SC - Fw: Eggplant

[Alderton, Philippa]

Thought this might hold some interest, to those of you interested in
eggplant...


Phlip

Nolo disputare, volo somniare et contendere, et iterum somniare.

phlip at morganco.net

Philippa Farrour
Caer Frig
Southeastern Ohio

"All things are poisons.  It is simply the dose that distinguishes between a
poison and a remedy." -Paracelsus

"Oats -- a grain which in England sustains the horses, and in
Scotland, the men." -- Johnson

"It was pleasant to me to find that 'oats,' the 'food of horses,' were
so much used as the food of the people in Johnson's own town." --
Boswell

"And where will you find such horses, and such men?" -- Anonymous

- -----Original Message-----
From: Jon van Leuven <jon.vanleuven at swipnet.se>
To: BYZANS-L <BYZANS-L at lists.missouri.edu>
Date: Thursday, March 02, 2000 7:15 AM
Subject: Re: Eggplant


>"Aubergine" is said to come from Catalan "alberginia" < Arabic
>"al-badhinjan" < a Sanskrit loan-word. This ought to explain the Turkic and
>Slavic variants. The vegetable reputedly originated in S.Asia, tropical
>Africa and Egypt, but conceivably initially the first.
>
>"Melitzana" etc presumably did come from Greek, and the allusion to
>darkness recurs in other names in the same plant family (nightshades).
>However, some kinds are not dark but e.g. white, whence the name
>"eggplant".
>
>Arabs might have spread it along with other spices, but one should remember
>that the Arabs were not the only medieval mediators from Asia to Europe.
>The people we now call Gypsies were another and they came through e.g.
>Greece by the 1300s. I don't know what their early economy or physiognomy
>was, but the modern dark-skinned Gypsies trading vegetables in e.g. Greece
>could easily give rise to such a name.
>
>It would be an irony of history if something that is cooked with joy
>everywhere west of India was propagated by a "race" whom the same regions
>are still doing their best to exterminate on the very grounds of economic
>and physiognomic inferiority etc. This would of course be only one example
>of the Gypsies' ignored contributions to Western life, but it might be
>suggested when e.g. the next fanatically anti-Gypsy nation such as the
>Czechs is invited to join organizations like the European Union. "Let them
>eat eggplant!" (to paraphrase a queen's advice to her own executioners).
>
>Jon van Leuven
>