Chapter CURRY-STUFF to CUSTARD-APPLE of C by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

CUSPADORE, s. An old term for a spittoon. Port.cuspadeira, from cuspir, [Lat. conspuere], to spit. Cuspidor would be properly qui multum spuit.

[1554.—Speaking of the greatness of the Sultan of Bengal, he says to illustrate it—“From the camphor which goes with his spittle when he spits into his gold spittoon (cospidor) his chamberlain has an income of 2000 cruzados.”—Castanheda, Bk. iv. ch. 83.]

1672.—“Here maintain themselves three of the most powerful lords and Naiks of this kingdom, who are subject to the Crown of Velour, and pay it tribute of many hundred Pagodas…viz. Vitipa-naik of Madura, the King’s Cuspidoor-bearer, 200 Pagodas, Cristapa-naik of Chengier, the King’s Betel-server, 200 pagodas, the Naik of Tanjouwer, the King’s Warder and Umbrella carrier, 400 Pagodas.…”—Baldaeus, Germ. ed. 153.

1735.—In a list of silver plate we have “5 cuspadores.”—Wheeler, iii. 139.

1775.—“Before each person was placed a large brass salver, a black earthen pot of water, and a brass cuspadore.”—Forrest, V. to N. Guinea, &c. (at Magindanao), 235.

[1900.—“The royal cuspadore” is mentioned among the regalia at Selangor, and a “cuspadore” (ketor) is part of the marriage appliances.—Skeat, Malay Magic, 26, 374.]

CUSTARD-APPLE, s. The name in India of a fruit (Anona squamosa, L.) originally introduced from S. America, but which spread over India during the 16th century. Its commonest name in Hindustan is sharifa, i.e. ‘noble’; but it is also called Sitap’hal, i.e. ‘the Fruit of Sita,’ whilst another Anona (‘bullock’s heart,’ A. reticulata, L., the custard-apple of the W. Indies, where both names are applied to it) is called in the south by the name of her husband Rama. And the Sitap’hal and Ramp’hal have become the subject of Hindu legends (see Forbes, Or. Mem. iii. 410). The fruit is called in Chinese Fan-li-chi, i.e. foreign leechee.

A curious controversy has arisen from time to time as to whether this fruit and its congeners were really imported from the New World, or were indigenous in India. They are not mentioned among Indian fruits by Baber (c. A.D. 1530), but the translation of the Ain (c. 1590) by Prof. Blochmann contains among the “Sweet Fruits of Hindustan,” Custard-apple (p. 66). On referring to the original, however, the word is sadap’hal (fructus perennis), a Hind. term for which Shakespear gives many applications, not one of them the anona. The bel is one (Aegle marmelos), and seems as probable as any (see BAEL). The custard-apple is not mentioned by Garcia de Orta (1563), Linschoten (1597), or even by P. della Valle (1624). It is not in Bontius (1631), nor in Piso’s commentary on Bontius (1658), but is described as an American product in the West Indian part of Piso’s book, under the Brazilian name Araticu. Two species are described as common by P. Vincenzo Maria, whose book was published in 1672. Both the custard-apple and the sweet-sop are fruits now generally diffused in India; but of their having been imported from the New World, the name Anona, which we find in Oviedo to have been the native West Indian name of one of the species, and which in various corrupted shapes is applied to them over different parts of the East, is an indication. Crawfurd, it is true, in his Malay Dictionary explains nona or buah- (“fruit”) nona in its application to the custard-apple as fructus virginalis, from nona, the term applied in the Malay countries (like missy in India) to an unmarried European lady. But in the face of the American word this becomes out of the question.

It is, however, a fact that among the Bharhut sculptures, among the carvings dug up at Muttra by General Cunningham, and among the copies from wall-paintings at Ajanta (as pointed out by Sir G. Birdwood in 1874, (see Athenaeum, 26th October), [Bombay Gazetteer, xii. 490]) there is a fruit represented which is certainly very like a custard-apple (though an abnormally big one), and not very like anything else yet pointed out. General Cunningham is convinced that it is a custard-apple, and urges in corroboration of his view that the Portuguese in introducing the fruit (which he does not deny) were merely bringing coals to Newcastle; that he has found extensive tracts in various parts of India covered with the wild custard-apple; and also that this fruit bears an indigenous Hindi name, ata or at, from the Sanskrit atripya.

It seems hard to pronounce about this atripya. A very high authority, Prof. Max Müller, to whom we once referred, doubted whether the word (meaning ‘delightful’) ever existed in real Sanskrit. It was probably an artificial name given to the fruit, and he compared it aptly to the factitious Latin of aureum malum for “orange,” though the latter word really comes from the Sanskrit naranga. On the other hand, atripya is quoted by Raja Radhakant Deb, in his Sanskrit dictionary, from a medieval work, the Dravyaguna. And the question would have to be considered how far the MSS. of such a work are likely to have been subject to modern interpolation. Sanskrit names have certainly been invented for many objects which were unknown till recent centuries. Thus, for example, Williams gives more than one word for cactus, or prickly pear, a class of plants which