The delicious and global influence of the Jesuits
Society of Jesus, or Jesuits, wanted to use this hot new technology — just over a century old — to spread Christianity in the East. This press was meant for Abyssinia (Ethiopia), but the winds took it round Africa and up to India, where it docked in Goa. It was getting ready to sail again, when it was learned that the Abyssinian emperor no longer wanted it.
Francis Xavier, one of the Jesuits’s founders, had established a strong presence in Goa. So, when this news came, the Jesuits quickly set up the press. Printing using carved surfaces may have existed in India before this, but this press produced the first Indian books using movable type. This was in Roman script, but attempts were made to cast types in Indian scripts, first Tamil and then Devanagari.
The earliest texts were religious, but in 1563, the press printed a book whose title translates as Colloquies on the Simples and Drugs of India (1563). Written by physician and naturalist Garcia da Orta in the form of dialogues with a fictional friend named Ruano, it describes the useful plants of India. Through the conversations, which include visits to patients, a fascinating picture emerges of the trading world of India and the Arabian Sea.
Travellers’ tales at that time tended to the fantastic, probably to make any merchandise they were selling seem more valuable. Garcia’s observations are sober and generally accurate, with him admitting when he doesn’t know something directly. He describes asafoetida as “the nastiest smell in the world”, but notes that dishes
