Again, in 1768, we find in the Scots Magazine, App. p. 673, but quoted from "London pap. Aug. 1768," and signed by R. Edwin, a professed eye-witness, a story with the following heading: "Description of the Anaconda, a monstrous species of serpent. In a letter from an English gentleman, many years resident in the Island of Ceylon in the East Indies.... The Ceylonese seem to know the creature well; they call it Anaconda, and talked of eating its flesh when they caught it." He describes its seizing and disposing of an enormous "tyger." The serpent darts on the "tyger" from a tree, attacking first with a bite, then partially crushing and dragging it to the tree ... "winding his body round both the tyger and the tree with all his violence, till the ribs and other bones began to give way ... each giving a loud crack when it burst ... the poor creature all this time was living, and at every loud crash of its bones gave a houl, not loud, yet piteous enough to pierce the cruelest heart."
Then the serpent drags away its victim, covers it with slaver, swallows it, etc. The whole thing is very cleverly told, but is evidently a romance founded on the description by "D. Cleyerus," which is quoted by Ray. There are no tigers in Ceylon. In fact, "R. Edwin" has developed the Romance of the Anaconda out of the description of D. Cleyerus, exactly as "Mynheer Försch" some years later developed the Romance of the Upas out of the older stories of the poison tree of Macassar. Indeed, when we find "Dr Andrew Cleyer" mentioned among the early relators of these latter stories, the suspicion becomes strong that both romances had the same author, and that "R. Edwin" was also the true author of the wonderful story told under the name of Foersch. (See further under [UPAS].)
In Percival's Ceylon (1803) we read: "Before I arrived in the island I had heard many stories of a monstrous snake, so vast in size as to devour tigers and buffaloes, and so daring as even to attack the elephant" (p. 303). Also, in Pridham's Ceylon and its Dependencies (1849, ii. 750-51): "Pimbera or Anaconda is of the genus Python, Cuvier, and is known in English as the rock-snake." Emerson Tennent (Ceylon, 4th ed., 1860, i. 196) says: "The great python (the 'boa' as it is commonly designated by Europeans, the 'anaconda' of Eastern story) which is supposed to crush the bones of an elephant, and to swallow a tiger".... It may be suspected that the letter of "R. Edwin" was the foundation of all or most of the stories alluded to in these passages. Still we have the authority of Ray's friend that Anaconda, or rather Anacondaia, was at Leyden applied as a Ceylonese name to a specimen of this python. The only interpretation of this that we can offer is Tamil ānai-kondra [āṇaik-kónḍa], "which killed an elephant"; an appellative, but not a name. We have no authority for the application of this appellative to a snake, though the passages quoted from Percival, Pridham, and Tennent are all suggestive of such stories, and the interpretation of the name anacondaia given to Ray: "Bubalorum ... membra conterens," is at least quite analogous as an appellative. It may be added that in Malay anakanda signifies "one that is well-born," which does not help us.... [Mr Skeat is unable to trace the word in Malay, and rejects the derivation from anakanda given above. A more plausible explanation is that given by Mr D. Ferguson (8 Ser. N. & Q. xii. 123), who derives anacandaia from Singhalese Henakandayâ (hena, 'lightning'; kanda, 'stem, trunk,') which is a name for the whip-snake (Passerita mycterizans), the name of the smaller reptile being by a blunder transferred to the greater. It is at least a curious coincidence that Ogilvy (1670) in his "Description of the African Isles" (p. 690), gives: "Anakandef, a sort of small snakes," which is the Malagasy Anakandîfy, 'a snake.']
1859.—"The skins of anacondas offered at Bangkok come from the northern provinces."—D. O. King, in J. R. G. Soc., xxx. 184.
ANANAS, s. The Pine-apple (Ananassa sativa, Lindl.; Bromelia Ananas, L.), a native of the hot regions of Mexico and Panama. It abounded, as a cultivated plant, in Hispaniola and all the islands according to Oviedo. The Brazilian Nana, or perhaps Nanas, gave the Portuguese Ananas or Ananaz. This name has, we believe, accompanied the fruit whithersoever, except to England, it has travelled from its home in America. A pine was brought home to Charles V., as related by J. D'Acosta below. The plant is stated to have been first, in Europe, cultivated at Leyden about 1650 (?). In England it first fruited at Richmond, in Sir M. Decker's garden, in 1712.[[28]] But its diffusion in the East was early and rapid. To one who has seen the hundreds of acres covered with pine-apples on the islands adjoining Singapore, or their profusion in a seemingly wild state in the valleys of the Kasia country on the eastern borders of Bengal, it is hard to conceive of this fruit as introduced in modern times from another hemisphere. But, as in the case of tobacco, the name bewrayeth its true origin, whilst the large natural family of plants to which it belongs is exclusively American. The names given by Oviedo, probably those of Hispaniola, are Iaiama as a general name, and Boniana and Aiagua for two species. Pine-apples used to cost a [pardao] (a coin difficult to determine the value of in those days) when first introduced in Malabar, says Linschoten, but "now there are so many grown in the country, that they are good cheape" (91); [Hak. Soc. ii. 19]. Athanasius Kircher, in the middle of the 17th century, speaks of the ananas as produced in great abundance in the Chinese provinces of Canton, Kiangsu and Fuhkien. In Ibn Muhammad Wali's H. of the Conquest of Assam, written in 1662, the pine-apples of that region are commended for size and flavour. In the last years of the preceding century Carletti (1599) already commends the excellent ananas of Malacca. But even some 20 or 30 years earlier the fruit was grown profusely in W. India, as we learn from Chr. d'Acosta (1578). And we know from the Āīn that (about 1590) the ananas was habitually served at the table of Akbar, the price of one being reckoned at only 4 dams, or 1⁄10 of a rupee; whilst Akbar's son Jahāngīr states that the fruit came from the sea-ports in the possession of the Portuguese.—(See Āīn, i. 66-68.)
In Africa too, this royal fruit has spread, carrying the American name along with it. "The Mānānāzi[[29]] or pine-apple," says Burton, "grows luxuriantly as far as 3 marches from the coast (of Zanzibar). It is never cultivated, nor have its qualities as a fibrous plant been discovered." (J.R.G.S. xxix. 35). On the Ile Ste Marie, of Madagascar, it grew in the first half of the 17th century as manasse (Flacourt, 29).
Abul Faẓl, in the Āīn, mentions that the fruit was also called kaṭhal-i-safarī, or 'travel jack-fruit,' "because young plants put into a vessel may be taken on travels and will yield fruits." This seems a nonsensical pretext for the name, especially as another American fruit, the Guava, is sometimes known in Bengal as the Safarī-ām, or 'travel mango.' It has been suggested by one of the present writers that these cases may present an uncommon use of the word safarī in the sense of 'foreign' or 'outlandish,' just as Clusius says of the pine-apple in India, "peregrinus est hic fructus," and as we begin this article by speaking of the ananas as having 'travelled' from its home in S. America. In the Tesoro of Cobarruvias (1611) we find "Çafari, cosa de Africa o Argel, como grenada" ('a thing from Africa or Algiers, such as a pomegranate'). And on turning to Dozy and Eng. we find that in Saracenic Spain a renowned kind of pomegranate was called rommān safarī: though this was said to have its name from a certain Safar ibn-Obaid al Kilāi, who grew it first. One doubts here, and suspects some connection with the Indian terms, though the link is obscure. The lamented Prof. Blochmann, however, in a note on this suggestion, would not admit the possibility of the use of safarī for 'foreign.' He called attention to the possible analogy of the Ar. safarjal for 'quince.' [Another suggestion may be hazarded. There is an Ar. word, āsāfīriy, which the dicts. define as 'a kind of olive.' Burton (Ar. Nights, iii. 79) translates this as 'sparrow-olives,' and says that they are so called because they attract sparrows (āsāfīr). It is perhaps possible that this name for a variety of olive may have been transferred to the pine-apple, and on reaching India, have been connected by a folk etymology with safarī applied to a 'travelled' fruit.] In Macassar, according to Crawfurd, the ananas is called Pandang, from its strong external resemblance, as regards fruit and leaves, to the Pandanus. Conversely we have called the latter screw-pine, from its resemblance to the ananas, or perhaps to the pine-cone, the original owner of the name. Acosta again (1578) describes the Pandanus odoratissima as the 'wild ananas,' and in Malayālam the pine-apple is called by a name meaning 'pandanus-jack-fruit.'
The term ananas has been Arabized, among the Indian pharmacists at least, as 'aīn-un-nās 'the eye of man'; in Burmese nan-na-si, and in Singhalese and Tamil as annāsi (see Moodeen Sheriff).
We should recall attention to the fact that pine-apple was good English long before the discovery of America, its proper meaning being what we have now been driven (for the avoiding of confusion) to call a pine-cone. This is the only meaning of the term 'pine-apple' in Minsheu's Guide into Tongues (2nd ed. 1627). And the ananas got this name from its strong resemblance to a pine-cone. This is most striking as regards the large cones of the Stone-Pine of S. Europe. In the following three first quotations 'pine-apple' is used in the old sense:
1563.—"To all such as die so, the people erecteth a chappell, and to each of them a pillar and pole made of Pine-apple for a perpetuall monument."—Reports of Japan, in Hakl. ii. 567.