"All the trees that grow by this river are either
cinnamon or brazil trees. They use these for firewood, and we cooked with
them throughout our journey." Friar Odoric makes the same hyperbolic
statement: "Here they burn brazil-wood for fuel."
It has been supposed popularly that the brazil-wood of commerce took its
name from the great country so called; but the verzino of the old
Italian writers is only a form of the same word, and bresil is in fact
the word used by Polo. So Chaucer: -
"Him nedeth not his colour for to dien
With brazil, ne with grain of Portingale."
- The Nun's Priests Tale.
The Eastern wood in question is now known in commerce by its Malay name
of Sappan (properly Sapang), which again is identical with the Tamil
name Sappangi. This word properly means Japan, and seems to have been
given to the wood as a supposed product of that region.[5] It is the wood
of the Caesalpinia Sapan, and is known in Arabic (and in Hindustani) as
Bakam. It is a thorny tree, indigenous in Western India from Goa to
Trevandrum, and growing luxuriantly in South Malabar. It is extensively
used by native dyers, chiefly for common and cheap cloths, and for fine
mats. The dye is precipitated dark-brown with iron, and red with alum. It
is said, in Western India, to furnish the red powder thrown about on the
Hindu feast of the Huli. The tree is both wild and cultivated, and is
grown rather extensively by the Mahomedans of Malabar, called Moplahs
(Mapillas, see p. 372), whose custom it is to plant a number of seeds at
the birth of a daughter. The trees require fourteen or fifteen years to
come to maturity, and then become the girl's dowry.
Though to a great extent superseded by the kindred wood from Pernambuco,
the sappan is still a substantial object of importation into England. That
American dye-stuff which now bears the name of brazil-wood is believed
to be the produce of at least two species of Caesalpinia, but the question
seems to partake of the singular obscurity which hangs over the origin of
so many useful drugs and dye-stuffs. The variety called Braziletto is
from C. bahamensis, a native of the Bahamas.
The name of Brazil has had a curious history. Etymologists refer it to the
colour of braise or hot coals, and its first application was to this
dye-wood from the far East. Then it was applied to a newly-discovered tract
of South America, perhaps because producing a kindred dye-wood in large
quantities: finally the original wood is robbed of its name, which is
monopolised by that imported from the new country.
