EARLY TRADE 



EUGENIA 

 CARYOPHYLLATA 



History 

 Barilert Baoord 



Sooth Indian 

 Nmi. 



is lavanga. Mr. F. W. Thomas (whom I Imvo had the pleasure of consulting on 



ubject) tells me that the earliest occurrence of the name is in the Ramayana ; to 

 Charakii is tlm first m.-dical writer who alludes to the clove. But the word 

 :* has passed into most of the more recent languages of India, and be- 

 riniin Inirtnuja, lavinga, labang, laung, langa, I6ng, rating, etc., thus showing a 

 .-.ii n n. ui source. Mr. Thomas, commenting on the possibility of lavanga being 

 .1 Sanskrit word, says, " I should think that the chance of its being Malay is Sannkrit 

 i. greatest. It has a Malay appearance. ... In Malay bunga lavang is the 

 mi ustl. bunga meaning gay or variegated, especially a flower. Lavang by 

 itself seetna to be used for ' mace.' " [Gf. Reinwardt, Reis in den Indischen 

 \rfttijnl., 1838.465; Uhlenbeck, Sanskrit Etymology; Encyclop. van Neder- 

 Indir. \ But, in addition, the clove bears in South India the names 

 vrdmbu, karampu, etc., words which Dymock (Mat. Med. W. Ind., 1885, 328) 

 jggests may have been the source of the caryophyllon. But it is probably 

 safe to assume that these South Indian names were derived from the 

 through the Arabic karanfal. The Tamil name for >n>,,i>i, >, 

 n i> n m is lavanga, and Crawfurd (Diet. Ind. Islands, 1856, 215) gives that 

 as tho Borneo name for the clove- bark a species of Cinnamon. In another 

 passage (101-2) Crawfurd observes that lawang is a name used by the Malays 

 for the clove, but brought to their country by the traders from India. Another 

 name for the clove (in the Malaya), he says, is gaumedi, a word which Prof. 

 Wilson, it would seem, translated " Cow's marrow " and regarded as of Sanskrit 

 irigin. 



The Clove thus bears no undoubted Indian aboriginal names, and was 

 jbably not known in India much before the 5th century. The clove is not 

 lentioned in the Periplus (63 A.D.) among commodities carried from India. 

 "lore would seem, moreover, no doubt that it is the caryophyllon of Paulus 

 Cgineta (Adams, transl., 1847, 160) a Greek physician who wrote about the 

 of the 6th century A.D., and who speaks of the spice in such terms as to 

 iply that it was well known. Passing over several centuries, it may be observed 

 it Caspar Bauhin (Pinax Theat. Hot., 1623, 410) was correct when he pointed 

 jut that Serapion was in error citing Galen. The account of the gariofilus given 

 jy Serapion (9th century), Avicenna (10th century), and by other Arabs is 

 iterally transcribed from Paulus. 



It is a well-established fact that the Chinese traded with Amboyna and India 

 it a time anterior to any definite knowledge of these countries being possessed 

 by the inhabitants of Europe. The Arabs also had a direct commerce of their Arab Knowledge. 

 jwn with India and the Malay Islands. In consequence various commodities 

 to be known to the Indians, Egyptians, Greeks, etc., at earlier dates than 

 ight be otherwise easily accounted for, and moreover were sometimes spoken of 

 Chinese, Indian, Ethiopian, Arabian, etc., in consequence of the nationality of 

 le traders, rather than the countries of supply. Hence very possibly the state- 

 lent of Paulus ^Egineta (and of most of the early writers) that cloves "were 

 -ught from India." As a matter of fact the clove even down to the present day 



hardly be said to be systematically cultivated anywhere in India. Marco Eastern 

 Polo (Travels, 1290 (ed. Yule), ii., 217) speaks of the cloves of Java, but his Travellers. 

 observation must be interpreted to denote the extensive traffic that even in 

 i time had been established, since the clove did not then grow in that island. 

 rbosa (Coasts E. Africa and Malabar (ed. Hakl. Soc.), 184, 219-20) visited 

 [alabar and the " spice isles," and wrote, " The clove grows in the islands called 

 lolucche, and from these it is brought to Malacca and thence to Calicut, a country 

 Malabar." So again, speaking of Pegu, he remarks there is much trade in 

 loves and mace and other Chinese goods. Varthema (Travels, 1510 (ed. 

 laid. Soc.), 245) also visited the Moluccas and gives a detailed description 

 the clove. Pigafetta investigated the clove plantations of Molucca in 1512, 

 id wrote a full account of the methods of cultivation and manufacture of the 



Garcia de Orta, who was in India from about 1535, and published at Travellers in 

 >a in 1563 his Colloquios dos Simples, etc., says (Coll., xxv.) that the possession 

 the Molucca Islands (and thus of the clove and nutmeg trade) was the cause 

 >f the war between the Spanish and the Portuguese. But it would be absurd 

 believe that cloves were not known prior to the discovery of the Moluccas. 

 10 price of cloves is stated in the Ain-i-Akbari, a work written in Agra (1590), 

 that they were by then regularly known and traded in all over India (Bloch- 

 i, transl., 64). Linschoten gives an exhaustive account of the spice about 

 same date, and Pyrard (1601) also described it. In 1603 the East India 



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