1.6 8 PIPER A GEJE, 



Among Europeans who described the pepper-plant with 

 some exactness, one of the first was Benjamin of Tudela, who 

 visited the Malabar Coast in A.D. 1166. Another was the 

 Catalan friar, Jordanus, about J 330 ; he described the plant as 

 something like ivy, climbing trees and forming fruit, like that 

 of the wild vine. " This fruit," he says, " is at iirst green, 

 then, when it comes to maturity, black." Nearly the same 

 statements are repeated by Mcolo Conti, a Venetian, who, at 

 the beginning of the loth century, spent twenty-five years in 

 the East. He observed the plant in Sumatra, and also described 

 it as resembling ivy. {Phanmcographia.) 



The high cost of pepper contributed to incite the Portuguese 

 to seek for a sea passage to India, and the trade in this spice 

 continued to be a monopoly of the Crown of Portugal as late 

 as the 18th centurv. 



In January 1 793, an agreement was made between the Eajah 

 of Travancore and the English, by which he was to supply a 

 large quantity of pepper to the Bombay Government in return 

 for arras, ammunition and European goods ; this was known 

 as the "Pepper Contract." 



It is worthy of remark that all the foreign names for black 

 pepper are derived from Pippali, the Sanskrit name for long 

 pepper, which leads one to suppose that the latter spice was the 

 first kind of pepper known to the ancient Persians and Arabs 



through whose hands it first reached Europe. Their earlier 

 writers describe the plant as a shrub like the Pomegranate 

 (P. chaha ?). The moderns apply the name Filfil (Pilpil, P<'''^'-) 

 to all kinds of pepper. Black pepper is called in Sanskrit 

 Mancha, which means a "pungent berry." The word is derived 

 from Marichi, "a particle of light or fire," and appears to 

 have been first applied to the aromatic berries known as Kakkola ; 

 It now signifies black and red pepper, and in the vernacular 

 tonus of Mirach or Mirchai, is a household word in India. 



lAIaricha is described in the Nighantas as bitter, pungent, 

 aigc:.tn 0, hot and dry ; synonyms for it are VaUi-ia "creeper 

 grown Lshana, Tikshua "pungent." Mulina, SyaL "black," 

 ^f-. It IS said to be u..ful in intermittent fever, haemorrhoids, 



