Chapter JACK of J by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

they are sent as presents to kings and petty princes. These (moreover) have no kernels inside them. The tree itself resembles a large fig-tree, and the leaves are cut into fingers like the hand. The wood resembles box, and so it is esteemed for many uses. The name of the tree is Cachi” (i.e. Cachi or Tzacchi).—Nicolo de’ Conti.

The description of the leaves … “foliis da modum palmi intercisis”—is the only slip in this admirable description. Conti must, in memory, have confounded the Jack with its congener the bread-fruit (Artocarpus incisa or incisifolia). We have translated from Poggio’s Latin, as the version by Mr. Winter Jones in India in the XVth Century is far from accurate.

1530.—“Another is the kadhil. This has a very bad look and flavour (odour ?). It looks like a sheep’s stomach stuffed and made into a haggis. It has a sweet sickly taste. Within it are stones like a filbert. … The fruit is very adhesive, and on account of this adhesive quality many rub their mouths with oil before eating them. They grow not only from the branches and trunk, but from its root. You would say that the tree was all hung round with haggises!”—Leyden and Erskine’s Baber, 325. Here kadhil represents the Hind. name kathal. The practice of oiling the lips on account of the “adhesive quality” (or as modern mortals would call it, ‘stickiness’) of the jack, is still usual among natives, and is the cause of a proverb on premature precautions: Gach’h men Kathal, honth men tel! “You have oiled your lips while the jack still hangs on the tree!” We may observe that the call of the Indian cuckoo is in some of the Gangetic districts rendered by the natives as Kathal pakka! Kathal pakka! i.e. “Jack’s ripe,” the bird appearing at that season.

[1547.—“I consider it right to make over to them in perpetuity … one palm grove and an area for planting certain mango trees and jack trees (mangueiras e jaqueiras) situate in the village of Calangute. …”—Archiv. Port. Orient., fasc. 5, No. 88.]

c. 1590.—“In Sircar Hajypoor there are plenty of the fruits called Kathul and

Budhul; some of the first are so large as to be too heavy for one man to carry.”—Gladwin’s Ayeen, ii. 25. In Blochmann’s ed. of the Persian text he reads barhal, [and so in Jarrett’s trans. (ii. 152),] which is a Hind. name for the Artocarpus Lakoocha of Roxb.

1563.—“R. What fruit is that which is as big as the largest (coco) nuts?

“O. You just now ate the chestnuts from inside of it, and you said that roasted they were like real chestnuts. Now you shall eat the envelopes of these …

“R. They taste like a melon; but not so good as the better melons.

“O. True. And owing to their viscous nature they are ill to digest; or say rather they are not digested at all, and often issue from the body quite unchanged. I don’t much use them. They are called in Malavar jacas; in Canarin and Guzerati panás.… The tree is a great and tall one; and the fruits grow from the wood of the stem, right up to it, and not on the branches like other fruits.”—Garcia, f. 111.

[1598.—“A certain fruit that in Malabar is called iaca, in Canara and Gusurate Panar and Panasa, by the Arabians Panax, by the Persians Fanax.”—Linschoten, Hak, Soc. ii. 20.

[c. 1610.—“The Jaques is a tree of the height of a chestnut.”—Pyrard de Laval, Hak. Soc. ii. 366.

[1623.—“We had Ziacche, a fruit very rare at this time.”—P della Valle, Hak. Soc. ii. 264.]

1673.—“Without the town (Madras) grows their Rice … Jawks, a Coat of Armour over it, like an Hedg-hog’s, guards its weighty Fruit.”—Fryer, 40.

1810.—“The jack-wood … at first yellow, becomes on exposure to the air of the colour of mahogany, and is of as fine a grain.”—Maria Graham, 101.

1878.—“The monstrous jack that in its eccentric bulk contains a whole magazine of tastes and smells.”—Ph. Robinson, In My Indian Garden, 49–50.

It will be observed that the older authorities mention two varieties of the fruit by the names of shaki and barki, or modifications of these, different kinds according to Jordanus, only from different parts of the tree according to Ibn Batuta. P. Vincenzo Maria (1672) also distinguishes two kinds, one of which he calls Giacha Barca, the other Giacha papa or girasole. And Rheede, the great authority on Malabar plants, says (iii. 19):

“Of this tree, however, they reckon more than 30 varieties, distinguished by the quality of their fruit, but all may be reduced to two kinds; the fruit of one kind distinguished by plump and succulent pulp of delicious honey flavour, being the varaka; that of the other, filled with softer and more flabby pulp of inferior flavour, being the Tsjakapa.”


More modern writers seem to have less perception in such matters than the old travellers, who entered more fully and sympathetically into native tastes. Drury says, however, “There are several varieties, but what is called the Honey-jack is by far the sweetest and best.”

“He that desireth to see more hereof let him reade Ludovicus Romanus, in his fifth Booke and fifteene Chapter of his Navigaciouns, and Christopherus a Costa in his cap. of Iaca, and Gracia ab Horto, in the Second Booke and fourth Chapter,” saith the learned Paludanus … And if there be anybody so unreasonable, so say we too—by all means let him do so! [A part of this article is derived from the notes to Jordanus by one of