Mangoes and Melons

Now that summer is almost upon us, with the heat and the dust and the electricity cuts, one of the (many) things that make me look forward to the season are the magical summer fruits - tarbooz, kharbuza, angoor, jamun, litchis (how I remember gorging on them on long summer afternoons) and of course, the Amb!

This post is all about the 'Amb' or the 'Mango', with a bit of Babur and his melons thrown in. 

The etymological root of the word Mango is the Tamil manga or man-gai, "which is perhaps a euphonic transposition of am-kai (mango fruit) from the Sanskrit amba (A historical dictionary of Indian food - K.T. Achaya). The word Manga was first used in Italian in 1510 by Ludovico di Varthema (who was apparently the first European non-Muslim to have entered Mecca) and who writes -

"Another fruit is also found here which is called the 'Amba', the stem of which is called 'Manga'...and when it is ripe it is yellow and shining. This fruit has a stone within like a dried almond, and is much better than the Damascus plum. A preserve is made of this fruit, such as we make of olives, but they are much superior."   

The word Mango was used for the first time more than a 100 years later by Dr. John Fryer (of the East India Company) while describing it -

"When ripe [the mango], the Apples of the Hesperides are but fables to them: for Taste, the Nectarine, Peach and Apricot fall short."

Babur, though, wasn't as rapturous over the great mango of the Indian sub-continent. He writes in the Baburnama - 

"Mangoes when good, are very good, but many as are eaten, few are first rate...taking it altogether, the mango is the best fruit of Hindustan. Some so praise it as to give it preference over all fruits except the musk-melon but, such praise outmatches it."   

Of course, Babur was more of a melon man.

India failed to impress him (other than for its wealth), for, amongst other reasons, its melons weren't good enough. He describes the melons of the cities he mentions in his autobiography,  he remembers Kabul and writes, "Recently a melon was brought, and as I cut it, I was oddly affected. I wept the whole time I was eating it.", and he judges towns by the quality of their melons - "Bukhara is a fine town; its fruits are many and good; its melons are excellent."

(On an aside, the plums of Bukhara are also praised by Babur - "The Bukhara plum is famous; no other equals it.", and in Punjabi, a plum is an 'Aloo Bukhara'. I wonder what the original Persian of Baburnama calls the "Bukhara plum".)

Me, I love my fruits, but as much as I love Babur and his lands of Central Asia, I'll take my Hindustani amb and leave his Fergana melons to him.