

Till-: BENGAL GRAM 



tlic cdil-lo Ii i- u "fin tli fin 111. It is, howovi-r. rcmarUalile that not a few 

 .!' the special vegetables ..f the rln,i lihro area of India should ln more Chinese 

 than Indian pi. the medicinal and other uses of this plant the reader 



..,!IOM Id con.Milt the \\orks cited in t he opening sentence abo\ e. 



CICER ARIETINUM, Linn. ; Fl. Br. Ind., ii., 176; Dufhi.- 

 and Fuller, /'/</./ m/d d'arden Crops, 1882, i., 33-6, pi. 8 ; Agri. Ledg., 

 No. 3, 37,42; Mollison, Textbook Ind. Aijri.. l'."l, iii., 73-8; Prain, 

 Plants, 1903, 365-6 ; Duthie, Fl. Upper Gang. Plain, 1903, 256 ; 

 Fl. Pres. Bomb., i., 408; LEGUMINOS.E. The Common or Bengal 

 Chick-pea ; cicer (Latin) ; erebinthos, orobos, krios (Greek) ; ceci 

 It.) ; zisern, kirchern, ziser, kucherebs (Germ.) ; ciceren (Belg.) ; ciche, 

 ciche., pois pechu, garvance (Fr.) ; gravancos, garbanzos (Castilian) ; 



has (Sp.). 



History. Most of the modern European names, like the English chick-pea 

 or chiehe. have doubtless come from the same root as the Latin cicer. Others 

 may l> viewed as derived from the Greek name, erebinthos, or are descriptive of 

 the shape of the seed (krios the ram's head). Hehn (Kulturpfl. und Hautt. 

 -210 e< seq.) identified cicer with the Greek krios (Dioscorides, ii., ch. 126). 

 pparently the earliest mention of the pulse in the literature of Europe occurs 



Homer (Iliad, bk. 13, 589). Some centuries later Theophrastus (about 350 

 .c.) assigned the word erebinthos definitely to the modern gram. Parched gram 



mentioned by Horace as an article of food with the poor. Cicero took his 



jMomon from this pulse, as Fabius did from faba, also Piso and Lentulus from 

 ie pea and the lentil. Gram must, therefore, have been a common article of 

 'ood with the poorer Greeks and Romans long before the Empire. The name 

 ' gram " comes from the Portuguese grao (i.e. grain), and was apparently a special 

 appropriation made in India, because of its being in that country the most general 

 ^rain given to horses. It is, of course, a pulse, not a grain, in the strict sense, 

 hut in South India, where cicer is but little cultivated, the name " horse gram " 

 is given to />o/<-/io hf/for/*. just in the same way that " green gram " denotes 

 FhnMfohtH i iu//i. These pulses, cicer more especially, are frequently articles 

 of cattle food, hence the expression " gram-fed " applied to the animals reared 

 on them. Nikitin, a Russian traveller, who visited Western and Southern 

 India in 1468, was impressed with the fact that in India horses were fed on peas. 

 The old English words calavances, caravances, garavances and garvances are 

 derived from the Spanish garbanzoo, and were apparently given (and to some 

 extent still are given) to several peas or beans largely used by mariners in place 

 of fresh vegetables, hence very possibly the refrain of the mariners who "live 

 >n yellow peas." And these names survived till the beginning of the 19th century, 

 or they occur in Act 54 of George III. (1814, ch. xxxvi.). For further par- 

 ticulars the reader should consult the article Cajanus (p. 199), also Dolichos 

 (pp. r>03-10) and Vi^na (pp. 1107-8). [Cf. Cocks, Diary, 1620, ii., 311; 

 Herbert, Travels, 1677, 333, 347 ; Fryer, New Ace. E. Ind. and Pers., 1675, 

 21; Shelvocke, Voyage, 1719, 62; Hamilton, New Ace. E. Ind., 1727, i., 

 393 ; Shaw, Travels, 1757, 140 ; Joret, Les PI. dans UAntiq., 1904, ii., 249.] 



In Sanskrit this pulse is known as chanaka or chennuka, and in the vernacu- 

 of India chana, chunna, chenna, chahna, chano, chania, sanna-galu or 

 lu, senagalu, chola, etc. Occasionally other names are given to it, such as but, 

 harbara, kadli, kadalai, hariman-dhakam, kudoly kempa, kadale, kalapai, etc. 

 The first series are most frequently used in Northern, Central and Western India 

 (down to Gujarat), while the second are specially prevalent in Eastern and Southern 

 India from Bengal, Assam, Burma and west to the Maratha country, thence 

 to the extreme south. In Arabic it is humez, in Kabyl hammez ; in Egyptian 

 homos or omoa and in Persian nakhud. Aitchison says that in Khorasan it 

 is known as nakhund. De Candolle observes that south of the Caucasus it 

 is known in Georgian as nachuda ; in Turkish and Armenian as nachius or 

 nachunt names which De Candolle asks whether they may net be connected 

 with the Sanskrit chennaka. In India the Arabic and Persian names are often 

 used by Muhammadan writers. Thus in the Ain-i-Akbari, written 1590 (Bloch- 

 inann, tran si., i., 62), mention is made of nukhud ddl as a pulse, the price of 

 which is given, and it is expressly stated not to be met with in Kashmir (Jarrett, 



295 



CICER 



ARIETINUM 



D.E.P., 

 ii., 274-84. 

 Bengal 

 Gram. 



European 



HMacy. 



Gram-fed. 



Indian 



Central Asiatic 

 and Egyptian 



" 



