Chapter MACASSAR to MACHEEN of M by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

MACASSAR to MACHEEN

MACASSAR, n.p. In Malay Mangkasar, properly the name of a people of Celebes (q.v.), but now the name of a Dutch seaport and seat of Government on the W. coast of the S.W. peninsula of that spider- like island. The last quotation refers to a time when we occupied the place, an episode of Anglo-Indian history almost forgotten.

[1605-6—“A description of the Iland Selebes or Makasser.”—Birdwood, Letter Book, 77.

[1610.—“Selebes or Makassar, wherein are spent and uttered these wares following.”—Danvers, Letters, i. 71.

[1664-5.—“… and anon to Gresham College, where, among other good discourse, there was tried the great poyson of Maccassa upon a dogg, but it had no effect all the time we sat there.”—Pepys, Diary, March 15; edition Wheatley, iv. 372.]

1816.—“Letters from Macassar of the 20th and 27th of June (1815), communicate the melancholy intelligence of the death of Lieut. T. C. Jackson, of the 1st Regt. of Native Bengal Infantry, and Assistant Resident of Macassar, during an attack on a fortified village, dependent on the dethroned Raja of Boni.”—As. Journal, i. 297.

MACE, s.

a. The crimson net-like mantle, which envelops the hard outer shell of the nutmeg, when separated and dried constitutes the mace of commerce. Hanbury and Flückiger are satisfied that the attempt to identify the Macir, Macer, &c., of Pliny and other ancients with mace is a mistake, as indeed the sagacious Garcia also poin ted out, and Chr. Acosta still more precisely. The name does not seem to be mentioned by Mas’udi; it is not in the list of aromatics, 25 in number, which he details (i. 367). It is mentioned by Edrisi, who wrote c. 1150, and whose information generally was of much older date, though we do not know what word he uses. The fact that nutmeg and mace are the product of one plant seems to have led to the fiction that clove and cinnamon also came from that same plant. It is, however, true that a kind of aromatic bark was known in the Arab pharmacopœia of the Middle Ages under the name of kirfat- al-karanful or ‘bark of clove,’ which may have been either a cause of the mistake or a part of it. The mistake in question, in one form or another, prevailed for centuries. One of the authors of this book was asked many years ago by a respectable Mahommedan of Delhi if it were not the case that cinnamon, clove, and nutmeg were the produce of one tree. The prevalence of the mistake in Europe is shown by the fact that it is contradicted in a work of the 16th century (Bodaei, Comment. in Theophrastum, 992); and by the quotation from Funnel.

The name mace may have come from the Ar. basbasa, possibly in some confusion with the ancient macir. [See Skeat, Concise Dict. who gives F. macis, which was confused with M. F. macer, probably Lat. macer, macir, doubtless of Eastern origin.]

c. 1150.—“On its shores (i.e. of the sea of Sanf or Champa), a re the dominions of a King called Mihraj, who possesses a great number of populous and fertile islands, covered with fields and pastures, and producing ivory, camphor, nutmeg, mace, clove, aloeswood, cardamom, cubeb, &c.”—Edrisi, i. 89; see also 51.

c. 1347.—“The fruit of the clove is the nutmeg, which we know as the scented nut. The flower which grows upon it is the mace (basbasa). And this is what I have seen with my own eyes.”—Ibn Batuta, iv. 243.

c. 1370.—“A gret Yle and great Contree, that men clepen Java. … There growen alle manere of Spicerie more plentyfous liche than in any other contree, as of Gyngevere, Clowegylofres, Canelle, Zedewalle, Notemuges, and Maces. And wytethe wel, that the Notemuge bereth the Maces. For righte as the Note of the Haselle hath an Husk withouten, that the Note is closed in, til it be ripe, and after falleth out; righte so it is of the Notemuge and of the Maces.”—Sir John Maundeville, edition 1866, page 187–188. This is a remarkable passage for it is interpolated by Maundeville, from superior information, in what he is borrowing from Odoric. The comparison to the hazel-nut husk is just that used by Hanbury & Flückiger (Pharmacographia, 1st edition 456).

c. 1430.—“Has (insulas Java) ultra xv dierum cursu duae reperiuntur insulae, orientem versus. Altera Sandai appellata, in quâ nuces muscatae et maces, altera Bandam nomine, in quâ solâ gariofali producuntur.”—Conti, in Poggius, De Var Fortunae.

1514.—“The tree that produces the nut (meg) and macis is all one. By this ship I send you a sample of them in the green state.”—Letter of Giov. da Empoli, in Archiv. Stor. Ital. 81.

1563.—“It is a very beautiful fruit, and pleasant to the taste; and you must know that when the nut is ripe it swells, and the first cover bursts as do the husks of our chestnuts, and shows the maça, of a bright vermilion like fine grain (i.e. coccus); it is the most beautiful sight in the world when the trees are loaded with it, and sometimes the mace splits off, and that is why the nutmegs often come without the mace.”—Garcia, f. 129v.-130.

[1602- 3.—“In you Provision you shall make in Nutmeggs and Mace haue you a greate care to receiue such