122 CAKALELE VOL. 2, NO.2 CAKALELE VOL. 2, NO.2 ( I991), PP. 123-132

Lodge, D., G. A. R. Johnston, 0. R. Curtis, and J. 1. Brand 1977 Effects of the areca nut constituents Arecadaine and Guvacine on the action of GABA in the cat central nervous system. Brain Research 136:513-522. ETYMOLOGY, ENTOMOLOGY, AND NUTRITION: 1. J., J. 1. Pindborg, and L Effendi. 1977. The relation between - ANOTHER WORD FROM PIGAFE1TA chewing and dental caries. Scandinat'ian Joumal of Research 85:64-70. Nicol, 1. A. C. 1960. The biology of marine twimals. New York: JAMES T. COLLINS AND RACHEL NOVOTl'fY Interscience. UmVERSITY OF HAWArI AT MANOA Onvlee, L. 1933. Na hoeri hapa. Tijd5chrift voor lndische Land- en Volkenkunde73:476-494. Peeters, A. 1970. La chigue de betel: Etude etbnobotanique. Universite de 1. INTRODUCTION Paris: These pour Ie doctorat de Troisieme cycle. In January 1522, the last surviving ship of Magellan's fleet skirted the coasts Rawat, A. K. S, R. Banerjee and V. R. Balasubrahmanyam. 1989. Chemical of AJor, Pantar, and Timor The Victoria was laden with the of North polymorphism of essential oil of Piper betle L. grown in India. Feddes Maluku and manned a crew of sixty, including two pilots from Tidore. In Repertorium 100(7/8):331-334. those turbulent waters, one of the pilots who had boarded the ship at the Reid, A. 1985. From betel-chewing to - in . direction of the sultan of Tidore spoke to Pigafetta of a nearby island, Journal ofAsi,w StudIes 44(3) 529-547. Arucheto, where dwelt a tribe of naked midgets, long-eared and hairless subterranean cave-dwellers capable of running at great speeds and singing Rookmaaker, H. R. 1905. Bijdrage tot de kennis van het gebruik van sirih in with subtle, thin voices. l (See Bausani 1972:56.) Truly a strana Ieggenda, as Nederlandsch-Oost-Indie. Bulletin Kalaniaal Museum te Haarlem Bausani (1972) called seaman's tale for the credulous Italian who 32:18-49. recorded it for us! Still, one element in tbe story tme and, indeed, Schwimmer, E. 1982. Betelnut: The beer of the Orokaiva. In Through a glass constitutes a familiar statement of East Indonesia nutrition. This short note darkly: Beer and modemization in Papua New Guinea, ed. will consider the probable diet of the Arucheto folk as related by the M. Marshall. Boroko: Institute of Applied Social and Economic Moluccan pilot. At the same time it will propose a solution to an Research. etymological problem noted by Bausani ( The Moluccan pilot may have told Pigafetta a tall tale, but when he Thierry, S. 1969. Le Betel I: fndeet ASledu Sud-Est. Catalogues du Musee described the food of these imaginary (?) unacculturated people, he surely de L'homme. Paris: National Museum of Natural History. drew on his personal knowledge of the foods of Maluku. As Pigafetta Tobert, N. 1984. Ethno-archaeology of pottery firing in Darfur, Sudan: recorded it (Bausani 1972:56, trans. by Collins): Implications for ceramic technology studies. Oxford Journal Arclli1eology 3(2): 141-156. they live in subterranean caves and eat fish and something which comes from [nasce] between a tree and its bark; white and Uhl, H. W., and 1. Dransfield. 1987. Genera Palman•. Kansas: L. H. Bailey rather similar to preserved coriander, it is called ambulon. 2 Hortorium and International Palm Society. de Wit, H. C. D. 1959. A checklist to Rumphius's Herbarium Amboinel1se. Tbe identity of this comestible, ambulon, is the focus of this brief paper. In Rumphius memorial volume, ed. H. C. D. de Wit. Baam: Hollandia. In the first part, we discuss three possible interpretations of ambulOll. In the second Dart. we offer an ctvrnolol!v for the term. CAKALELE VOL. 2, NO.2 ETYMOLOGY, ENTOMOLOGY, AND NUTRITION 125 124

eating of sago grubs is certainly not a cultural pattern found only in AMBULON: A COMESTIBLE I 2. l Maluku. Burkill (1966: 1488) provided a fuller report: Surely, the comestible described by the Tidore pilot has some relatIOnshIp to sago, the staple food obtained from the pith of the sago palm tree, } Sago palm-stumps make a very suitable breeding-place for the principally Metrox)'lon spp. This food at one time constituted an important Palm-weevil (Rhynchophorus), and so does sago refuse. In eastern part of the diet throughout the Malay archipelago and parts of Melanesia. [i.e., the eastern parts of island Southeast Asia], where Although it is no longer the favorite foodstuff on long sea voyages, it i much sago is prepared, the grubs of the beetle are eaten as a remains the staple food in various parts of Borneo, Sulawesi, Maluku, and j 1 delicacy. New Guinea. From a nutritional perspective, this is a rational utilization of available resources; indeed, the complement of protein in fish would be a More modern and fuller accounts are given regarding the consumption starch, which sago is. of sago grubs in Sarawak, Malaysia (Tan 1977) and in Papua New Guinea Earlier in his description of Tidore, Pigafelta described sago, its origin, (Ohtsuka 1977, May 1984). According to Ohtsuka (1977), the beetle family mode of production, and usefulness. The form of sago he described seems to is Cerambycidae (genus Rhyncophoros) and is known in Papuan pidgin as have been sago bread, that is sago flour baked in molds and subsequently binatang blJong saksa.k. Beetles lay eggs, which develop into the larvae and dried in the sun. However, Pigafetta did not associate this sago, which he then beetles, in the pith of the fallen sago trunk. apparently saw in Tidore, with the ambulon of the pilot's narrative The fact Although in Papua New Guinea sago grubs are said to be more that Pigafetta himself did not observe the Arucheto comestible and that the frequently collected and eaten by children, in Maluku this does not seem to process differed from the one with which he was familiar in Tidore perhaps be the case. 4 Ellen 0978:71) includes grubs as one of several "recognized obfuscated its identity for him. In Maluku, there are numerous ways to secondary sources of animal foods" among the Nuaulu of ccntral Seram. process and prepare sago flour, ranging from baking and roasting to mixing Moreover, during an intensive lieldtrip on Ambon Island in June 1991, we with boiling water or frying in a greaseless wok. One of the methQds, least I collected preliminary data on sago grub collection and consumption among common but still known in Maluku, is the production of sago pearfs, a form the Christian Amhoncse of Ambon Bay. Indeed, demonstrations of various of sago rather well-known in Western countries. Sago pearls are obtained by I ways of eating sago grubs were photographed. The grub, lilat sagu in dissolving raw sago [lour in water, pressing the solute through a coarse sieve Ambonese Malay, IS usually eaten fried in a pan or wok in its own ample and drying it. This results in white spheres (pearls), about the size of obtained by pmching it between the lingers Occasionally the grubs as well preserved coriander, as Pigafetta recorded. Thus, one interpretation of the as the adult Rhyncophorus beetle, miJilIJai sagu (again in Ambonese Malay), Arucheto food is sago, a food stuff well-known to the pilot from Tidore. 1 are eaten raw. Another interpretation should be considered. In the seventeenth J Because sago is mostly carbohydrate, and the gmb is mostly protein century, Dutch observers noted that one of the comestibles held in the (14% dry mass) and fat (64% dry mass) (Tan 1977), the grub provides an highest esteem by the Ambonese was a grub infesting the stumps of felled essential element to the diet, in the absence of fish or meat. Not only is the sago trees, Sago grubs could be the referent of amhulon. protein essential, but the fat is essential for the absorption of fat-soluble (l726:295, trans. bv Collins), for example, wrote: vitamins, To put it another way, the diet becomes complete, except for some vitamins and minerals, with sago and the grub. People here have a sort of worm, named the sago worm, which A third possibility is that ambulon refers to an edible mushroom, jamllr flourishes in the mealy pith of the sago tree when it has borne its sagu, that grows on sago refuse heaps. It is white with a round top and is fruit and is about to die. These worms, which are very fat and found wherever sago is extracted. Moreover, in many of the languages greasy, are considered one of the greatest delicacies of the spoken in or near modem of Pigafetta's most important ports Ambonese who w;ua]]v roast them on small 3 of call--these mushrooms are named ombulon, or words of phonetic (D. J. Prentice, pers. comm., November 1991; Prentice n.d.) Although sate has become an Indonesian food of worldwide renown, it is unlikely that sago grub s;lle would have the same afficiandos! Still, the ETYMOLOGY, ENTOMOLOGY, AND NlJTRITION CAKALELE VOL. 2, No.2 127 126 sago. Furthermore, it is most likely that the vehicular language of both 2. AMBULON: AN ETYMOLOGY regions was a dialect of Malay most closely resembling modern Bacan TIle description of sago pearls, sago grubs, and sago mushrooms, as well as Malay (Collins 1991). Thus, it is plausible that the pilot narrated his tale the likelihood of these comestibles being familiar to the pilot, lead us to the a variant and a vocabulary similar to that of Bacan Malay. While issue of the etymology of ambuJon. In his edition of Pigafetta's narrative there are three possible interpretations of the term arnbuJon, namely sago 1906), James Robertson ventured a timid identification in his flour (especially in the form of sago pearls), sago grubs, and sago index (vol. 3:8): "Ambu10n (a food)." Bausani (1972:56, n. 121) was more mushrooms, based on the lexicon of contemporary MaJay variants in the forthright, admitting he was unable to trace the word: "[J cibo di scorza region, we consider sago flour (in the shape of pearls) the most likely 9 d'albero deao ambuJon non sono duscito a. identifi,:·arJo." Although many meaning of ambuJon It most closely fits the available description and, in scholars and Southeast Asian specialists have studied Pigafetta's wordlist, combination with fish. makes nutritional sense. renowned as the first European attempt at Malay lexicography, few of them attention to the many Malay words which appear outside the 3. CONCLUSION wordlist, that is, in the narrative parts of Pigafetta's account. Approximately thirty Malay words stud the Italian narrative text but only five of these In this brief foray into tbe sixteenth century dietary habits of Maluku, we appear in the wordlist. Bausani, of all the editors of Pigafetta, was the most have presented an etymology of a hitherto unidentified lexical item in conscientious and effective in interpreting and elucidating these 450-year-old Pagafetta's historic narrative. The identification proposed here rests on the items. However, aIIlbuJon escaped his interpretation. marshalling of nutritional, entomological, cultural, and dialectal evidence. It In the 1930s, several scholars debated the provenancc of Pigafetta's is the combination of these multidisciplinary resources which has yielded a wordlist, disagreeing about its "Moluccan-ness" and especially noting the solution to Bausani's (1972) dilemma. Dialectology leads us to conclude elements from BrJnei MalayS This debate provides a clue toward the of all the languages which display forms similar to ambuJoll (see de of interpretation. Despite the appearance of a few misplaced .Cebuano Clercq 1909), the Malay of Brunei and north Maluku constitutes the most terrns,6 the majority of the words in the list are clearly Malay, most likely likely source of the word. Nutrition, moreover, suggests that a starch rather collected in Brunei and Maluku. Indeed, in the sixteenth century, Brunei than grubs or mushrooms was the intent of the narrator. In addition, the Malay and the variant of Malay spoken in North Maluku were probably contemporary consumption of sago in the north Maluku homeland of the quite similar to each other (see Collins 1991). Thus, it is to the pilot strengthens the identification dialects of contemporary Brunei and north Maluku that we turn for We do not, however, claim that the Arucheto folk themselves necessarily ate a.mbuJung. Modem reports of the societies of the Alor and Pantar illumination. The general variant of Brunei Malay-that is, neither the Kedayan nor islands do not contain evidence of that. Indeed, the dry climate and rugged the Kampong Ayer subdialects--was partially described in a series of lexiC<'ll terrain of these islands do not seem conducive to the growth of the sago entries prepared by Brunei's National Language Bureau (Dewan Bahasa palm in numbers large enough to sustain its widespread exploitation as a dan pustaka Brunei). Although there are numerous works on the foodstuff. Rather, the pilot's story remains a straIla Jeggenda, weaving vocabularies of Malay variants in eastern Indonesia (Collins in press), the strands of reality with outlandish threads of narrative. Pigafetta not most recent and complete is an unpublished lexicon of the variant spoken in preserved for us a 450-year-old lexeme but also one of the earliest. Bacan (Collins n.d.). Both of these Malay dialects yield an acceptable source though condensed, examples of north Maluku oral 1i terature. for Pigafetta's ambuJon. Note the following very close matches between Brunei and Bacan. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Brunei ambuJung'sago flour' (Dewan Bahasa 197 Bacan "N1h,,!ww'sarm trec' (Collins n.d./\ We arc graLCLUJ Prof Ir. Jan Nanere, and his especially Freddy Rumalatu, who Today, in both Brunei and north Maluku, the very place In facilitated our initial sago fieldwork on Ambon Island and elsewhere in June Pigafetta most likely collected his Malay vocabulary, "rnhrrhmi! refers to v f I E1YMOLOOY, ENTOMOLOGY, AND NFfRITION 129 CAKALELE VOL. 2, NO.2 12& i· given the geography of the story, an island near Alor or Timor mllst 1991. Collins would also like to express his gratitude to Jack Prentice who I have been intended. encouraged this etymological miniproject by lending Italian and Brunei dictionaries and by making Comns's sabbatical leave in Leiden (during the f 2. The original reads: "abitano in cave so{[o cerra e mangiano pesce e una Fall of 1991) effective and comfortable Dr. Pierre-Yves Manguin of DEVI, ! cosa che nasce tra larhore e la scorza, che: e bianca e rotunda come CNRS (Paris), generously shared his knowledge of Pigafetta editions and coriandoli de con/cUo. detta fllI1bulon" (Bausani 1972:56). Note that pointed our research to BurkilL Our thanks also go to D. L. Schuiling who Bausani used the manuscript of the Bibliotheca Ambrosiana in Milan, provided infonnation from old and new sources available in the Sago the text he considered the most reliable and complete. See Robertson's Archief of Wageningen University (Netherlands) and A. Messer who description of this manuscript (Pigafetta 1906, vol. 2:243-248), which contributed entomological insights. Collins also acknowledges the kindness he datcd 1525. of his cousins, Vincenzo and Antonella Giarrusso, whose interest in Pigafetta's contribution to Southeast Asian studies encouraged him to 3. A fuller, more accurate, and earlier (though published later) account is provided by Rumphius (1750:79,83). reread Pigafetta's narrative.

4. Nor is it the case for the grubs caten in .. According to F. X. NOTES Rahyono (pers. comm., November 1991), in gendon ("ecn groote dikke wOmJ in rOlanplanlen. aren· of kokosboomen, die tot !ekken} dient evw." Jansz 1932:279) is most often cooked in vegetables Pigafetta made very clear who had told him the story and how the dishes. 1. narrator had come to be aboard the Victoria. He wrote at the time the 5. In particular, Blagden (J931), Gonda ([938), Kern (1938), and Le Roux ship was still in Tidore that: (1929) wrote, some at great length, on Pigafetta's sources More recently Sa.bato, a vintuno de dicembre, giorno de San Tommaso, il re Bausani (1960) also joined the debate. nostro venne a Ie navi e ne consegno il due piloti {chel avevamo 6. Pigafetta included a Cebuano wordlist in his narrative as well as a pagati, perch'e ne conducessero fora de queste isole (Bausani Malay onc. A few Cebuano words crept into the Malay list and a few 1972:49-50). {On the day of 51. Thomas, Saturday December twenty-one, our Malay words are found in the Cebuano list. BaLlsani (1972) provides a king came to the ships, and assigned us the two pilots whom we had lucid discussion of this phenomenon. paid to conduct us out of those islands (Pigafetta 1906: 111)·1 7. In the vocabulary prepared by Brunei's Dewan Bahasa staff, ambulullg the And later near the coasts of Pantar and Alor he mentioned is defined as tepong !>'flgu 'sago 110ur', which is distinguished from ambllyat, whicb is sago flour cooked by pouring boiling water over it. Moluccan narrator again: Earlier Haynes (900) also cited il111bulung. Ne disse il nostro piloto vecchio de Maluco, come appresso 8. In Bacan, a divergent dialect of Malay (Collins 1983), ambulllng is a era una isola, chiamata Arucheto (Bausani 1972:56) (Our old pilot from Maluca told us that there was an island nearby generic term for sago tree. At least seven kinds ofsago are distinguished: ambu/ung duri puti, ambulllng licing. ambulung plilutang, ambulll17g called Arucheto (Pigafetta 1906: 161) 1 ngga.ni, ambulllng sike. ,unbU/ll17g ,wang, and a.mbulung tims AJtbough Mosto (Pigafetta 1894: 106, n. 3) suggests that Arucheto may be identified as Haruku or Am, and Robertson (Pigafetta 1906:22: 9. We do not deny the possibility of a shift in the meaning of ambulung does not disagree with Mosto, Bausani (1972:56), wisely concludes that, from sago to a phenomenon closely related to sago, such as the grub or thc mushroom. Precisely this kine! of metonymy seems to have taken } I ETYMOLOGY, 131 130 CAKA.LELE VOL. 2, NO.2 1 I place in the Murut word for sago mushroom (D. J. t'renuce, pers. } Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka (Brunei). 197 L Perbendaharaan-kata cornm., November 1991). Nonetheless, the combination of evidellce Brunei. Bahana 15:917-920. supports the identification of sago itself, rather than the symbiotic Ellen, Roy F 1978. Nuaulu settlement and ecology: An to the mushrooms or grubs. I environmcntal relations ofan Eastern Indonesi'm (VKl The Maninus REFERENCES Gonda, J. 1938. Pigafetta's vocabularium van hct "Molukkcn Maleisch." I Hll(jra.gen lOt de Land- en Volkenkunde 97: 10 1-124, 516-541. f j [l"-.Y""", H. S 1900. A list of Brunei-Malay words. Journal of tlie Straits Bausani, A. 1960. The first Italian-Malay vocabulary by Antonio Pigafetta. .1 j Branch ofthe ROllalAsiatic Society 34:39--48. Ha!5t and We!5t j . van Indonesie, 3rd ed. 2 vols. Bausani, A., cd. 1972. L 'Indonesia nella reJazione di viaggio di Antonio I traduzione in indonesiano di F. Soenoto RivaL) s-(:.Jnlve:nblage/IJarldlJng: W. van Roeve. Relazioni di Italiani in Indonesia 2. Roma: Istituto Italiano ! Practisch Javaanscll-NcderJandsch woordenboek, 3rd ed. per il medio ed estremo Oriente. Centro Italiano di Cultura, Djakarta. 1 Sernarang: G C. T. van Blagden, C O. 193 1. Corrigenda to Malay and other words collected W 1938. Waar verzamelde Pigafetla zijn Maleise woorden? Pigafetta. Journal of the Malayan Branch ofthe Royal Asiatic Society Tljdschn'fl voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 78:271-273. 9:857-861 Koonlin. 1977 Sago-76:' of the First International Sago BurkilL 1. H. 1966. A dictionary of the products of the Malay Symposium. the equatorial swamp as a natural resource, Appendix B, peninsula. 2 vols. (Originally published in Kuala .Lumpur: I Sago worms fRj})lficophoms sp) Kuala Lumpur: Kemajuan Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives, Malaysia. 1 May, R.1. 1984. Kalkai anif;/f1j' A gUide to bush 100&;, markets, and Clercq, F. S. A. de. 1876. Het i\-htleisdl der Molukken: Liist der mcest I culinary arts olPapua New Guinea. Bathurst. N. S. W. Robert Brown voorkomende vreemde en van bet gewone lvfaleisb and Associates. woorden. zooals die gebmikt worden in de resldentien Temate, Ambon met Banda en Timor Koepang Batavia: W. Bnlining. Ohtsuka, Ryutaro. 1977 Time-space use of the on sago and game. In Human actijlity system: Its stmcture, ed. 1909. Nieuw plantkundig woordenboek voor NcderJand,ch Hiroshl Watanabe, pp. 231 u260. Tokyo University ofTokvo Press. cd. M. Greshoff Amsterdam: J.H. Pigafetta, Antonio. 1894. Relazione slllprimo intomo colle Collins, James T. 1983. Penggolongan bahasa Bacan. 10:86á-125. regole sull'arte del najligare, ed. Andrea da Mosto. Raccolta di Documenti e Studi pubbliati dalla R. Commissione Columbiana pel ---. 1991. Malay dialects and the history of Malays. A paper presented Quarto Centario dalla scoptera dell'Amcrica, part 5, vol. 3. Roma: IJ al the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique, Paris, December 2, Ministero della Pubblica Istmzionc. 1991. Antonio. 1906. MageJJan $ voyage around the world The original In press. BibliognliJ dialek t\.1elayu di [ndonesJa TJinur. Kuala text of the Ambrosian manuscript. with English translation, notes, Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka. bil)li()gr'aphy, and index, ed. James A. Robertson. 3 vols. 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i ijl- bij geJegenheid van zljn l50 jang bestaan 1778-1928, vol. 2: 1-99. • z «- G ; 1.& Weltevreden: Kolff. :2:5 i! 0. Rumphills, Georgius E. 1741. Herbarium AmbOlnense. 7 vols. Amsterdam: i F. Changuion, 1. Catllffe and H. Uytwerf. V ':?' 1 o 1750. Het AmbOlnsche Knlld-hoek, vol. 1, ed. 1. Burmannus. j' 1 ! " Amsterdam: M. Uytwerf. 1';'0 '" Valentijn, Frani;ois. 1726. Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indien, vol. 3, Omstanding ) I' . verhaal van de geschiedenissen en zaaken het kerkyJyke oRe den t/ I Godsdienst betreffende, zoo in Ambonia. Dordrecht: Joannis van " Braam; Amsterdam: Gerard onder de Linden. Ii,

Wilkinson, H. 1. 1932. A Malay-English dictionary. London: Macmillan. "<: r LU V) 3Vei « o z0 « "<: " aJ :2 Cl

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