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| The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.2 |
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Citation Information
38o
MARCO POLO BOOK III.
Ting-pi (IX. 415). Some rather curious details of these missions are extracted by Pauthier from the Chinese Annals. The royal residence is in these called A pu-'Izota. * The king is styled Pirati. I may note that Barbosa also tells us that the King of Kaulam was called Benate-deri (devar?). And Dr. Caldwell's kindness enables me to explain this title. Pirati or Berate represents Vénádau, " the Lord of the Venádu," or Venattu, that being the name of the district to which belonged the family of the old kings of Kollam, and Ventgan being their regular dynastic name. The Rajas of Travancore who superseded the Kings of Kollam, and inherit their titles, are still poetically styled Venádan. (Pautlzier, p. 603 seqq. ; Ram. I. f. 304. )
NOTE 2.—The brazil-wood of Kaulam appears in the Commercial Handbook of Pegolotti (circa i 340) as Verzino Colombino, and under the same name in that of Giov. d'Uzzano a century later. Pegolotti in one passage details kinds of brazil under the names of Verzino salvatico, di,nestico, and co/umbiimm. In another passage, where he enters into particulars as to the respective values of different qualities, he names three kinds, as Colonzni, Ameri, and Seni, of which the Colo»zni (or Colombino) was worth a sixth more than the Ameri and three times as much as the Seni. I have already conjectured that Ameri may stand for Lanzeri referring to Lambri in Sumatra (supra eh. xi., note i) ; and perhaps Seni is Sini or Chinese, indicating an article brought to India by the Chinese traders, probably from Siam.
We have seen in the last note that the Kaulam brazil is spoken of by Abulfeda ; and Ibn Batuta, in describing his voyage by the back waters from Calicut to Kaulam, says : " All the trees that grow by this river are either cinnamon or .brazil trees. They use these for firewood, and we cooked with them throughout our journey." Friar Odoric makes the same hyperbolic statement : " Here they burn brazil-wood for fuel."
It has been supposed popularly that the brazil-wood of commerce took its name from the great country so called ; but the verzino of the old Italian writers is only a form of the same word, and bresil is in fact the word used by Polo. So Chaucer :—
bri
" Him nedeth not his colour for to dien With brazil, ne with grain of Portingale.','
—The Nun's Priest's Tale.
The Eastern wood in question is now known in commerce by its Malay name of Sappan (properly .Sapazz;), which again is identical with the Tamil name Sappan; i. This word properly means Japan, and seems to have been given to the wood as a supposed product of that region. t It is the wood of the Caesalpinia Sapazz, and is known in Arabic (and in Hindustani) as Bczkam. It is a thorny tree, indigenous in Western India from Goa to Trevandrum, and growing luxuriantly in South Malabar. It is extensively used by native dyers, chiefly for common and cheap cloths, and for fine mats. The dye is precipitated dark-brown with iron, and red with aluni. It is said, in Western India, to furnish the red powder thrown about on the Hindu feast of the Húli. The tree is both wild and cultivated, and is grown rather extensively by the Mahomedans of Malabar, called Illoplahs (Illapillas, see p. 372), whose custom it is to plant a number of seeds at the birth of a daughter. The trees require fourteen or fifteen years to come to maturity, and then become the girl's dowry.
Though to a great extent superseded by the kindred wood from Pernambuco, the sappan is still a substantial object of importation into England. That American dyestuff which now bears the name of brazil-wood is believed to be the produce of at least two species of Caesalpinia, but the question seems to partake of the singular obscurity which hangs over the origin of so many useful drugs and dye-stuffs. The variety called Brailetto is from C. bahamensis, a native of the Bahamas.
The name of Brazil has had a curious history. Etymologists refer it to the colour
* The translated passage about 'Apuhota is a little obscure. The name looks like Kaßukada, which was the site of a palace north of Calicut (not in Kaulam), the Caßucate of the Portuguese. ł Dr. Caldwell.
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