron spatula, about twice a week (_Penny Cyclop._). But the text is confirmed by Sir E. Tennent, who says that the Tamils in Northern Ceylon, who also keep the animal for its musk, collect this from the wooden bars of the cage, on which it rubs itself (_Nat. Hist. Ceylon_, p. 32).

[157] It is a Ceylonese story, according to Tennent, that the cobra’s stomach sometimes contains a stone of inestimable price. The cerastes or horned adder is now well known.

[158] _Ambergris_, a substance found chiefly in warm climates, floating on the surface of the sea or thrown on the coasts. It was formerly believed to be the exudation of a tree, but is now considered to be a morbid animal concretion, having been found in the intestinal canal of the sperm whale. It is found usually in small pieces, but some times in lumps of fifty to one hundred pounds weight. The best comes from Madagascar, Surinam, and Java. It is opaque, of a bright grey colour, softish, and when rubbed or heated exhales an agreeable odour. It is inflammable; and is used as a perfume. (_Penny Cyclop._ and _Macculloch’s Commercial Dictionary_.)

[159] This strange myth is in _Marco Polo_ (Part iii. c. 23). He represents the islands to be “full five hundred miles out at sea,” south of Mekrán. The people of Sumatra believe that the inhabitants of Engano, a small island south of Bencoolen, are all females, and, like the mares of ancient story, are impregnated by the wind. (_Marsden’s Sumatra._)

[160] This is probably a legendary notice of the Andaman islanders, whom Polo represents as “having a head, teeth, and jaws like those of a mastiff dog” (iii. c. 16). And Ibn Batuta, describing the people of “Barahnakár” (under which name he seems to have mixed up the stories of the Andamans which he had heard, with his experience of some port on the main at which he had touched on his way from Bengal to Sumatra), says, “Their men are of the same form with ourselves, except that their mouths are like those of dogs; _but the women have mouths like other folks_” (_Lee’s Trans._, p. 198). The stories of the Andaman islanders are as old as Ptolemy, whose _Agmatæ_ (compare Polo’s _Angaman_) and adjacent islands, they doubtless are. Till Dr. Mouat’s account, just published, we had little more knowledge of them than these 1800-year-old legends gave us, and even now we do not know much, near as they are to Calcutta.

[161] He had probably, during his voyages in the Persian Gulph, touched at some point of the north-east of Arabia, where Wellsted notices the peculiar wildness and low civilization of the people, “of a darker hue than the common race of Arabs;” “the greater number residing in caves and hollows;” “their principal food dates and salt fish, rice being nearly unknown to them;” whilst they testified as much surprise at the sight of looking-glasses, watches, etc., as could have been exhibited by the veriest savage of New Holland. (_Wellsted’s Travels in Arabia_, i. 241-2.)

[162] “_Duplarum._”

[163] As we say in later times, “The Great Mogul”.

[164] See the same statement in _Marco Polo_, i. 29.

[165] As M. Polo says, with a facetiousness unusual in him, “With regard to the money of Kambalu, the great Khan is a perfect alchymist, for he makes it himself” (i. 26).

[166] From Rubruquis to Père Huc all travellers in Buddhistic Tartary and Thibet have been struck by the extraordinary resemblance of many features of the ecclesiastical system and ritual to those of the Roman Church. Father Grueber, in 1661, speaking of the veneration paid to the Lama, ascribes it to “the manifest deceits of the devil, who has transferred the veneration due to the sole Vicar of Christ to the superstitious worship of barbarous nations, as he has also, in his innate malignity, parodied the other mysteries of the Christian faith.” (In Kircher’s _China Illustrata_.) Huc and Gabet say, “The crosier, the mitre, the dalmatica, the cope or pluvial (which the Grand Lamas wear in travelling), the double-choired liturgy, the psalmody, the exorcisms, the censer ... the benedictions ... the rosary, the ecclesiastical celibate, the spiritual retreats, the worship of saints; fasts, processions, holy water; in all these numerous particulars do the Buddhists coincide with us.” The cardinal’s red hat among the Lamas is a modern fact. (Abridged from a paper by the present writer in _Blackwood_ for March 1852.)

[167] Ibn Batuta describes how at the funeral of the Great Khan four female slaves and six favourite Mamluks were buried alive with him, and four horses were impaled alive upon the tumulus; the same being done in burying his relatives, according to their degree (_Lee_, p. 220).

[168] This is perhaps the Tartar city of Iymyl, called by the Chinese Yemi-li, built by Okkodai, the son of Chengiz Khan, somewhere to the east of Lake Balkash. (See _D’Avezac’s Notice of Travels in Tartary_, _Recueil de Voyages_, iv. p. 516). But the description rather suggests one of the vast cities of China, such as Marco Polo describes Kinsai (Hang-choo-foo).

[169] “_Vasa pulcherrima et nobilissima atque virtuosa et porseleta._” Perhaps “full of good qualities, and of fine enamelled surface”?

[170] Carpini says that there was a certain cemetery for the emperors and chiefs, to which their bodies were carried whenever they died, and that much treasure was buried with them. No one was allowed to come near this cemetery except the keepers (_Recueil de Voyages_, iv. 631). Marco Polo says that if the chief lord died a hundred days journey from this cemetery, which was in the Altai mountains, his body must be carried thither. Also “when the bodies of the Khans are carried to these mountains, the conductors put to the sword all the men whom they meet on the road, saying, ‘Go and serve the great lord in the other world;’ and they do the same to the horses, killing also for that purpose the best he has” (ii. 45).

[171] This seems from Alcock to be the Japanese practice. _Le Roi est mort, vive le Roi!_

[172] Doubtless our friar had in his mind the words of Isaiah, “Wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures: and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there. And the wild beasts of the island shall cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in their pleasant palaces” (xiii. 21-22).

[173] Probably a _kirbah_, or water skin, or perhaps several tied together, frequently used by the _fellahs_ to cross the Tigris and Euphrates. There are no large tortoises in either of those rivers. (B.)

[174] A couple of buffalos, perhaps, which may frequently be seen swimming across the stream with only their muzzles and horns above water. (B.)

[175] Referring probably to Harrán, the Haran of Scripture. The country generally being desert, there was little to say about it. (B).

This chapter is a worthy parallel to that one in _Horrebow’s History of Iceland_, “Concerning Owls and Snakes,” which Sir Walter Scott quotes more than once with such zest.

[176] See ch. ii. parag. 7, _ante_.