On the other hand, the botanists who have more recently visited America have no hesitation as to the Asiatic origin. I may name Seemann for the Isthmus of Panama, Ernst for Venezuela, and Sagot for Guiana.[1526] The two first insist upon the absence of names for the banana in the languages of Peru and Mexico. Piso knew no Brazilian name. Martius[1527] has since indicated, in the Tupi language of Brazil, the names pacoba or bacoba. This same word bacove is used, according to Sagot, by the French in Guiana. It is perhaps derived from the name bala, or palan, of Malabar, from an introduction by the Portuguese, subsequent to Piso’s voyage.
The antiquity and wild character of the banana in Asia are incontestable facts. There are several Sanskrit names.[1528] The Greeks, Latins, and Arabs have mentioned it as a remarkable Indian fruit tree. Pliny[1529] speaks of it distinctly. He says that the Greeks of the expedition of Alexander saw it in India, and he quotes the name pala which still persists in Malabar. Sages reposed beneath its shade and ate of its fruit. Hence the botanical name Musa sapientum. Musa is from the Arabic mouz or mauwz, which we find as early as the thirteenth century in Ebn Baithar. The specific name paradisiaca comes from the ridiculous hypothesis which made the banana figure in the story of Eve and of Paradise.
It is a curious fact that the Hebrews and the ancient Egyptians[1530] did not know this Indian plant. It is a sign that it did not exist in India from a very remote epoch, but was first a native of the Malay Archipelago.
There is an immense number of varieties of the banana in the south of Asia, both on the islands and on the continent; the cultivation of these varieties dates in India, in China, and in the archipelago, from an epoch impossible to realize; it even spread formerly into the islands of the Pacific[1531] and to the west coast of Africa;[1532] lastly, the varieties bore distinct names in the most separate Asiatic languages, such as Chinese, Sanskrit, and Malay. All this indicates great antiquity of culture, consequently a primitive existence in Asia, and a diffusion contemporary with or even anterior to that of the human races.
The banana is said to have been found wild in several places. This is the more worthy of attention since the cultivated varieties seldom produce seed, and are multiplied by division, so that the species can hardly have become naturalized from cultivation by sowing itself. Roxburgh had seen it in the forests of Chittagong,[1533] in the form of Musa sapientum. Rumphius[1534] describes a wild variety with small fruits in the Philippine Isles. Loureiro[1535] probably speaks of the same form by the name M. seminifera agrestis, which he contrasts with M. seminifera domestica, which is wild in Cochin-China.[1536] Blanco also mentions a wild banana in the Philippines,[1537] but his description is vague. Finlayson[1538] found the banana wild in abundance in the little island of Pulo Ubi at the southern extremity of Siam. Thwaites[1539] saw the variety M. sapientum in the rocky forests of the centre of Ceylon, and does not hesitate to pronounce it the original stock of the cultivated bananas. Sir Joseph Hooker and Thomson[1540] found it wild at Khasia.
The facts are quite different in America. The wild banana has been seen nowhere except in Barbados,[1541] but here it is a tree of which the fruit does not ripen, and which is, consequently, in all probability the result of cultivated varieties of which the seed is not abundant. Sloane’s wild plantain[1542] appears to be a plant very different to the musa. The varieties which are supposed to be possibly indigenous in America are only two, and as a rule far fewer varieties are grown than in Asia. The culture of the banana may be said to be recent in the greater part of America, for it dates from but little more than three centuries. Piso[1543] says positively that it was imported into Brazil, and has no Brazilian name. He does not say whence it came. We have seen that, according to Oviedo, the species was brought to San Domingo from the Canaries. This fact and the silence of Hernandez, generally so accurate about the useful plants, wild or cultivated, in Mexico, convince me that at the time of the discovery of America the banana did not exist in the whole of the eastern part of the continent.
Did it exist, then, in the western part on the shores of the Pacific? This seems very unlikely when we reflect that communication was easy between the two coasts towards the isthmus of Panama, and that before the arrival of the Europeans the natives had been active in diffusing throughout America useful plants like the manioc, maize, and the potato. The banana, which they have prized so highly for three centuries, which is so easily multiplied by suckers, and whose appearance must strike the least observant, would not have been forgotten in a few villages in the depths of the forest or upon the littoral.
I admit that the opinion of Garcilasso, descendant of the Incas, an author who lived from 1530 to 1568, has a certain importance when he says that the natives knew the banana before the conquest. However, the expressions of another writer, extremely worthy of attention, Joseph Acosta, who had been in Peru, and whom Humboldt quotes in support of Garcilasso, incline me to adopt the contrary opinion.[1544] He says,[1545] “The reason the Spaniards called it plane (for the natives had no such name) was that, as in the case of their trees, they found some resemblance between them.” He goes on to show how different was the plane (Platanus) of the ancients. He describes the banana very well, and adds that the tree is very common in the Indies (i.e. America), “although they (the Indians) say that its origin is Ethiopia.... There is a small white species of plantain (banana), very delicate, which is called in Espagnolle[1546] dominico. There are others coarser and larger, and of a red colour. There are none in Peru, but they are imported thither from the Indies,[1547] as into Mexico from Cuernavaca and the other valleys. On the continent and in some of the islands there are great plantations of them which form dense thickets.” Surely it is not thus that the author would express himself were he writing of a fruit tree of American origin. He would quote American names and customs; above all, he would not say that the natives regarded it as a plant of foreign origin. Its diffusion in the warm regions of Mexico may well have taken place between the epoch of the conquest and the time when Acosta wrote, since Hernandez, whose conscientious researches go back to the earliest times of the Spanish dominion in Mexico (though published later in Rome), says not a word of the banana.[1548] Prescott the historian saw ancient books and manuscripts which assert that the inhabitants of Tumbez brought bananas to Pizarro when he disembarked upon the Peruvian coast, and he believes that its leaves were found in the huacas, but he does not give his proofs.[1549]
As regards the argument of the modern native plantations in regions of America, remote from European settlements, I find it hard to believe that tribes have remained absolutely isolated, and have not received so useful a tree from colonized districts.
Briefly, then, it appears to me most probable that the species was early introduced by the Spanish and Portuguese into San Domingo and Brazil, and I confess that this implies that Garcilasso was in error with regard to Peruvian traditions. If, however, later research should prove that the banana existed in some parts of America before the advent of the Europeans, I should be inclined to attribute it to a chance introduction, not very ancient, the effect of some unknown communication with the islands of the Pacific, or with the coast of Guinea, rather than to believe in the primitive and simultaneous existence of the species in both hemispheres. The whole of geographical botany renders the latter hypothesis improbable, I might almost say impossible, to admit, especially in a genus which is not divided between the two worlds.