BOTANY. 115 



PLANTAIN. 



The plantain or banana, though a far less palatable fruit, 

 holds the same place in this country that the apple does in 

 England, and the United States. It is used cs a vegetable as 

 well as an article for the dessert, the great proportion being 

 eaten with rice and meat in the place of potatoes. 



There is perhaps no plant of which so many preposterous 

 things have been carelessly written in books of travels, 

 and then copied into works of graver character, than 

 this. Among other things equally veritable, it is said, * 

 " Three dozen plantains are sufficient to serve one man 

 for a week instead of bread, and will support him much 

 better." A Karen by me says he often eats ten at a time, 

 and a hundred would not be sufficient for a man one day if 

 be had nothing else, unless they were very large. 



Like the mango, the tree is indigenous, but the wild 

 fruit is too full of Leeds to be eatable. The plantain and 

 banana, winch were formerly regarded as distinct, are now 

 considered by botanists as one species, but it embraces 

 tnany varieties; I have the Burman names of twenty-Jive 

 before me. " The numerous varieties," writes Voigt " we 

 have in vain tried to put in some order. The attempt made 

 for this purpose, in Schultens, appears to us to have only 

 increased the confusion." The Manila hemp, from which 

 a fabric of the finest texture is prepared, is made from the 

 leaves of a species of plantain tree, M. textilis. Another 

 distinct species of this genus grows wild in our jungles, and 

 is rather an ornamental plant, which is all that it has to 

 recommend it. Unlike the common plantain it never 

 throws up shoots from its roots. 



The name of the plantain in Pali is mauza, which is its 

 Arabic name, mauz, with a final vowel added, to pronounce 

 the last consonant, no words in Pali, ending in any con- 

 sonant excepting n. Now if its Arabic name be so widely 

 diffused, it seems quite certain that had the plant been 

 known to the Hebrews, the Hebrew being cognate with 

 Arabic, it would have had a similar name. This fact is a 

 sufficient refutation of the conjectural interpretations of 



See Loudon's Encyclopedia cf Plants, under M. paradisiaca, 



