FIPERAGE^. 167 



1 



pepper bears the same names witli the addition or substitution 

 of the adjective "white." 



History, Uses, &C. — T'he earliest travellers from the 



West who visited India, found the pepper vine in cultivation on 

 the Malabar Coast, Theophrastus (H. P. ix., 22) mentions two 

 kinds of popper (TrtVcpi or TrtTrept) in the fourth century B. C, and 

 Dioscorides (ii., 148) mentions ^€vkov tt/ttcpi, \vliite pepper, fiaKpov 

 TTitvept^ long i^eppor, and /^/Xa^ ir^ircpi, black pepper. Pliny says : 

 "It is quite surprising that the use of pepper has come so 

 much into fashion, seeing that in other substances which we use, 

 it is sometimes their sweetness, and sometimes their appearance, 

 that has attracted our notice ; whereas, pepper has nothing in it 

 that can plead as a recommendation to either fruit or berry, 

 its only desirable quality being a certain pungency; and yet it 

 is for this that w^e import it all the way from India ! Who was 

 the first to make trial of it as an article of food ? and who, I 

 Avonder, was the man that was not content to prepare himself, by 

 S hunger only, for the satisfying of a greedy appetite? '' (12, 14,) 



In the Periplus of the Erythrean Sea, written about A.D. 64, 

 it is stated that pepper is exported from Barake, the shipping 

 place of Nelkunda. in which region, and there only, it grows in 

 great quantity. These have been identified with places on the 

 Malabar Coast between Man galore and Calicut. 



Long pepper and Black pepper are among the Indian spices 

 ;f on which the Romans levied duty at Alexandria about 



t 



-V 



A.D.176. 



mer 



M 



Coast, or at all events had some information about the pepper- 



plant from an eye-witness. It is he who furnishes the first 



^ y^ particulars about it, stating that it is a climbing plant, sticking 



close to high trees like a vine. Its native country he calls 

 Male. The Arabian authors of the Middle Ages, as Ibn 

 Khnrdadbah [circa A.D. 869-885), Edrisi in the middle of the 

 12th, and Ibn Batuta in the 14th century, furnished nearly 

 similar accounts. 



