The order Pedalineœ to which this annual belongs is composed of several genera distributed through the tropical parts of Asia, Africa, and America. Each genus has only a small number of species. Sesamum, in the widest sense of the name,[2099] has ten, all African except perhaps the cultivated species whose origin we are about to seek. The latter forms alone the true genus Sesamum, which is a section in Bentham and Hooker’s work. Botanical analogy points to an African origin, but the area of a considerable number of plants is known to extend from the south of Asia into Africa. Sesame has two races, the one with black, the other with white seed, and several varieties differing in the shape of the leaf. The difference in the colour of the seeds is very ancient, as in the case of the poppy.
The seeds of sesame often sow themselves outside plantations, and more or less naturalize the species. This has been observed in regions very remote one from the other; for instance, in India, the Sunda Isles, Egypt, and even in the West India Islands, where its cultivation is certainly of modern introduction.[2100] This is perhaps the reason that no author asserts he has found it in a wild state except Blume,[2101] a trustworthy observer, who mentions a variety with redder flowers than usual growing in the mountains of Java. This is doubtless an indication of origin, but we need others to establish a proof. I shall seek them in the history of its cultivation. The country where this began should be the ancient habitation of the species, or have had dealings with this ancient habitation.
That its cultivation dates in Asia from a very early epoch is clear from the diversity of names. Sesame is called in Sanskrit tila,[2102] in Malay widjin, in Chinese moa (Rumphius) or chi-ma (Bretschneider), in Japanese koba.[2103] The name sesam is common to Greek, Latin, and Arabic, with trifling variations of letter. Hence it might be inferred that its area was very extended, and that the cultivation of the plant was begun independently in several different countries. But we must not attribute too much importance to such an argument. Chinese works seem to show that sesame was not introduced into China before the Christian era. The first certain mention of it occurs in a book of the fifth or sixth century, entitled Tsi-min-yao-chou.[2104] Before this there is confusion between the name of this plant and that of flax, of which the seed also yields an oil, and which is not very ancient in China.[2105]
Theophrastus and Dioscorides say that the Egyptians cultivated a plant called sesame for the oil contained in its seed, and Pliny adds that it came from India.[2106] He also speaks of a sesame wild in Egypt from which oil was extracted, but this was probably the castor-oil plant.[2107] It is not proved that the ancient Egyptians before the time of Theophrastus cultivated sesame. No drawing or seeds have been found in the monuments. A drawing from the tomb of Rameses III. show the custom of mixing small seeds with flour in making pastry, and in modern times this is done with sesame seeds, but others are also used, and it is not possible to recognize in the drawing those of the sesame in particular.[2108] If the Egyptians had known the species at the time of the Exodus, eleven hundred years before Theophrastus, there would probably have been some mention of it in the Hebrew books, because of the various uses of the seed and especially of the oil. Yet commentators have found no trace of it in the Old Testament. The name semsem or simsim is clearly Semitic, but only of the more recent epoch of the Talmud,[2109] and of the agricultural treatise of Alawwam,[2110] compiled after the Christian era began. It was perhaps a Semitic people who introduced the plant and the name semsem (whence the sesam of the Greeks) into Egypt after the epoch of the great monuments and of the Exodus. They may have received it with the name from Babylonia, where Herodotus says[2111] that sesame was cultivated.
An ancient cultivation in the Euphrates valley agrees with the existence of a Sanskrit name, tila, the tilu of the Brahmans (Rheede, Malabar, i., ix., pp 105-107), a word of which there are traces in several modern languages of India, particularly in Ceylon.[2112] Thus we are carried back to India in accordance with the origin of which Pliny speaks, but it is possible that India itself may have received the species from the Sunda Isles before the arrival of the Aryan conquerors. Rumphius gives three names for the sesame in these islands, very different one from the other, and from the Sanskrit word, which supports the theory of a more ancient existence in the archipelago than on the continent.
In conclusion, from the fact that the sesame is wild in Java, and from historical and philological arguments, the plant seems to have had its origin in the Sunda Isles, It was introduced into India and the Euphrates valley two or three thousand years ago, and into Egypt at a less remote epoch, from 1000 to 500 B.C. It was transported from the Guinea coast to Brazil by the Portuguese,[2113] but it is unknown how long it has been cultivated in the rest of Africa.
Castor-oil Plant—Ricinus communis, Linnæus.
The most modern works and those in highest repute consider the south of Asia to be the original home of this Euphorbiacea; sometimes they indicate certain varieties in Africa or America without distinguishing the wild from the cultivated plant. I have reason to believe that the true origin is to be found in tropical Africa, in accordance with the opinion of Ball.[2114]
The difficulties with which the question is attended arise from the antiquity of cultivation in different countries, from the facility with which the plant sows itself and becomes naturalized on rubbish-heaps and in waste ground, lastly from the diversity of its forms, which have often been described as species. This latter point need not detain us, for Dr. J. Müller’s careful monograph[2115] proves the existence of sixteen varieties, scarcely hereditary, which pass one into the other by many transitions, and constitute, therefore, but one species.
The number of varieties is the sign of a very ancient cultivation. They differ more or less as to capsules, seeds, inflorescence, etc. Moreover, they are small trees in hot countries, but they do not endure frost, and become annuals north of the Alps and in similar regions. They are in such cases planted in gardens for ornament, while in the tropics, and even in Italy, they are grown for the sake of the oil contained in the seed. This oil, which is more or less purgative, is used for lamps in Bengal and elsewhere.