Pliny goes on to complain about pepper.
"It is quite surprising that the use of pepper has come so much into fashion... pepper has nothing in it that can plead as a recommendation to either fruit or berry, its only desirable quality being a certain pungency"
He continues, "and yet it is for this that we import it all the way from India! Who was the first to make trial of it as an article of food? and who, I wonder, was the man that was not content to prepare himself by hunger only for the satisfying of a greedy appetite?"
So, we can concur that pepper from India (both long and black pepper) was sufficiently spicy to cause significant heartburn to Pliny.
In fact, the word "pepper" itself comes from the Sanskrit "pippali".
Most of this pepper came from Kerala and was traded through the glorious port of Muziris on Malabar coast.
Muziris finds mention in the Periplus (a travelogue of ports) of the Erythrean Sea (Red Sea).
This black fruit (botanically, pepper is a fruit) caused so much irritation to Pliny the Elder.
It also formed the core of the Maritime Spice Route from Asia to Europe.
Pepper was so valuable to Rome and Europe that it was used as ransom!
In order to lift the siege on Rome, the Visigoths headed by Alaric I demanded 5000lbs of gold, and 3000 lbs of Pepper (among other assorted things)
Even a millennium after Alaric, pepper was still in demand in Europe.
One could argue that the foundations of Venice, Genoa and several maritime republics stand on the strength of this dried black spice!
That famous sea voyage of Vasco da Gama was an attempt to discover an alternate sea route to the source of... you guessed it.
It was to get to the source of pepper and other assorted spices.
That of course, led to the Age of Colonialism and everything that followed.
But I'll stop here.
May our meals and lives be spiced up by this magical black seed, now and forever!
Thank you for reading!
Correction: Pliny did not say pepper was draining Rome by 50 million sesterces a year.
With the blessings of Ma Saraswati, & blessings of Sita-Rama, I begin work on something based on the Ramayana.
Looking forward to your support & encouragement.
As always, starting with a #Thread on Rabindranath Tagore's 1881 opera Valmiki-Pratibha.
Tagore wrote the Valmiki-Pratibha as an opera that traces the path of how the thief Ratnakara is blessed by Saraswati and transforms into Adi Kavi Valmiki.
Tagore himself played the role of Valmiki and his niece Pratibha played the role of Saraswati.
Here's the story.
Ratnakara and his gang of robbers conduct human sacrifices from time to time.
So, they capture a girl and are about to sacrifice her.
Valmiki, the leader of the gang, comes forward, holding a broad blade.
The girl struggles and turns, to see what's about to befall her.
So,24=9+6+9
These are respectively, the 9 qualities of the Buddha, 6 of Dhamma and 9 of the Sangha.
Where do we find them?
For starters, the 9 qualities of Buddha
They are mentioned clearly in the Mahaparinibbana Sutta 2.9.4
What are these 9?
Araham- no attachment to sensual pleasures
Sammasambuddho - way to dissociate from this suffering-filled world
Vijjacharana Sampanno - Knowledge of how this world arises
Yet, the same Abbasid Caliphate that set up the "House of Wisdom", led and inspired forces for centuries after, to destroy libraries in India, from Nalanda, to Vikramasila to Oddantapura.
Baktiyar Khilji who destroyed Nalanda and other universities in the last years of 12th century, was the general of Muhammad Ghori, who struck coins in the name of the Caliphate.
It is to be noted that Khilji's destruction of Nalanda came much before Chenghiz Khan's of Baghdad.
While al-Khwarizmi is credited as the father of Algebra (with the name itself coming from his work al-Jabr) the roots of Algebra go far back.
Let's look at what Carl B Boyer states in his "A History of Mathematics".