[Illustration: Interior of Syrian Church at Kutteiyan in Travancore. (From
"Life of Bp. D. Wilson.")]
Kublai had a good deal of diplomatic intercourse of his usual kind with
Kaulam. De Mailla mentions the arrival at T'swan chau (or Zayton) in 1282
of envoys from KIULAN, an Indian State, bringing presents of various
rarities, including a black ape as big as a man. The Emperor had three
times sent thither an officer called Yang 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-'hota[4]
The king is styled Pinati. 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. Pinati or Benate represents
Venadan. "the Lord of the Venadu," or Venattu, that being the name of
the district to which belonged the family of the old kings of Kollam, and
Venadan being their regular dynastic name. The Rajas of Travancore who
superseded the Kings of Kollam, and inherit their titles, are still
poetically styled Venadan. (Pauthier, p. 603 seqq.; Ram. I. f. 304.)
NOTE 2. - The brazil-wood of Kaulam appears in the Commercial Handbook of
Pegolotti (circa 1340) 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,
dimestico, and columbino. In another passage, where he enters into
particulars as to the respective values of different qualities, he names
three kinds, as Colomni, Ameri, and Seni, of which the Colomni (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
Lameri referring to Lambri in Sumatra (supra ch. xi., note 1); 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: -
"Him nedeth not his colour for to dien
With brazil, ne with grain of Portingale."
- The Nun's Priests Tale.
The Eastern wood in question is now known in commerce by its Malay name
of Sappan (properly Sapang), which again is identical with the Tamil
name Sappangi. This word properly means Japan, and seems to have been
given to the wood as a supposed product of that region.[5] It is the wood
of the Caesalpinia Sapan, and is known in Arabic (and in Hindustani) as
Bakam. 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 alum. It
is said, in Western India, to furnish the red powder thrown about on the
Hindu feast of the Huli. The tree is both wild and cultivated, and is
grown rather extensively by the Mahomedans of Malabar, called Moplahs
(Mapillas, 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 dye-stuff 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 Braziletto is
from C. bahamensis, a native of the Bahamas.
The name of Brazil has had a curious history. Etymologists refer it to the
colour of braise or hot coals, and its first application was to this
dye-wood from the far East. Then it was applied to a newly-discovered tract
of South America, perhaps because producing a kindred dye-wood in large
quantities: finally the original wood is robbed of its name, which is
monopolised by that imported from the new country. The Region of Brazil had
been originally styled Santa Cruz, and De Barros attributes the change of
name to the suggestion of the Evil One, "as if the name of a wood for
colouring cloth were of more moment than that of the Wood which imbues the
Sacraments with the tincture of Salvation."
There may perhaps be a doubt if the Land of Brazil derived its name from
the dye-wood. For the Isle of Brazil, long before the discovery of America,
was a name applied to an imaginary Island in the Atlantic. This island
appears in the map of Andrea Bianco and in many others, down at least to
Coronelli's splendid Venetian Atlas (1696); the Irish used to fancy that
they could see it from the Isles of Arran; and the legend of this Island of
Brazil still persisted among sailors in the last century.[6] The story was
no doubt the same as that of the green Island, or Island of Youth, which
Mr. Campbell tells us the Hebrideans see to the west of their own Islands.
(See Pop.
