c. 1440.—"There is a tree commonly found, the trunk of which bears a fruit resembling a pine-cone, but so big that a man can hardly lift it; the rind is green and hard, but still yields to the pressure of the finger. Inside there are some 250 or 300 pippins, as big as figs, very sweet in taste, and contained in separate membranes. These have each a kernel within, of a windy quality, of the consistence and taste of chestnuts, and which are roasted like chestnuts. And when cast among embers (to roast), unless you make a cut in them they will explode and jump out. The outer rind of the fruit is given to cattle. Sometimes the fruit is also found growing from the roots of the tree underground, and these fruits excel the others in flavour, wherefore they are sent as presents to kings and petty princes. These (moreover) have no kernels inside them. The tree itself resembles a large fig-tree, and the leaves are cut into fingers like the hand. The wood resembles box, and so it is esteemed for many uses. The name of the tree is Cachi" (i.e. Çachi or Tzacchi).—Nicolo de' Conti.
The description of the leaves ... "foliis da modum palmi intercisis"—is the only slip in this admirable description. Conti must, in memory, have confounded the Jack with its congener the bread-fruit (Artocarpus incisa or incisifolia). We have translated from Poggio's Latin, as the version by Mr. Winter Jones in India in the XVth Century is far from accurate.
1530.—"Another is the kadhil. This has a very bad look and flavour (odour?). It looks like a sheep's stomach stuffed and made into a haggis. It has a sweet sickly taste. Within it are stones like a filbert.... The fruit is very adhesive, and on account of this adhesive quality many rub their mouths with oil before eating them. They grow not only from the branches and trunk, but from its root. You would say that the tree was all hung round with haggises!"—Leyden and Erskine's Baber, 325. Here kadhil represents the Hind. name kaṭhal. The practice of oiling the lips on account of the "adhesive quality" (or as modern mortals would call it, 'stickiness') of the jack, is still usual among natives, and is the cause of a proverb on premature precautions: Gāch'h meṅ Kaṭhal, honṭh meṅ tel! "You have oiled your lips while the jack still hangs on the tree!" We may observe that the call of the Indian cuckoo is in some of the Gangetic districts rendered by the natives as Kaṭhal pakkā! Kaṭhal pakkā! i.e. "Jack's ripe," the bird appearing at that season.
[1547.—"I consider it right to make over to them in perpetuity ... one palm grove and an area for planting certain mango trees and jack trees (mangueiras e jaqueiras) situate in the village of Calangute...."—Archiv. Port. Orient., fasc. 5, No. 88.]
c. 1590.—"In Sircar Hajypoor there are plenty of the fruits called Kathul and Budhul; some of the first are so large as to be too heavy for one man to carry."—Gladwin's Ayeen, ii. 25. In Blochmann's ed. of the Persian text he reads barhal, [and so in Jarrett's trans. (ii. 152),] which is a Hind. name for the Artocarpus Lakoocha of Roxb.
1563.—"R. What fruit is that which is as big as the largest (coco) nuts?
"O. You just now ate the chestnuts from inside of it, and you said that roasted they were like real chestnuts. Now you shall eat the envelopes of these....
"R. They taste like a melon; but not so good as the better melons.
"O. True. And owing to their viscous nature they are ill to digest; or say rather they are not digested at all, and often issue from the body quite unchanged. I don't much use them. They are called in Malavar jacas; in Canarin and Guzerati panás.... The tree is a great and tall one; and the fruits grow from the wood of the stem, right up to it, and not on the branches like other fruits."—Garcia, f. 111.
[1598.—"A certain fruit that in Malabar is called iaca, in Canara and Gusurate Panar and Panasa, by the Arabians Panax, by the Persians Fanax."—Linschoten, Hak. Soc. ii. 20.