NOTE 2.—­The brazil-wood of Kaulam appears in the Commercial Handbook of Pegolotti (circa 1340) as Verzino Colombino, and under the same name in that of Giov. d’Uzzano a century later.  Pegolotti in one passage details kinds of brazil under the names of Verzino salvatico, dimestico, and columbino.  In another passage, where he enters into particulars as to the respective values of different qualities, he names three kinds, as Colomni, Ameri, and Seni, of which the Colomni (or Colombino) was worth a sixth more than the Ameri and three times as much as the Seni.  I have already conjectured that Ameri may stand for Lameri referring to Lambri in Sumatra (supra ch. xi., note 1); and perhaps Seni is Sini or Chinese, indicating an article brought to India by the Chinese traders, probably from Siam.

We have seen in the last note that the Kaulam brazil is spoken of by Abulfeda; and Ibn Batuta, in describing his voyage by the back waters from Calicut to Kaulam, says:  “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.