[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.