[76] Five persons to eat, that is. But an English gentleman, who is a coffee planter in the middle of Java, told me that he once cut a jack (the fruit intended by the bishop), which it took three men to carry. That they grow in Ceylon to 50 lbs. weight at least is testified by Cordiner and Sir Emerson Tennent. The former says they grow there to two feet in length, and to the same circumference, which is bigger than I ever saw them in Bengal. The manner of growing is accurately described in the next paragraph of the text.
The jack is, no doubt, the Indian fruit described by Pliny, Book xii. ch. 12, as putting forth its fruit from the bark, and as being remarkable for the sweetness of its juice, a single one containing enough to satisfy four persons. The name of the tree, he says, is pala, and of the fruit Ariena. The former is possibly the Tamul name, Pila, which is also one of the Malabar names. If, however, Pliny derived the whole of his information on this fruit, as he appears to derive part of it, from the historians of the Alexandrian invasion, the name may be merely the Sanskrit phala, a fruit, and it would be a comical illustration of the persistency of Indian habits of mind. For a stranger in India asking the question, “What is that?” would almost certainly at this day receive for reply, “P’hal hai, khudáwand!” “It is a fruit, my lord!”
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.)