THE MANGO 87 



speaks of it as an-mo-lo, which Yule and Burnell consider a 

 phonetization of the Sanskrit name amra. Several centuries 

 later, in 1328, Friar Jordanus, who had visited the Konkan 

 and learned to appreciate the progenitors of the Goa and Bom- 

 bay mangos, wrote, "There is another tree which bears a fruit 

 the size of a large plum, which they call aniba." He found it 

 "sweet and pleasant." The common name which he used is a 

 variation of the north Indian am or amba. Six years later 

 (1334) Ibn Batuta wrote that "the mango tree ('anba) resembles 

 an orange tree, but is larger and more leafy; no other tree 

 gives so much shade." John de Marignolli, in 1349, says, 

 " They also have another tree called amburan, having a fruit of 

 excellent fragrance and flavor, somewhat like a peach." Var- 

 thema, in 1510, mentioned the mango briefly, using the name 

 amba. Sultan Baber, who wrote in 1526, is the first to distin- 

 guish between choice and inferior varieties. He says, "Of 

 the vegetable productions peculiar to Hindustan one is the 

 mango, (ambeh). . . . Such mangos as are good are excellent." 



The island of Ormuz, in the mouth of the Persian Gulf, 

 was settled in early days by the Portuguese and became one 

 of the great emporiums of the East. Garcia de Orta, a Portu- 

 guese from Goa, wrote in 1563 that the mangos of Ormuz 

 were the finest in the Orient, surpassing those of India. It is 

 probable, however, that the mangos known at Ormuz were not 

 grown on the island itself, since it has very little arable land and 

 water is exceedingly scarce. The Cronica dos Keys Dormuz 

 (1569) says that mangos were brought to Ormuz from Arabia 

 and Persia. Later, in 1622, P. della Valle speaks of the mangos 

 grown on the Persian mainland at Minao, only a few miles 

 from Ormuz. 



The Ain-i-Akbari, an encyclopedic work written during the 

 reign of Akbar (about 1590), contains a lengthy account of the 

 mango. Akbar, it may be remembered, was the Mughal 

 emperor who planted the Lakh Bagh at Darbhanga, and in 



