Friday, February 9, 2024

Notus un Protus

An earlier post here catalogued some nineteenth century brand-name meat substitutes. A number of these were produced by John Harvey Kellogg, of breakfast food fame. The earliest and best-selling were nuttose (1896) and protose (1899). By the first decades of the twentieth century, cans of these were being shipped from Battle Creek across the continent. So that, in 1912, the company petitioned the Interstate Commerce Commission to have their meat substitute receive the same favorable (20% lower than third class) rate that canned meat did. The petition, Kellogg Food Company v. Grand Trunk Railway Company of Canada et al. (26 ICC 611) was dismissed. When first launched, nuttose and protose were both mainly ground peanuts, with some cereal (flour) added for consistency. But, by that time, protose was primarly wheat gluten plus peanuts for consistency and oiliness. It is not clear when the change to protose took place; the Soyinfo Center, mentioned in that earlier seitan post, has a meat alternatives book with an extensive bibliography covering this history. Patenting a recipe is tricky, as the invention must be novel and unobvious. But in 1899, Kellogg applied for one for the gluten and nuts combination and was granted US670,283 in 1901. So this may be a factor. (An interesting post last year by a patent attorney on recent meat substitutes suggests that that patent applied for nuttose and that protose was the 1906 US869,371, which added casein, making the recipe no longer vegan. I am not sure that is true, but, as noted, the formulation did change. There are more follow-on patents, such as 1908 US1,001,150, which adds yeast.)

So that, in 1904, Rupert Hughes, who was from the Midwest and had lived on London, could write in his The Real New York, in the “Where to Eat” chapter, of vegetarian restaurants there.

London has long had vegetarian restaurants. They are just coming in here, under bland and ladylike titles, such as “The White Rose” or “The Laurel.” But even for those who do not believe in limiting themselves to a single mania it is worth while dropping in at these places on occasion to give the stomach a rest from the meat-chopping wear and tear. The prices at these restaurants are very low; hence they have not interested the general public, which likes to pay for novelties. The vegetarians get up various amusing fooleries in imitation of steaks, cutlets, filets and ducks; they call them “true meats” and get their black effects with nuttose and protose and other “ oses.” Even the coffee is made out of blistered peanuts — or at least so it tastes. But the vegetables are amazingly well cooked, and have quite a new taste when there are no meats to distract the palate. And they do wonderful things with fresh mushrooms and nuts. Sometimes they serve a black cream of mushrooms that is worthy of a plutocrat.

That earlier meat substitutes post quoted Chesterton's 1909 refusal of all the nut- foods, including nuttose. Punch, for whom vegetarians were always an easy target, once mentioned protose by name.

Google Books search offers a tantalizing snippet for “meatless mockeries” in The American Mercury of 1950, indicting protose and nuttose specifically. Using the usual snippet view tricks, it is possible to reconstruct it and so save a trip over to the Main Library to have them get this seventy-five year old volume, still held captive by copyright, sent down from storage up North. This shows that rather than being another amusing anti-vegetarian screed, it's Symon Gould and Dr. Shelton making “The Case for Natural Hygiene,” as explained here, advocating for a healthier version, which seems timely now that so many restaurants have gone to Beyond versions of meat dishes as their nod toward vegetarian customers.

While no hygienist would assert that man cannot live on flesh alone (witness, the short-lived Eskimo), he also knows that man is consitutionally frugivorous and that fruits and vegetables are his best fare. Therefore, the system of natural hygiene cmploys a fruit and vegetable diet, it does not follow that the average vegetarian in this country — who is rarely a hygienist — is aware of the scientific aspects of this diet. He is most often influenced by the ethical creed of his faith, and he has no scruples against using white sugar, salt, white bread, condiments of various kinds, and excessive quanities of carbohydrates. Some vegetarians are even addicted to smoking, but all such habits are excluded from the regimen of the true natural hygienist. Again, the “vegetarian” theory of nutrition is primarily concerned with abstinence from flesh, fish or fowl; it does not consider the proper balancing and combinations of foods and it consistently ignores the hygienist stricture against overeating, since many vegetarians believe that they must make up for the seeming lack of proteins in their diet by eating large quantities of cereals and legumes. They also indulge in meat-substitutes and such meatless mockeries as “protose steak,” “mock hamburger,” “nuttose veal cutlets” and other grain, peanut and soybean concentrates, which they boil or fry and serve with gravy to simulate the flesh they seem to regret having abandoned. Finally, they tend to bypass natural healing by seeking the services of a medical practitioner whenever they develop an ailment.

In 1919, a collection of stories by ⁧משה נאדיר⁩ Moyshe Nadir was published, including one (joke, if you like) titled ⁧„נאָטוס און פּראָטוס“⁩ Notus un Protus 'Nuttose and Protose'. An English translation by Nathan Ausubel appears in A Treasury of Jewish Humor. The narrator tells how they met ⁧א בחור מיט לאנגע האָר, א בעהעלפעריש בערדיל און מיט לײַװענטענע הױזען⁩ a bokher mit lange hor, a behelferish berdil un mit layventene hoyzen 'a young man with long hair, an assistant's (helperish) beard and with canvas (linen) pants' who asked whether they ate meat, accused them of being a cannibal, and sold them some vegetarian pamphlets. So that they ended up in a vegetarian restaurant being served by ⁧א בלײכער הוסטענדיגער הױךּ-אױפגעשפּראָצטער װעיטער, װאָס האָט אױסגעזעהן װי אַ מיטעליעהריגע ציבעלע⁩ a bleykher hustendiger hoykh-oyfgeshprotster veyter, vos hot oysgezehn vi a mitelyehrige tsibele 'a pale coughing skinny (tall-out-sprouter) waiter, who looked like a middle-aged scallion'. Each course is available made either from nuttose or from protose. But what arrives is consistently nondescript. Moreover, the waiter's recommendations get increasing elaborate trying to balance the relative merits of the two. Which is why the narrator is in prison charged with murder.

The name of the establishment is ⁧װערים־קרויט׳ס װעגעטארישען רעסטאָראנט⁩ verim-kroyt's vegetarishen restorant. Ausubel leaves this untranslated as “Verimkroit's Vegetarian Restaurant.” Harvey Fink, in That is how it is has “Cabbageworm's.” ⁧װערים־קרויט׳ס⁩ verim-kroyt 'worm cabbage', like Standard German Wurmkraut, refers to herbal remedies like tansy or Artemisia species with English names like wormwood or wormseed. None of which will have the unsavory implications of the original name.

Ben Katchor's The Dairy Restaurant (noted on LanguageHat a couple years ago), with an associated website, pictures this world in words and illustrations and inventories dairy and Jewish vegetarian restaurants of that time, particularly in New York City. It, too, summarizes Nadir's short story.

Many Yiddish periodicals and booklets from that time and place have been digitized. When they have been OCRed, it is usually good enough to find something, but not accurate enough to take as is. There are also dialectical variations and different translitertion choices into Yiddish. Nadir chose ⁧פּראָטוס⁩ protus, but ⁧פּראָטאָס⁩ protos would be perhaps closer. That is what was chosen for an ad by The Battle Creek Food Company in ⁧געזונט און שפייז⁩ Gezunt un shpayz 'Health and Food' for ⁧פּראָטאָס⁩ protos 'Protose' and ⁧סאַװיטא⁩ savita 'Savita' (paste with nutritional yeast for gravies and soups). This other form is particularly tricky to search for because it finds many false positives in transliterating proto- compounds or in explaining Greek πρῶτος.

An interesting one of these ⁧פּראָטאָס⁩ protos matches is the following.

ענדלעך איז די קניה געשלאָסן געװאָרן. זײ האָבּן אײנגעקױפט פערד, רײז, געטרוקנט פלײש אוּן לעדערנע לאָגלען אױף װאַסער.
װען זײ זעגען צוריקגעקוּמען אין לאַגער אַרײן, האָט מען אָפּגעקאָכט אַ גוּט נאַכטעסן, װײל ס'איז שױן געװען אַרוּם אָװנטצוּ.
ראָבּערטן איז שױן געװען א סך בּעסער. טהאַלקאַװע האָט אים אָפּגעקאָכט אַזאַ מין סאָרט אַרבּעס, אָדער װי ער האָט זײ אָנגערוּפן : „פּראָטאָס“ אוּן דאָס האָט אים געדאַרפט צוּגעבּן פרישע כּוחות.
צוּפרידענע, זאַטע אוּן גליקלעכע פוּן די הײנטיקע איבּערלעבּענישן, זענען אַלע געגאַנגען שלאָפן.
endlekh iz di knih geshlosn gevorn. zey hobn eyngekoyft ferd, reyz, getruknt fleysh un lederne loglen af vaser.
ven zey zegen tsurikgekumen in lager areyn, hot men opgekokht a gut nakhtesn, veyl s'iz shoyn geven arum ovnttsu.
robertn iz shoyn geven a skh beser. thalkave hot im opgekokht aza min sort arbes, oder vi er hot zey ongerufn : "protos" un dos hot im gedarft tsugebn frishe koykhes.
tsufridene, zate un gliklekhe fun di heyntike iberlebenishn, zenen ale gegangen shlofn.
Finally, the purchase was closed. They bought horses, rice, dried meat and leather flasks for water.
When they returned to the camp, they cooked a good dinner, because it was already around evening.
Robert was already much better. Thalcave cooked him this kind of peas, or as he called them: “protos” and that gave him fresh strength.
Satisfied, full and happy from today's experiences, everyone went to sleep.

This is from p. 104 of ⁧די קינדער פוּן קאַפּיטאַן גראַנט⁩ di kinder fun kapitan grant 'The Children of Captain Grant', a translation of Les Enfants du capitaine Grant / In Search of the Castaways. The word seems straightforward to explain in context. The title of this chapter in French is «L'espagnol de Jacques Paganel» and much of it is taken up by Paganel trying to communicate with the Patagonian, in what he believes to be Spanish and supposing there to be some sort of dialect / pronunciation problem. But then it turns out that Paganel has been carrying around Camões's Os Lusíadas and so teaching himself Portuguese. The reader will have already suspected something, since Paganel's attempts quoted earlier in the chapter are recognizably Portuguese while Thalcave's responses are Spanish. Thalcave is an Araucanian (Mapuche) and his name means «Le Tonnant» / “The Thunderer”, which checks out as tralkafe, with a different transcription scheme for the retroflex affricate. South American Spanish has poroto for some kinds of beans, from the Quechua purutu. Porotos granados is one of those traditionally already-vegan world dishes. So it makes sense for Thalcave to call what he fed Robert that. … Except, I cannot find anywhere where Jules Verne wrote anything like this. Granted, none of these are meant to be literal translations; the chapters don't even line up exactly. But one would think the introduction of such a foreign word easy to find. But I can't in the French or the English or the German or the Polish (The Yiddish translation was published in Warsaw — Mad readers will be, of course, sensitized to the perfectly ordinary niepotrzebne 'unnecessary' there.) or the Russian translations. I admit that I am reluctant to believe that the Yiddish translator invented this detail, but perhaps someone who knows more about it or about Verne's work will be able to explain.

Getting back on track, one can find incidental references to vegetarian restaurants, sometimes even in English in an otherwise Yiddish work. For example, the inside cover of ⁧ראבינדראנאטה טאַגאָר⁩ Rabindranath Tagore: a study and an appreciation invites the reader to contact the author.

M. I. Littauer
c. o. Tolstoyan Vegetarian Restaurant
55 Second Ave., N. Y. C.

As expected, this booklet has a section on Tagore's vegetarianism.

זעלבסטפערשטענדליך, אז טאַגאָר איז אויך א וועגעטאריער. עס ווערט דערמאנט פון זיין פריינד באַסאַנאַטאַ קומאַר ראָי אז טאַגאָר און די קינדער פון זיין שול שפּייזען זיך אויף א וועגעטארישען דיעט. אין איינעם פון זיינע ביכער דערמאָנטער מיט שטאלץ דעם וועגעטאַריזם, וואָס זיין פאָלק פּראקטיצירט שוין פון טויזענדער יאָהרען. „געקאָכטע רייז, קארטאָפעל, בלומען־קרויט אָדער בעבלאך און גענוג פּוטער איז אלץ וואס ער פערלאַנגט צום עסען“ — זאָגט זיין פריינד ראָי.
zelbstfershtendlikh, az tagor iz oykh a vegetaryer. es vert dermant fun zeyn freynd basanata kumar roy az tagor un di kinder fun zeyn shul shpeyzen zikh af a vegetarishen dyet. in eynem fun zeyne bikher dermonter mit shtalts dem vegetarizm, vos zeyn folk praktitsirt shoyn fun toyzender yohren. "gekokhte reyz, kartofel, blumen-kroyt oder beblakh un genug puter iz alts vas er ferlangt tsum esen" - zogt zeyn freynd roy.
It goes without saying, that Tagore is also a vegetarian. It is mentioned by his friend Basanata Koomar Roy that Tagore and the children of his school eat a vegetarian diet. In one of his books, he proudly mentions vegetarianism, which his people have been practicing for thousands of years. "Boiled rice, potatoes, cauliflower or beans and enough butter is all he wants to eat," says his friend Roy.

I believe that there was a printing error and have corrected ⁧בלומען, קרויט⁩ blumen, kroyt 'flowers, cabbage' to ⁧בלומען־קרויט⁩ blumen-kroyt 'cauliflower', since that is what Roy wrote in English. I imagine there must be other German dialects besides Yiddish in which 'cauliflower' is Blumenkraut instead of Blumenkohl, but I haven't been able to find reference to that. Cabbage is an colonial import to Bengal, arriving with the Portuguese, like potatoes, tomatoes, and chili peppers. Bengali কপি kôpi, along with Hindi गोभी gōbhī and other nearby words, 'cabbage' is from Portuguese couve. Cauliflower, which is the same species as cabbage, was first introduced to India as a plant in 1822 by a Dr. Jemson from Kew (see here). কপি kôpi became 'cauliflower' as well; the Hindi or Punjabi cognate is usually spelled gobi in restaurants here; when it is necessary to disambiguate, it is ফুলকপি phulôkôpi 'flower-', just as in English, German, French, Portuguese, and so on. Furthermore, in 1911, for Tagore's 50th birthday, a special কবিসংবর্ধনা kôbisômbôrdhônā 'poet tribute' was presented in the form of a cauliflower barfi dessert. One can find the recipe by searching for the Bengali or the informal transliteration, kabisambardhna. I assume the কপি kôpi 'cauliflower' / কবি kôbi 'poet' pun is no accident.

It is not a foregone conclusion that Tagore would be a vegetarian, thousands of years notwithstanding. Brahmo culture was not, as a rule. In 1921, a few years after his 1913 Nobel Prize, but too late for Littauer (1917), a collection of his letters from 1885-1895 was published as Glimpses of Bengal. In there, in one dated 22nd March 1894 (aet. 32), we can read about the incident with a domestic fowl destined for the table that prompted him to choose a vegetarian diet. The start of the last sentence of the Bengali original seems to me to suggest that this was not the first time.

আরও একবার নিরামিষ খাওয়া ধরে দেখব ।
ārôō ēkôbār nirāmiṣ khāōẏā dhôrē dēkhôb.
One more time I will try to eat vegetarian.
I have decided to try a vegetarian diet. (tr. Glimpses)

Tagore wrote some biting satire as a young man. One that is somewhat relevant here is দয়ালু মাংসাশী dôẏālu māṅgsāśī 'Kind Carnivore', for which I cannot seem to find an English translation. Here are a few choice sentences.

বাঙ্গালীদের মাংস খাওয়ার পক্ষে অনেকগুলি যুক্তি আছে, তাহা আলোচিত হওয়া আবশ্যক। মার বিশ্বজনীন প্রেম, সকলের প্রতি দয়া এত প্রবল যে, আমি মাংস খাওয়া কর্ত্তব্য কাজ মনে করি।
bāṅggālīdēr māṅgs khāōẏār pôkṣē ônēkôguli jukti āchē, tāhā ālōcit hôōẏā ābôśjôk. āmār biśbôjônīn prēm, sôkôlēr prôti dôẏā ēt prôbôl jē, āmi māṅgs khāōẏā kôrttôbjô kāj mônē kôri.
There are many arguments in favor of Bengalis eating meat that need to be discussed. My universal love, kindness to all is so strong, that I consider it a duty to eat meat.

বিখ্যাত ইংরাজ কবি বলিয়াছেন যে, আমরা বোকা জানোয়ারের মাংস খাই, যেমন ছাগল, ভেড়া, গরু। অধিক উদাহরণের আবশ্যক নাই — মুসলমানেরা আমাদের খাইয়াছেন, ইংরাজেরা আমাদের খাইতেছেন।
bikhjāt iṅgrāj kôbi bôliẏāchēn jē, āmôrā bōkā jānōẏārēr māṅgs khāi, jēmôn chāgôl, bhēṛā, gôru. ôdhik udāhôrôṇēr ābôśjôk nāi — musôlômānērā āmādēr khāiẏāchēn, iṅgrājērā āmādēr khāitēchēn.
The famous English poet said that we eat the meat of foolish animals, such as goats, sheep, cattle. More examples are not necessary — the Muslims were eating us, the British are eating us.

To be absolutely clear, this isn't really about diet at all, but British (and earlier Mughal) imperialism.

Moses Littauer later featured in an Esquire piece in June 1939 on the New York Vegetarian Society, whose Thanksgiving feast included nuttose salad and mushrooms with protose. It traces the society's initial membership from:

Theosophists, Rosicrucians, Naturopaths, Anti-Vivisectionists, the Millennium Guild, the Jewish, Spanish and Communist Vegetarian Societies and kindred groups

More Yiddish vegetarian restaurants can be found in ads in periodicals. Some of these are health related, of course. But even more interesting (to me) are those in the radical newspapers that were also part of this environment. For example, here is the column of restaurant ads from the 19 Nov 1929 ⁧מארגן פרייהייט⁩ Morgen Freiheit.

  • ⁧רעסטאָראַנען⁩ restoranen 'Restaurants'
  • ⁧יוניטי קאָאָפּעראטיװער רעסטאָראן⁩ iuniti kooperativer restoran 'Unity Cooperative Restaurant'
  • ⁧העלט פוד װעגעטאַרישער רעסטאָראַנט⁩ helt fud vegetarisher restorant 'Health Food Vegetarian Restaurant'
  • ⁧חברים, עסט אין א—ס—ת—ר׳—ס סײענטיפיק װעגעטאַרישן רעסטאָראנט⁩ khbrim, est in astr's seyentifik vegetarishn restorant 'Comrades, Eat at Esther's Scientific Vegetarian Restaurant'
  • ⁧חברים עסט אין טאָמאַס גיטמאַן רעסטאָראן, און לאָנטש־רום⁩ khbrim est in tomas gitman restoran, un lontsh-rum 'Comrades Eat at Thomas Gitman Restaurant, and Lunch Room'
  • ⁧ראציאנאלײר װעגעטארישער רעסטאראן⁩ ratsyanaleyr vegetarisher restaran 'Rational Vegetarian Restaurant'
  • ⁧חברים טרעפן זיך אין באָרדענ׳ס דעירי לאָנטשאָנעט⁩ khbrim trefn zikh in borden's deiri lontshonet 'Comrades Meet at Borden's Dairy Luncheonette'
  • ⁧טרעפט אײערע פרײנט אין מעסינגער׳ס װעגעטארישער רעסטאָראן⁩ treft eyere freynt in mesinger's vegetarisher restoran 'Meet Your Friends at Messinger's Vegetarian Restaurant'
  • ⁧איר וועט אַלעמאָל טרעפן חברים און פרײהײט-לעזער אין בראונשטײנ׳ס װעגעטאַרישער רעסטאָראַנט⁩ ir vet alemol trefn khbrim un freyheyt-lezer in braunshteyn's vegetarisher restorant 'You will always find comrades and⁩ Freiheit readers at Braunstein's Vegetarian Restaurant'
  • ⁧חבה סאָלין׳ס רעסטאראן בּאנהעטן און הוליאנקעס⁩ khbh solin's restoran banhetn un hulyankes 'Chava Sollin's Restaurant Banquets and Parties'
  • ⁧נעשמאַק,ע פרישע שפּײן הברישע אטמאָספערע אין דזשײקאָב קעטץ פּריװאטע דײנינג רום⁩ neshmak,e frishe shpeyn hbr'she atmosfere in jeykob ketts private deyning rum 'Delicious Fresh Spanish Hebrew Atmosphere in Jacob Ketts Private Dining Room'
  • ⁧בוירד פּריוואטע רעסטאָראנט ט. שענקמאן, פּראָפּ. הײמישע מאכלים⁩ boyrd private restorant t. shenkman, prop. heymishe makhlim 'Byrd Private Restaurant T. Shenkman, Prop. Homemade Dishes'
  • (⁧אַלע חברים זאָלן פיקםן ןײערע ראַדיאָס בײ מאַקס פרעי א ספּעציאליסט אין ראַדיאָס פון אלע סאָרטן⁩ ale khbrim zoln fikmn neyere radyos bey max frei a spetsyalist in radyos fun ale sortn 'All comrades should buy new radios at Max Frei, a specialist in radios of all kinds')
  • (⁧דזשאָזעף העלפאַנד דזשענעאל ביזנעס בראַקער⁩ jozef helfand jeneal biznes braker 'Joseph Helfand General Business Broker')
  • (⁧פארזיכערט ד. אשינסקי⁩ farzikhert d. ashinski 'Insurance D. Ashinsky')

⁧נאָטוס און פּראָטוס⁩ Notus un Protus was included in later collections of Nadir's stories, such as in 1927 and 1928. That latter includes another story poking fun at the political environment of the Lower East Side then.

דער אַנאַרכיסט
מײן נאָמען איז הערמאן זילבער. איך בין פינף-און-דרײסיג יאָהר אלט, טראָג נישט קײן לאנגע האָר, בין פון מיטעלען ּװאוקס, טראָג נישט קײן װינדזאָר-קראװאט און פונדעסטװעגען בין איךּ אן אנארכיסט.
der anarkhist
meyn nomen iz herman zilber. ikh bin finf-un-dreysig yohr alt, trog nisht keyn lange hor, bin fun mitelen vuks, trog nisht keyn vindzor-kravat un fundestvegen bin ikh an anarkhist.
The anarchist
My name is Herman Silver. I am thirty-five years old, do not wear long hair, am of medium height, do not wear a Windsor tie and nevertheless I am an anarchist.

The absent neckwear would have been reminiscent of Hugo Kalmar in The Iceman Cometh.

Even his flowing Windsor tie is neatly tied. There is a foreign atmosphere about him, the stamp of an alien radical, a strong resemblance to the type Anarchist as portrayed, bomb in hand, in newspaper cartoons.

The real world model for Hugo was Hippolyte Havel, who had edited the Chicagoer Arbeiter Zeitung. This has been digitized, but not OCRed for search. A spot-check finds breweries and wurst, but it is perhaps a bit early for vegetarian restaurant ads.

Nadir's gag is the same as the cartoon by Gerhard Seyfried (who is still at it) on the first page of the first issue of Anarchy Comics in the late '70s, mocking the cartoons that O'Neill had in mind.

Naturally, there were vegetarian anarchists. Bartolomeo Vanzetti was a vegetarian some of the time, “most of the time,” as portrayed in Boston by Upton Sinclair, who was himself a vegetarian some of the time. A Fragment of the Prison Experiences of Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman describes the especially bad treatment of the vegetarians Morris Becker, arrested in 1917 along with Goldman at a peace rally and convicted of obstructing the draft for World War I (Wikipedia's anniversaries amusingly mixes up Louis Kramer, also arrested there, with a baseball exec), and Nicholas Zogg, arrested for sending arms to the PLM but also convicted just of obstructing the draft. Anarchist Voices includes reminiscences of the Stelton Modern and Stony Ford Schools. Eva Bein recalled,

Another thing is that we didn't eat any meat, and I remained a vegetarian until eighteen. We ate Protose and Notose [sic] in cans — mostly nuts, beans, and the like — and all sorts of Kellogg's cereals, which they would buy at Macy's and have shipped to Stony Ford, and bread without yeast.

Dora Keyser described running a vegetarian restaurant around 1920 on 103rd St; she remained an active anarchist and vegetarian her whole life. Vegetarian restaurants were also a meeting place for radicals on the West Coast. In her autobiography, Tomorrow is Beautiful, the Ukraine-born activist Lucy Robins Lang related how Jack London, who was vegetarian at the time, persuaded her and her husband, Bob Robins, to open a vegetarian restaurant in San Francisco. It was at 418 Market St. and named the St. Helena Vegetarian Cafe. Bohemians as well as radicals congregated there until it burned down. A difference from East Coast society is suggested by their running an ad in the Blue Book.

The most important Yiddish-language anarchist newspaper in America was ⁧פרייע אַרבעטער שטימע⁩ Fraye Arbeter Shtime 'Free Voice of Labor'. There is a documentary about it on the usual streaming services or DVD from the public library. Now, it might be unseemly for vegetarian restaurants to compete for anti-capitalist reader-diners. So six (later seven) of them appear to have regularly run a cooperative ad.

אַן ענטפער פון די וועגעטאַרישע רעסטאָראַנען
an entfer fun di vegetarishe restoranen
An answer from the vegetarian restaurants
מיר די אונטערצייכענטע וועגעטאַרישע רעסטאָראַנען קיפּערס ערקלעהרען דאָ און בעווייזען פאַקטיש, אַז די רעעלסטע און אַנשטענדיגסטע ביזנעס מעטאָדען ווערען אָנגעווענדעט אין אונזערע רעסטאָראַנען.
mir di untertseykhente vegetarishe restoranen kipers erklehren do un beveyzen faktish, az di reelste un anshtendigste biznes metoden veren ongevendet in unzere restoranen.
We the undersigned vegetarian restaurant keepers, explain here and prove actually that the most real and decent business methods are used in our restaurants.
אַז מיר יאָגען זיף ניט נאך רויבערישע פּראָפיטען אונטער אַ וועגעטאַריש־פרומער מאַסקע צו ראַטעווען די ליידענדע מענשהייט, בעווייזט דאָ דער פאָלגענדער אויסצוג פון אונזערע ביל אָף פערס, וועלכע זיינען כמעט אין די אַלע 6 רעסטאָראַנען די זעלבע.
az mir yogen zif nit nakh royberishe profiten unter a vegetarish-frumer maske tsu rateven di leydende menshheyt, beveyzt do der folgender oystsug fun unzere bil of fers, velkhe zeynen khmet in di ale 6 restoranen di zelbe.
That we are not chasing robberish profits under a vegetarian-pious mask of saving suffering humanity, is proven by the following excerpt from our bills of fare, which are almost the same in all 6 restaurants.
  • ⁧רעגולאַר דינער 50ס. בעשטעהט פון: איין פאָרשפּייז, אַ קאָטלעט, סופּ און צושפּייז, ברויט און פּוטער.⁩
    regular diner 50s. beshteht fun: eyn forshpeyz, a kotlet, sup un tsushpeyz, broyt un puter.
    Regular Dinner 50¢. Consists of: an appetizer, a cutlet, soup and side dish, bread and butter.
  • ⁧איינצעלנע דישעס:⁩ eyntselne dishes: Individual Dishes:
    • ⁧וועדזשעטייבל סופּ 10ס.⁩ vejeteybl sup 10s. Vegetable Soup 10¢.
    • ⁧באָקווהיט סופּ 10ס.⁩ bokvhit sup 10s. Buckwheat Soup 10¢.
    • ⁧רייז און מילך 10ס.⁩ reyz un milkh 10s. Rice and Milk 10¢.
    • ⁧גראנאלא און מילך 10ס.⁩ granola un milkh 10s. Granola and Milk 10¢.
    • ⁧אַלע פלייקס און מילך 10ס.⁩ ale fleyks un milkh 10s. All Flakes and Milk 10¢.
    • ⁧שרעדעד ווהיט 10ס.⁩ shreded vhit 10s. Shredded Wheat 10¢.
  • ⁧קאָטלעטען פון דר. קעלאָג׳ס פּראטאָס אָדער נאטאס, וועלכע איז פיעל טהייערער ווי פלייש:⁩
    kotleten fun dr. kelog's protos oder notos, velkhe iz fyel theyerer vi fleysh:
    Cutlets from Dr. Kellogg's Protose or Nuttose, which is much more expensive than meat:
    • ⁧פּראטאס קאָטלעט 20ס.⁩ protos kotlet 20s. Protose Cutlet 20¢.
    • ⁧נאטאס קאטלעט 20ס.⁩ notos kotlet 20s. Nuttose Cutlet 20¢.
    • ⁧ראאַסטס 20ס.⁩ roasts 20s. Roasts 20¢.
    • ⁧סאַלאַטען 10ס., 15ס., 20ס.⁩ salaten 10s., 15s., 20s. Salads 10¢, 15¢, 20¢.

    • ⁧עגג סענדוויטש 10ס.⁩ egg sendvitsh 10s. Egg Sandwich 10¢.
    • ⁧טאָמייטאָ סענדוויטש 10ס.⁩ tomeyto sendvitsh 10s. Tomato Sandwich 10¢.
    • ⁧פּראטאס סענדוויטש 15ס.⁩ protos sendvitsh 15s. Protose Sandwich 15¢.
    • ⁧נאטאס סענדוויטש 15ס.⁩ notos sendvitsh 15s. Nuttose Sandwich 15¢.
    • ⁧לעטוס סענדוויטש 10ס.⁩ letus sendvitsh 10s. Lettuce Sandwich 10¢.
    • ⁧קאפע, טילך, קאקא 5ס.⁩ kafe, tilkh, kaka 5s. Coffee, Tea, Cocoa 5¢.
    • ⁧ברויט און פּוטער 5ס.⁩ broyt un puter 5s. Bread and Butter 5¢.
אונזערע קאָפטימערם וועלען אויך באַשטעטיגען אַז מען רעדט און אַגיטירט ניט אין קיינע פון אונזערע רעסטאָראַנען, אַז מען בעהאַנדעלט אַלעמען אַנשטענדיג, אַז מען גיט גאַנץ גרויסע פּאָרציאָנען, גענוג ברויט (האָל־ווהיט, דאָם געזונדסטע און קאָסטבאַרסטע ברויט), מיר זיינען די איינציגע, וועלכע יוזען דר. קעלאָגג׳ס בעטעל קריק פּראָדוקטען, די קיטשענם זיינען אַבסאָלוט פריי פאַר אינספּעקשאָן, מיר זיינען אימער די ערשטע צו סעטלען מיט דער ווייטערס יוניאָן.
unzere koftimerm velen oykh bashtetigen az men redt un agitirt nit in keyne fun unzere restoranen, az men behandelt alemen anshtendig, az men git gants groyse portsyonen, genug broyt (hol-vhit, dom gezundste un kostbarste broyt), mir zeynen di eyntsige, velkhe iuzen dr. kelogg's betel krik produkten, di kitshenm zeynen absolut frey far inspekshon, mir zeynen imer di ershte tsu setlen mit der veyters iunyon.
Our chefs will also confirm that one does not agitate in any of our restaurants, that one treats everyone decently, that one gives quite large portions, enough bread (whole wheat, the healthiest and cheapest bread), we are the only ones who use Dr. Kellogg's Battle Creek products, the kitchens are absolutely free for inspection, we are always the first to settle with the waiters union.
מעהר איינצעלהייטען וועט מען מיט צופריעדענהייט געבען יעדען איינעם אין אונזערע פאָלגענדע רעסטאָראַנען
mehr eyntselheyten vet men mit tsufryedegheyt geben yeden eynem in unzere folgende restoranen
More details will be gladly given to anyone in our following restaurants.
  • ⁧ב. סאזער׳ס וועגעטאַריער רעסטאָראַן⁩
    ⁧6טע עוועניו, צווישען 25טע און 26טע סטריטס⁩
    b. sazer's vegetaryer restoran 6te eveniu, tsvishen 25te un 26te strits
    B. Sazer's Vegetarian Restaurant
    6th Avenue, between 25th and 26th Streets
  • ⁧ב. סאזער׳ס וועגעטאַריער רעסטאָראַן⁩
    ⁧62 וועסט 36טע סטריט, צווישען 5טע און 6טע עוועניוס⁩
    b. sazer's vegetaryer restoran 62 vest 36te strit, tsvishen 5te un 6te evenius
    B. Sazer's Vegetarian Restaurant
    62 West 36th Street, between 5th and 6th Avenues
  • ⁧טאפּילאָווסקי און מענדעלסאָן וועגעטאַריער רעסטאָראַן⁩
    ⁧68 ספּרינג סטריט, צווישען לאַפאַיעט און קראָסבי סטריטס⁩
    tapilovski un mendelson vegetaryer restoran 68 spring strit, tsvishen lafayet un krosbi strits
    Tapilowski and Mendelssohn Vegetarian Restaurant
    68 Spring Street, between Lafayette and Crosby Streets
  • ⁧סילבערפארב׳ס וועגעטאַריער רעסטאָראַן⁩
    ⁧67 סעקאָנד עװ., קאָרנער 4טע סט.
    silberfarb's vegetaryer restoran 67 sekond ev., korner 4te st.
    Silverfarb's Vegetarian Restaurant
    67 Second Ave., corner 4th St.
  • ⁧טאָלסטאָי וועגעטאַריער רעסטאָראַן⁩
    ⁧55 2טע עוועניו, צווישען 3טע און 4טע סטריטס⁩
    tolstoi vegetaryer restoran 55 2te eveniu, tsvishen 3te un 4te strits
    Tolstoy Vegetarian Restaurant
    55 2nd Avenue, between 3rd and 4th Streets
  • ⁧ווינוס וועגעטאַריער רעסטאָראַן⁩
    ⁧26 דילענסי סטריט, צווישען פאַרפייטה און קריסטיע סטריטם⁩
    vinus vegetaryer restoran 26 dilensi strit, tsvishen farfeyth un kristye stritm
    Venus Vegetarian Restaurant
    26 Delancey Street, between Fairfield and Christie Streets
  • ⁧עפנער׳ס איידיעל וועגעט. רעסטאָראַן, 1843 פּיטקין עוועניו, בראָנזוויל.⁩
    efner's eydyel veget. restoran, 1843 pitkin eveniu, bronzvil.
    Efner's Ideal Veget. Restaurant, 1843 Pitkin Avenue, Brownsville.

Nor was it only working class or immigrants. Edward Carpenter, the anarchist philosopher and early gay-rights activist, was a vegetarian and anti-visisectionist. (See, for example, here.)

George Bernard Shaw, the most famous vegetarian of his day, asserted The Impossibilities of Anarchism, as against (Fabian) Socialism. His biographer, Michael Holroyd summed up the intersections in play then.

From agnostics, anarchist and atheists; dress- and diet-reformers; from economists, feminists, philanthropists, rationalists, spiritualists, all striving to destroy or replace Christianity, was the socialist revival of the late nineteenth century to be draw.

George Orwell similarly felt that, in the face of rising Fascism,

For the moment the only possible course for any decent person, however much of a Tory or an anarchist by temperament, is to work for the establishment of Socialism.

He sometimes described himself as a Tory Anarchist, and was, moreoever, having none of the rest, wanting socialists that were rougher and straighter. Lightly in The road to Wigan Pier.

The first thing that must strike any outside observer is that Socialism in its developed form is a theory confined entirely to the middle class. The typical Socialist is not, as tremulous old ladies imagine, a ferocious-looking working man with greasy overalls and a raucous voice. He is either a youthful snob-Bolshevik who in five years' time will quite probably have made a wealthy marriage and been converted to Roman Catholicism; or, still more typically, a prim little man with a white-collar job, usually a secret teetotaller and often with vegetarian leanings, with a history of Nonconformity behind him, and, above all, with a social position which he has no intention of forfeiting.

And more bluntly in a letter to Jack Common.

And then so many of them are the sort of eunuch type with a vegetarian smell who go about spreading sweetness and light and have at the back of their minds a vision of the working class all T.T., well washed behind the ears, readers of Edward Carpenter or some other pious sodomite and talking with B.B.C. accents.

One also thinks here of Herbert Read, the War Poet and champion of modern art, converted to anarchism by reading Carpenter's Non-Governmental Society (as well as Bakunin and Kropotkin), who nevertheless accepted a knighthood in 1953 for contributions to literature. Read was never, I do not believe, a strict vegetarian. But a couple entries in the “Extracts from a Diary” (these were originally letters to his future wife Evelyn) chapter of the “War Diary” section of The Contrary Experience: Autobiographies hint in that direction: (29.xii.16) an ideal cook tolerent of his “vegetarian proclivities”; (26.x.18) “Lunch at Eustace Miles' — vegetarian!” (Meaning Eustice Miles's restaurant on Chandos St in Charing Cross. The lunch was with “Toby” Rutter. After lunch, they went to see Wyndham Lewis's exhibition, but Lewis was late, so they went round to Ezra Pound's for a while. Lewis showed up later and afterwards they went to tea with Osbert and Sachie Sitwell.)

The FAI, the capital-A Anarchists in Orwell's Homage to Catalonia, debated, according to José Peirats, their attitude toward vegetarians.

B) Ante las corrientes lingüísticas, vegetarianas, etc., ¿se deben formar agrupaciones naturistas, esperantistas, dentro del movimiento anarquista? Se acuerda ir a estas agrupaciones y aceptarlas también, respetándose aquella labor por ellas más preferida, con tal que al adherirse sean ante todo anarquistas.
B) Given the linguistic, vegetarian, etc. currents, should naturist and Esperantist groups be formed within the anarchist movement? It is agreed to go to these groups and accept them as well, respecting the work they most prefer, as long as when they join they are above all anarchists.

Which adds another idealist dimension closer to the focus of this blog, language reformers and Esperantists in particular. It also takes us back to the starting point of this post, as Yiddish was one of Zamenhof's native languages. Wikipedia has a whole page on Anarchism and Esperanto. As for Vegetarianism and Esperanto, for the 8th Esperanto Congress in Kraków, in 1912, the following arrangements were made.

Vegetarana restoracio — Konsiderante la fakton ke inter la esperantistoj troviĝas sufiĉe multaj vegetaranoj la Komitato faris kontrakton kun vegetarana restoracio kies mastrino kaj servistaro parolas Esperanton.
Vegetarian restaurant — Considering the fact that there are quite a few vegetarians among Esperantists, the Committee made a contract with a vegetarian restaurant whose owner and staff speak Esperanto.

The International Vegetarian Union (IVU) has a page on the Tutmonda Esperantista Vegetarana Asocio (TEVA) 'World Esperantist Vegetarian Association'. (The two organizations were started at the same time and place, Dresden August 1908, where J. Arthur Gill arranged for vegetarian Esperantists to meet at the time of the 4th Esperanto Congress, and then for non-Esperantists to meet there a little before and form the broader organization.) BitArkivo.org has scans of its Vegetarano from the '20s to the '60s and Esperantista Vegetarano from the '70s into this century. Zamenhof's Fundamenta krestomatio includes Kio estas vegetarismo? 'What is vegetarianism?'.

Eve Jochnowitz, Yiddish scholar, culinary historian, and vegetarian, wrote a paper, “A Younger World: Vegetarian Writing and Recipes in Yiddish as Political Strategies,” that puts such writing in the context of “Socialism, Anarchism, Zionism, and Aguda.” It too retells Nadir's “Nutose un Protose” story, noting that she was surprised to learn that these were real products. But it also translates part of a letter from Sholem Aleichem to Joseph Perper where he says, apropos of communicating with Zamenhof about publishing Esperanto translations of his work, “Vegetarianism and Esperanto stem from the same ideological root.” This is from a piece “Sholem Aleichem Un Zayn Batsiung Tsum Vegetarizm,” 'Sholam Aleichem and his attitude toward vegetarianism' in ⁧דער וועגעטארישער געדאנק⁩ der vegetarisher gedank 'The Vegetarian Idea'. This periodical only ran for three issues and this is from no. 3 of March 1930; among all libraries, Harvard only has no. 1 and NYPL only has no. 2. Only CJH's YIVO Vilna Collection, where I believe Jochnowitz works, has all three. In any case, the original is far away and there may be some time before it is digitized.

But what of vegetarian anarchist Esperantists? Esperanto was one of the courses at the Stelton Modern School mentioned above. Outside of America, the Pearce Register of First World War Conscientious Objectors on the Imperial War Museum's website includes one William Greaves (b. 1885), a shipping clerk, objected with the motivation,

Non-Sect; NCF (No-Conscription Fellowship); Anarchist-Communist; Esperanto; Vegetarian;

The record there ends in 1917 with him having served a prison sentence with hard labour for disobeying orders in the Non-Combatant Corps.

Élisée Reclus, the vegetarian anarchist geographer, wrote approvingly of Esperanto in L'homme et la terre.

C'est, d'un côté, que le sentiment de fraternité internationale a sa part dans le désir d'employer une langue commune, sentiment qui se rencontre surtout chez les travailleurs socialistes, hostiles à toute idée de guerre, et, de l'autre, que l'esperanto, plus facile à apprendre que n'importe quelle autre langue, s'offre de prime abord aux travailleurs ayant peu de loisir pour leurs études.
It is, on the one hand, that the feeling of international brotherhood has its part in the desire to use a common language, a feeling which is found especially among socialist workers, hostile to any idea of war, and, on the other hand, that Esperanto, easier to learn than any other language, is readily available to workers who have little time for their studies.

The Weimar anarchists of the ISK were required to be vegetarians. Leonard Nelson asserted this as a basic commitment outside of any consensus, writing,

Ein Arbeiter, der nicht nur ein „verhinderter Kapitalist“ sein will, und dem es also Ernst ist mit dem Kampf gegen jede Ausbeutung, der beugt sich nicht der verächtlichen Gewohnheit, harmlose Tiere auszubeuten, der beteiligt sich nicht an dem täglichen millionenfachen Mord, der an Grausamkeit, Rohheit und Feigheit alle Schrecknisse des Weltkriegs in den Schatten stellt.
Das sind Angelegenheiten, Genossen, die entziehen sich der Abstimmung.
A worker who does not just want to be a “would-be capitalist” and who is serious about the fight against all exploitation does not give in to the contemptible habit of exploiting harmless animals, he does not take part in the daily murder of millions that in terms of cruelty, brutality and cowardice, eclipses all the horrors of the World War.
These are matters, comrades, that cannot be voted on.

The ISK published La Kritika observanto: revuo politika kaj kultura 'The Critical observer: a political and cultural magazine'. There seem to only be a few copies in libraries and only one issue has been digitized. (The BnF WorldCat entry actually points to this ÖNB copy.) It is not listed in the LIDIAP. But copies do show up in used bookstores occasionally. As might be expected, its few ads are for other printed matter.

Esperanto is strongly associated with Chinese anarchists at the start of the twentieth century, of which there were two groups, one in France and one in Japan. 新世紀 Xin Shiji 'New Century', published in Paris 1907-1910, started out with a subtitle La Tempoj Novaj 'New Times', but later switched to La Siècle Nouveau 'New Century'. It ran some articles on 萬國新語 wànguó xīnyǔ 'Esperanto'. One of the leaders of this group and funder of its printing was 李石曾 Li Shizeng, who was a vegetarian as well as an anarchist and did much to introduce soy foods to Europe. To this end, and to provide funds and a place to employ Chinese students from the Work-Study Movement, he started Usine de la Caséo-Sojaïne / 巴黎豆腐工廠 Bālí dòufu gōngchǎng 'Paris tofu factory'. Again, the Soyinfo Center has a book with extensive bibliography and illustrations on this.

天義報 Tianyi bao 'Journal of Natural Justice', published in Tokyo 1907-1908, printed a strange drawing by Adolphe Willette titled Al Elisée Reclus and subtitled Unu mamo por ĉiu / Unu koro por ĉiuj 'A breast for each / A heart for all'. The scan is pretty hard to make out; the same picture appeared as a postcard and better images of it can be found on a site for anarchist postcards and another for a postcard dealer.

There was debate on what to call Esperanto in Chinese. In addition to the above 萬國新語 wànguó xīnyǔ 'new language for ten thousand nations', there was the more direct 世界語 shìjiè yǔ 'world language' — which would eventually win, a calque 希望者 xīwàng zhě 'hoping one', a phonetic approximation 愛斯不難讀 àisībùnándú 'loved as not difficult to read', and a shorter phonetic 愛世語 àishìyǔ 'love the world language'.

The most important anarchist in China was 師復 Shifu. He was born 劉兆彬 Liu Shaobin, changed his name and then dropped the family name 劉 Liu altogether as part of a rejection of the family system, in which both clans divided people and men dominated women through marriage. In Esperanto, he wrote as Sifo. In 1912, after reading 新世紀 Xin Shiji, he converted to anarchism and started the 心社 Xin She 'Conscience Society'. In 1913, he founded the journal 晦鳴錄 Huiming lu 'Cock-Crow Record', with subtitle 平民之聲 pingmin zhi sheng 'Voice of the Common People' and Esperanto title La Voĉo de la Popolo 'The Voice of the People'; the Chinese name was later shortened to just 民聲 Min Sheng 'Voice of the People'. On the second page of the first issue, Shifu laid out each of their principles.

  • 共產主義。 gòngchǎn zhǔyì. 'communism'
  • 反對軍國主義。 fǎnduì jūnguó zhǔyì. 'anti-militarism'
  • 工團主義。 gōngtuán zhǔyi. 'syndicalism'
  • 反對宗教主義。 fǎnduì zōngjiào zhǔyì. 'anti-religion-ism'
  • 反對家族主義。 fǎnduì jiāzú zhǔyì. 'anti-family-ism'
  • 素食主義。 sùshí zhǔyì. 'vegetarianism'
  • 語言統一。 yǔyán tǒngyī. 'language unification'
  • 萬國大同。 wànguó dàtóng. 'Great Harmony for all nations'

Note how the first two pages have Esperanto headings, Deklaracio 'Declaration' and Klarigo pri anarĥismo 'Explanation of anarchism'. Elsewhere there is 素食主義淺說 sùshí zhǔyì qiǎnshuō 'A brief introduction to vegetarianism' headed La vegetarismo.

Shifu and his comrades formed an urban commune to try to put these principles into practice. They planned a rural commune, but those plans were never accomplished. Despite their commitment in principle to gender equality, the cooking and cleaning were done by Shifu's sisters. (His brothers and sisters helped operate the printing press and the sisters also did the binding.) Changes in eating seem to have mostly been using tofu instead of meat, and, for some reason, forks instead of chopsticks. Those details come from an unpublished Huiyi Shifu (回憶師復, I imagine) 'Recollections of Shifu' by 莫纪彭 Mo Jipeng, related in Edward Krebs, Shifu: Soul of Chinese Anarchism. There is also 莫紀彭先生訪問紀錄 / Mo Jipeng xian sheng fang wen ji lu 'The Reminiscences of Mr. Mo Jie-peng', which was published about the same time (1997) as that biography (1998). I think these are two different documents, covering similar memories, but I might be confused. The latter is in Google Books. Snippet view isn't hopeless, but it helps to know that it uses the more modern 世界語 shìjiè yǔ 'world language' for 'Esperanto' and both 無政府 wúzhèngfǔ 'no government' and the phonetic 安那其 ānnàqí for 'anarchy'. As well as a summary of anarchist history (with some badly mangled European names in Roman type, transcribed from handwriting, I suppose: Elesee Reckno), he recalls slogans like 素食爲大同起點之情! sùshí wèi dàtóng qǐdiǎn zhī qíng 'Vegetarianism is the starting point of Datong!' But also more personal details, such as that the others had a nickname for Shifu of 「正經先生」 zhèngjīng xiānshēng “Mr. Serious.” (Krebs has 'Mr. Earnest', but that suggests the Wildean pun to me.) Or that 烹調是香烈的! pēngtiáo shì xiāng liè de 'The cooking was fragrant and strong!'

Shifu died in 1915. Issue No. 23 ran a special tribute to him, with a picture titled S-ro Sifo 'Mr. Sifo' and 師​復​者​遺像 Shī​fù​zhě​yíxiàng 'Portrait of Shifu'. The Esperanto version from La Voĉo de la Popolo is not scanned here (or anywhere else I can find). All these Google Books scans are actually of a 1967 reprint, edited by Martin Bernal, still a postdoc at Cambridge and far away from any controveries about the Classical World. (The 1992 reprint, edited by 狭間直樹 Naoki Hazama, might be more complete.) But it appears to have been reproduced in The British Esperantist of August 1915. Both list the principles of 心社 Xin She 'Conscience Society' Konscienco.

  1. 不食肉。bù shíròu. 'Do not eat meat.' kontraŭ viando
  2. 不飲酒。bù yǐnjiǔ. 'Do not drink liquor.' kontraŭ alkoholo
  3. 不吸煙。bù xīyān. 'Do not smoke tobacco.' kontraŭ tabako
  4. 不用僕役。bùyòng púyì. 'Do not use servants.' kontraŭ sklaveco
  5. 不乘轎及人力車。bù chéng jiào jí rénlìchē. 'Do not ride in sedan-chairs or rickshas.' kontraŭ homveturilo
  6. 不婚姻。bù hūnyīn. 'Do not marry.' kontraŭ edzeco
  7. 不稱族姓。bù chēng zú xìng. 'Do not use a family name.' kontraŭ familieco
  8. 不作官吏。bùzuò guānlì. 'Do not serve as an official.' ne ŝtatoficistiĝo
  9. 不作議員。bùzuò yìyuán. 'Do not serve as a member of a representative body.' ne deputatiĝo
  10. 不入政黨。bù rù zhèngdǎng. 'Do not join a political party.' ne politikpartianiĝo
  11. 不作海陸軍人。bùzuò hǎi lùjūn rén. 'Do not serve in the army or navy.' ne militistiĝo
  12. 不奉宗教。bù fèng zōngjiào. 'Do not believe in a religion.' kontraŭ religio

Those English translations are Krebs's. The original list can also be found here in an collection of Shifu's writings in Chinese, hosted by Marxists, that also transcribes a defense of Esperanto headed in French, Les Anarchistes et la Internationale Langue“Esperanto”, but nothing of diet outside the whole list.

Perhaps more importantly, and maybe even as a testament to the idea that using Esperanto might reach a worldwide audience (plus circling this post back), Emma Goldman's Mother Earth published a translation of part of that tribute from Esperanto into English by the British Esperantist H[arry] E. Shaw, though it does not repeat all the principles (beyond implying anarchism) or even mention his vegetarianism. 民聲 Min Sheng 'Voice of the People' continued to be published sporadically in Shanghai through 1916. In 1921, it was restarted in Canton. The Esperanto and English supplements for these last issues are included in the scan. For instance, No. 31 of April 1921, with a piece on Kropotkin, who had just died. But this was possibly without as much effort to meld all Shifu's -isms.

Thursday, November 2, 2023

Maize 2

More European words following the same ideas as previously include:

  • Catalan blat de moro 'Moor's wheat'.
  • Hungarian törökbúza 'Turkish wheat'.
  • Basque arto, which originally meant 'millet'.
  • Bulgarian царевица tsarevitsa < Цариград Tsarigrad 'Imperial City', that is, Constantinople / Instanbul.
  • Welsh indrawn is just Ind- + grawn 'India grain'.

A number of Slavic languages have something like Russian кукуру́за kukurúza. Vasmer says, «Трудное слово», 'it's a difficult word'. He does cite Kretchmer's idea that it is from the sound one makes when feeding cornmeal to turkeys. In addition to such a cucuruz, Romanian porumb originally meant 'pigeon', on account of the shape, and a regional păpușoi is from păpușă 'doll'.

Around the Mediterranean, the imputed source may need to change.

  • Turkish mısır 'Egyptian', short for mısır buğdayı 'Egyptian wheat' or mısır darısı 'Egyptian millet'.
  • Likewise, Armenian: եգիպտացորեն egiptacʿoren 'Egyptian wheat'.
  • Conversely, in Egyptian Arabic, ذُرَةٌ dhura is either 'sorghum' or 'maize', per Lane (scan), the former is disambiguated as ذُرَة صَيْفِىّ dhura sayfia 'summer sorghum' or ذُرَة قَيْظِىّ dhura qayzia 'spring sorghum' and the latter ذُرَة شَامِىّ dhura shamia 'Syrian sorghum' or ذُرَة كِيزَان dhura kizan 'vessel(?) sorghum'.
  • Maltese qamħirrun = qamħ ir-rum 'wheat of the Romans'.

Modern Hebrew תירס tiras was named (in imitation of the European "Turkish grain" words) for Tiras, one of the sons of Japheth in Genesis 10:2, because of an association with Turkey. In his Dictionary, s.v., Klein has a rant against this, partly because in the Targum (and the Protestant Samuel Bochart's Phaleg, which similarly aimed to equate modern names with the tribes of Noah), תירס Tiras is תרקא tarreka Thracia, and according to some in the Talmud, פָּרַס pāras 'Persia'; so something else is needed if you want Turkey.

In Persian, the normal word is ذرت zorrat, borrowed from that Arabic ذُرَّة dhura, and like it formerly meaning 'sorghum'. An older term (according to, for instance, here) was گندم مکه 'Mecca wheat'. This idea is also found to the North and East around the Caspian. The main Azeri word is qarğıdalı, evidently from qarğı 'reed'. But (according to this), there are other regional forms, such as məkkə-buğda 'Mecca wheat' in Nakhchivan and Lankaran, yekə buğda 'big wheat' in Balakan and Zagatala, and hacı-buğda 'Haji wheat' in (Azerbaijani speaking parts of ?) Dagestan. So too, Turkmen mekgejöwen, Uzbek makkajoʻxori, Tajik Ҷуворимакка 'Mecca sorghum', sometimes shortened, as it is in Kazak жүгері jügerı / Kyrgyz жүгөрү jügörü; this second part coming from Pers. جواری jovâri 'sorghum' (Horn), also the Dari word for 'maize', and cognate with Sanskrit यव yava, “barley”. (jowari is enough of an English word to make it into the OED.)

In the actual Indian subcontinent, Indian corn is also often makka. So makki ki roti, a maize flatbread, served with sarson ka saag, mustard greens: ਮੱਕੀ ਦੀ ਰੋਟੀ + ਸਰੋਂ ਦਾ ਸਾਗ is (or is marketed as) quintessential Punjabi street food. Around here, the makki ka atta used seems to be coarser than masa harina, so the bread is stiffer than tortillas. More examples: Hindi मक्का / Urdu مکا‎ makkā or मकई makaī, Marathi मका makā, Oriya ମକା môka, Gujarati મકાઈ makāī, Tamil மக்காச்சோளம் makkāccōḷam, Telugu మొక్కజొన్న mokkajonna, Kannada ಮೆಕ್ಕೆ ಜೋಳ mekke jōḷa. Malayalam is മക്കച്ചോളം makkacōḷaṁ or just ചോളം cōḷaṁ, that part being common Dravidian for 'sorghum'. (cholum is also enough of an English word to make it into the OED.)

The conventional explanation, again, is that makka is 'Mecca', that being, following the common pattern, the supposed origin. If not entirely fanciful, it would presumably be the Spanish who brought it from the New World to the Arabs.

But there is also a controversy of long standing looking to prove Pre-Columbian origins for maize in Asia and the Subcontinent in particular. Some of this focuses on physical evidence. For example, from the late '80s:

This debate continues on Usenet, blogs and other personal sites, and now social media. As far as I can tell, the evidence for and against has not much changed in decades, even while the details have been worked out in the development of maize from teosinte in Central America and the spread of the various early maize races throughout the Americas. It is now possible, though, to access higher resolution photos and even a video tour of the statues with what might be corn cobs.

Concentrating on the words, an early origin would imply that there ought to be Sanskrit words for maize. Watt gives a few and takes three 'corn' entries from Monier-Williams, which he then decides were probably millet or sorghum. (It is unfortunately easy to find recent online papers quoting these very ones as evidence of an early maize arrival.) Turner has markaka, a word attested only in lexicographical works, as the source of 'maize' words from Ḍumāki mʌkæi to Marāṭhī makā. His gloss for the headword is 'Ardea argala', as in Monier-Williams, preceded by:

मर्क् mark (prob. invented to serve as the source of the words below), to go, move.

But Ardea argala is an adjutant bird. Still McGregor has two entries for Hindi मक्का makkā, with the 'maize' sense “conn[ected with] markaka-.” This is copied into Wiktionary, whose second Reference does (p. 106) note Central Asian mäkkä-jokhari (see above) and so the possible Mecca derivation. On the other hand, Václav Blažek, in article analyzing 15 Indo-European 'barley' words, sums his theory up (2.4.5) as a *mr̥k- 'seeds of barley', as 'kind of corn which must be irrigated' from *merk- 'to dip', which also explains a water bird. But the path of Mecca jowari would need explaining.

Or there is markaṭaka 'a species of grass', from Āpastamba's Śrautasūtra, which Turner compares to markaka-. It also occurs in food lists in the Mārkaṇḍeya and Padma Puranas. It seems to be ragi.

The Gauhati copper-plate grant of Indrapala has boundaries involving a makkhi-yāna. Dr. Hoernle (met here before on account of the Bower Manuscript) points out that this might be 'the road lined with maize (-fields)' or another form of makhānā (which is coincidentally popped like popcorn).

All of this is obviously colored by nationalism and religion, particularly in our present climate. Makki-di-roti probably isn't ancient Punjabi cuisine. (“Makki di roti is colonial violence” might be trolling / Poe's law.) But it is, at worst, a happy accident of colonialism, like banh mi or nem.

Another set of words includes Bengali ভুট্টা / Hindi भुट्टा / Urdu بهٿا bhuṭṭā, which McGregor, Platts, and Turner trace to bhr̥ṣṭá¹ 'fried / roasted'. But another possibility is that it is related to Indian words for Tibet / Bhutan (and so like Bhut Jolokia).

As to the earlier suspicion that by bútás Burton meant bhuṭṭā and the reasonableness of doing that in an African context. First, in one of his Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay he wrote, “the ‘búta’ of Hindostan, young maize roasted or boiled.” Likewise, back in Africa, his 1859 report to the Royal Geographical Society on “The Lake Regions of Central Equatorial Africa” has several pages of agriculture and the paragraph on Zea mays contains, “green maize or young ‘corn-cob,’ the buta of Western India.” The two volume Lake Regions Of Central Africa, published the next year, does not have either the botanical name or the India reference. Elsewhere, someone's report, “Sketches of Abyssinia,” taken from Indian Public Opinion, says:

Besides these they have the bhutta, or the Indian corn, which they call mashela bahry [ምሸላ ባሕሪ], or corn from the sea—their usual method of distinguishing any foreign importation.

So it works, given the right audience and maybe a little more qualification than the Pongo-land passage had.

In East Africa, Swahili muhindi (Burton mentioned it in that RGS report and here in Zanzibar) indicates that maize comes from India.

In his journal on the Second Zambesi expedition, on Aug 31, 1858, Dr. Livingstone recorded his analysis of a common pattern for maize names:

I consented and went to wood on the island of Nyakasenna. Found the native cotton called Tonje Cadja growing on it. It clings to the seed and, from its hard crisp feel in the hands, seems more like wool than cotton. The fibre is strong, curly and short. Tonje manga is the introduced variety and, as that same word is applied to maize, we learn in this etymology that maize is not an indigenous but an imported grain. Mapira is the name of the large millet or sorghum and Mapira manga of Maize (Foreign mapira).

For reasons that will become evident in a second, take note that the tonje manga that Livingstone found and Kirk reported was likely from India. And that manga specifically means something foreign arriving by sea and is named for the Manga Arabs from Muscat, the name coming from Arabic مَنْقَعُ 'pool of water' or, by extension, 'sea'.

Yoruba, Igbo, and Edo cognates ọka are from a common root for 'millet', but now additionally mean 'maize'. Westermann identified a larger set of -kà- 'Rohrgras,Sorghum' for his 'West Sudanic' languages. His overall Sudansprachen 'Sudanic languages' form, I believe, the basis, more or less, of proto-Niger-Congo. “The Diffusion of Maize in Nigeria. A Historical and Linguistic Investigation” listed out these and other terms to determine, in particular, the role of the Portuguese in its spread there.

ọka is used to make ẹkọ, which Burton (in Yorubaland) compared to sowens. Lumpers, for whom grits and polenta are really the same thing, will probably want to include ugali, if not angú …, hasty-pudding and stirabout (Burton in Brazil, explaining how it is made from fubá). Splitters who don't go all the way to distinguishing all the national varieties, but do need to call out the slightly fermented version, in search of an Englishing might go with corn-pap. This African sense does make it in the OED's pap noun2 1.b. Even though this is immediately informed by Africaans, Harriot had written of, “boyling the floure with water into a pappe.” Pap seems to be on the top of the flour packaging on Amazon with other names below.

While describing Savi in The Kingdom of Whydah (present day Benin), Burton includes a footnote on the preparation of akansan, which is usually spelled akasan. Here is a photo from Michael W. Twitty, the Kosher/Soul culinary historian's, Twitter; note how a respondant from Nigeria recognizes is as more or less the same as eko.

I am not sure it is the most effective way to convey the decision tree, but this chart of “Sub-Saharan African Maize-Based Food-Processing Practices” is pretty amazing.

An old LanguageHat post pointed to a paper on Bantu porridge words, which pointed to another paper on manioc noting a mid-17th century Dutch reference to maize flour in fufu. Wikipedia has a helpful note, thrown into a typically random paragraph in the fufu article warning against Eastern and Southern Africans confusing it with their own ugali. And, as noted above, milie, Dutch mille, can be 'millet' or 'maize'. Still, in Dapper's Naukeurige beschrijvinge der Afrikaensche gewesten van Egypten, …, we find first, “Mille, Mais by d'Indianen geheten,” which seems unambiguous, and then, “Dan hunne gewoonlijke ſpijze is meeſt fondy of foufy, van meel van mille.” Even more strangely, the previous paragraph had noted, “Zy hebben groten overvloet van Banannas en Mandioque, of Farinhe-wortelen, welke twee gewaffen gen broot verſtrekken.” As though at that time they made bread from cassava flour but fufu from maize meal.

There is also debate about pre-Columbian dispersion of maize to Africa. Much of this that is easy to find online is the work of Mervyn David Waldegrave Jeffreys, an Oxford-educated colonial administrator who got a 1934 PhD in Anthropology from UCL while (on leave from?) working in Nigeria and who collected for the Wellcome Museum. He was prolific enough that someone published a bibliography with supplement. Jeffrey's argument was refined over the years, but the essential part seems to be that Arabs brought maize to Africa before Europeans reached the New World. Linguistic evidence of that is of this sort:

  • Guinea wheat is not a standin for unknown foreign origin, or confusion with sorghum, but a sign of maize there before Europeans had been to America.
  • Portuguese milho zaburro is not a functional description (something like grain for fodder), and so liable to confusion between sorghum and maize, but always exactly the latter, so early references to it indicate that the Portuguese found maize in Africa (before they might have brought it there).
  • Manga = Mecca “I now put forward the theory that Manga is the Bantuised form of either Mecca or Mocha, both old established Arab trading emporiums, established long before the days of Mohamet.”

The zaburro confusion, if that is what it is, was already in Ramusio's translation of Barros's Asia, Primeira Decada (1552 edition, need to navigate to image number 38), where the translator adds mahiz in one margin and an illustration in the other. Now elsewhere Ramusio adds canna del mahiz in the margin of a translation of the Iambulus fragment of Bibliotheca Historica (C1 BCE). Burton makes a cameo appearance as translator of Francisco de Lacerda in Kazembe, giving, in a footnote quoted by Jeffreys, maize as milho burro 'lesser millet' and sorghum as milho grosso 'greater millet'.

As for the prerequisite that Arabs might have reached America, one potential source is early Chinese accounts of Arab sailors in 木蘭皮 Mùlán Pí, which is usually taken as Morocco and Spain under the Almoravids المرابطون Al-Murābiṭūn. But about which the botanist Hui-lin Li wrote a paper, supposing, in particular, that descriptions of a large grain there referred to maize.

Jeffrey's non-linguistic evidence includes things like that there is a ntoro that cannot eat maize on Tuesdays, which is taken to imply that it must have been known very long ago for such a taboo to have developed.

The Africanist Frank Willett (that is a link to an obituary; Wikipedia tellingly does not have an entry at all; Britannica has a one-sentence bio because he wrote their African Art article, but that's it) wrote:

Jeffreys draws on all manner of evidence, with more industry than discretion, failing to bear in mind certain important considerations and using linguistic evidence in a way no philologist could approve.

(Backstory is a squabble in Man: W J W J.)

Another paper author at the 1962 Third Conference on African History and Archaeology, where Willett presented the maize paper that contains that quote, was A. C. A. Wright, again a colonial career civil servant, who had written a 1949, “Maize Names as Indicators of Economic Contacts,” published in The Uganda Journal. (I have no idea why the UF Digital Collections have that journal, but fortunately they do. There is even a follow-up in that journal, by a Comboni Missionary, Fr. Carlo Muratori, giving Italian dialectical 'maize' forms.) He manages to cover a lot of the same territory without, that I can see, going beyond the bounds of generally accepted facts.

Once again, there is no escaping that this is politically delicate. Mealie-meal was the staple of the mines and cities of colonial Southern Africa. Jeffreys briefly appears in the work of Henrika Kuklick, the historian of anthropology. First in the paper “Contested Monuments” (in Colonial Situations) on the tortured archeology of Great Zimbabwe and Rhodesia's state policy to deny that it was the work of Bantu people centuries ago, putting Jeffrey's claims of foreign origin not only for material culture but even for vocabulary in that context. And then again in The Savage Within on the survival of diffusionism at “the only university that tolerated unreconstructed diffusionists, the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.” With footnote, “Jeffreys taught social anthropology, and seems to have been the only convinced diffusionist who was able to secure an academic appointment to do so.” Even from the diffusionist side, Ivan Van Sertima, the Guyanese author whose They Came Before Columbus aimed to show that Africans reached Central America before Columbus, pointed out that Jeffreys moved to South Africa later in life by choice, and concluded that he may have just assumed that someone brought maize to Africa, rather than that they went and got it.

This review of Van Sertima takes a swipe at Jeffreys as a way of linking to our last African work, Leo Wiener's Africa and the Discovery of America, last encountered here in connection with peanuts. Recall that his shtick is to mine word lists, find patterns, and construct significant historical revisions based on them. About eight pages of the Tobacco chapter are devoted to maize. However, as I read it, there is no challenge to the American origin of maize the plant / grain; even the basic outline of the history of its spread is accepted. Rather, it is the history of the word maize itself that gets revising. It is not a native word from a Caribbean language. Instead, the source is the word mazorca, conventionally explained as Iberian Arabic maṣúrqa formed from ماسُورة māsūrah plus a Latinate -icus suffix, and used to describe pipes used as bobbins, and which the Spaniards used to describe corn-cobs, by analogy with somewhat similar ears of sorghum they knew from Africa and the Portuguese maçaroca. Evidence of this Wiener also sees in various African words for these grains. The Bambara maka is taken to be an Arabicized form, which went from Africa to India, accounting for makka there. Note that Jeffreys (see above) had conversely taken the same to indicate that Arabs had brought maize to Africa before Columbus, naming it after Mecca.

There is also debate of long standing around the arrival of maize in East Asia. De Candolle (cited here regularly) begins his discussion of it (translation) by quoting his earlier work:

Le Maïs est originaire d'Amérique et n'a été introduit dans l'ancien monde que depuis la découverte du nouveau. Je regarde ces deux assertions comme positives, malgré l'opinion contraire de quelques auteurs et le doute émis par le célèbre agronome Bonafous, auquel nous devons le traité le plus complet sur le Maïs.
Maize is of American origin, and has only been introduced into the old world since the discovery of the new. I consider these two assertions as positive, in spite of the contrary opinion of some authors, and the doubts of the celebrated agriculturist Bonafous, to whom we are indebted for the most complete treatise upon maize.

And, indeed, Matthieu Bonafous's 1833 Traité du maïs does claim early arrivals throughout Asia. The specific evidence given includes:

  • A 13th century “Charter of Incisa,” documenting a grain called meliga.
  • Maize found in an Ancient Egyptian tomb by Rifaud in 1819.
  • Entries in 16th century Chinese materia medica.

De Candolle refutes these in turn. The 1204 Incisa document, published by Molinari in 1810, records that two returning crusaders gave the town a piece of the True Cross and some semine, seu granis de colore aureo, et partim albo 'seed or grain of gold color, also partly white' from around Constantinople named meliga. Bonafous admits that this might be sorghum. But that turns out not to be necessary, since in 1877 Comte Riant, in the ironically titled, “Chartre du Maïs,” showed that the whole thing was a forgery.

De Candolle assumes that the Egyptian maize was put there by one of the modern workers. Virey goes to the trouble of supposing that it might be sorghum. Braun also went with a deception by the locals. I am actually not sure where Rifaud reported that he found maize. The citation given by Bonafours in the 1833 edition, digitized by Google is, “J.-J. Rifaud. Voyage en Egypte, en Nubie et lieux circonvoisins, depuis 1805 jusque'en 1827, avec 200 planches. Paris. 1834.” But that is the work Rifaud hoped to publish (prospectus); he wasn't able to get enough subscribers. The 1836 edition, digitized by the Real Jardín Botánico de Madrid, ends instead with “Paris, 1855, planches 97 et 138.” Now, those plates, which in the end were all that was published, have been digitized by the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle: pl 97 pl 138. They only show the sarcophagus and an elevation of the tomb site. There isn't any real text. My guess is that Rifaud announced his find in some more ephemeral form, perhaps in some journal, or even the manuscript. Everyone since has just copied Bonafous's citation. In the process of looking for something more definite, I did find an anecdote of Rifaud littering into a maizefield, so that the farmer thought he was putting some written spell on the crop. Also he vandalized the sites with grafitti.

Ancient Egypt is a magnet for those promoting new historical theories. So, Ancient Egyptian Maize by Gunnar Thompson, which presents both textual evidence and many illustrations of ancient artwork (slightly redrawn from published copies), clarifying that various unidentified plants, such as the one in the lower-left of Carter's mural for the Egypt Exploration Society are maize. The lexicographical side is mostly just the usual name lists with proposed connections.A page with the proposed hierglyphic words seems to misread its source. That latter says that “common words for corn flour” (meaning any kind of grain) are nḏ and sḥj. And that specific kinds are gotten by appending swt 'wheat' and jt 'barley'. The slightly different words drawn by Thompson do look compatible with this, though it is not clear exactly where they come from.

  1. corn 𓋴𓎞𓏬𓈖𓌾
  2. wheat 𓋴𓎞𓏬𓈖𓋴𓅱
  3. barley 𓐩𓏌𓌾𓋴𓎞𓏬

The book's scope is not limited to the Near East. For example, there is a section on Rosslyn Chapel and the mid-15th century maybe-maize carvings there. (The chapel's own site even gets in on the Sir Henry “may have travelled there long before Columbus” act.) As sometimes happens, the author is so invested in their revised history that not only are they derisive toward the traditional experts, but they even seem to develop a personal animus toward popularizers for relying on those experts and not doing their own research. The popular account in this case being Betty Fussell's The Story of Corn.

Bonafous and Rifaud were noticed by exegetical works. So, in Fairbairn's 1866 Imperial Bible-Dictionary, s.v. Corn, is an entry written by James Hamilton and illustrated by a maize plant. If it was known to the Egyptians, it would have been in Palestine, and it is not impossible that classical ζειά, the source of Linnaeus's name for maize, included it. Smith's 1868 Comprehensive Dictionary only mentions Rifaud, giving Hamilton as authority, that it might have been known to the Hebrews. But it then wonders whether Rifaud's grains might not have gotten there, “by accident or design, at some time within the last three or four centuries?” There is no sign of this discussion in Smith's 1863 three volume Dictionary or the 1871 four volume update in entries written by Henry Hayman (right around the time of the Rugby controversy); these works have Hebrew fonts and are in many ways unrelated. McClintock and Strong's 1882 Cyclopædia looks to be a shortened version of Hamilton's entry. For all these, as with the Tribes of Israel, the driving idea is that the theology might be tidier if everything was known in the Bible, or at least to the older pagans. The importance here is that these Biblical reference works have been continuously reprinted since and are now transcribed online, making them a potential modern propagator of these unorthodox theories.

In 1906, Berthold Laufer, referenced here before as an expert on the introduction of foreign foods to China, wrote a monograph, on “The Introduction of Maize into Eastern Asia.” His proposal is that within a generation of discovery, it had been brought by the Portuguese to India, and from there through Tibet to China, where by the second generation, so within fifty to seventy-five years of Columbus, is was established. Which is fast enough to account for all the available evidence. He argues against direct introduction by Europeans, in part based on the differences in how maize and potatoes (or tobacco) are perceived. Ping-Ti Ho's 1955 “The Introduction of American Food Plants into China” questions some of this, specifically that maize was produced in large quantities as early as the late 16th century, proposing both overland and maritime routes.

The maize section in Francesca Bray's 1984 Agriculture volume of Needham's Science and Civilisation in China, (e) (2) (iii), begins by quoting (the English translation of) de Candolle. It does not present any novel arguments, but summarizes what we might call the accepted history. In 2004, Johannessen (see above for India) and Sorenson published a paper on “Scientific Evidence for Pre-Columbian Transoceanic Voyages,” as part of the Sino-Platonic Papers series, edited by Language Log's Victor Mair. It summarizes most of the revised arguments. That same yesr, Anne E. Desjardins, a USDA research biochemist, put together a web site on Milho, Makka, and Yu Mai: Early Journeys of Zea Mays to Asia, with the help of the National Agricultural Library's librarian. (That link is to the Wayback Machine, as the original links are all dead. The closest thing remaining on the NAL site are some maize-centered Zoom videos from 2022. It is also possible to get a PDF snapshot of the site here.) Although the authors mostly limit themselves to English (with occasional French) sources, everything is properly footnoted. In terms of content, we might again call it all accepted history. Dr. Desjardins, like Prof. Mair, was a Peace Corps volunteer in Nepal. (Ethnographic art and textiles in particular are another area of interest here; many dealers and collectors in those at the end of the last century and beginning of this one were Peace Corps alumni/ae of that generation.) The site was promoted on a Peace Corp message board.

Ho had concluded,

… that, barring a sensational discovery in Chinese sources clearly indicating a pre-Columbian introduction, Chinese maize as a topic for speculation should be closed.

In 2005, in “Maize in Pre-Columbian China,” Uchibayashi claimed to have made that discovery, in the form of the 1505 本草品彙精要 Bencao Pinhui Jingyao 'Classified Materia Medica', where the 薏苡仁 yiyi-ren Job's tears entry has an illustration that looks more like maize. (Note 6 accidentally has 苡薏仁.)

Besides the herbals, the physical evidence for early arrival is mostly odd varieties of maize itself, particularly waxy / glutinous ones. But, it has been pointed out that it shouldn't be surprising that a culture mostly dependent on rice would favor these in its cultivation. And that they are similar to some in Brazil, and so might have initially arrived from there to India or Burma. For instance, Collins 1909 A new type of Indian corn from China. Or Stonor and Anderson 1949 “Maize Among the Hill Peoples of Assam”, addressed specifically by Mangelsdorf and Oliver 1951 “Whence Came Maize To Asia?”, which concludes that no major revision of needed. I am not sure whether botany is more resistant to creative reinterpreation than philology.

As for 本草綱目 Bencao Gangmu, completed in 1578 and published in 1596, and its 玉蜀黍 yù shǔshǔ entry (illustration text): Bonafouns used that illustration as the frontispiece for the first chapter of the later edition of his Maize work. And Weatherwax too as an illustration in his The Story of Maize Plant (though there is some confusion around in which order to read the characters). Note that the text itself somewhat weakens the argument, saying,

玉蜀黍種出西土,種者亦罕。
Yùshǔshǔ zhǒng chū xītǔ, zhǒng zhě yì hǎn
Maize, originating from Western lands, is rarely grown.

In the end, words for 'maize' in various Sinitic topolects (at various times) are not of an inherently different pattern than elsewhere or otherwise suggestive of anything other than recent introduction.

  • 番麥 fan1 mai4 Hokkien hoan beh8 'foreign wheat'
  • 御麥 yu4 mai4 'imperial (tribute) wheat'
  • 玉麥 yu4 mai4 'jade wheat'
  • 玉蜀黍 yu4 shu3 shu3 'jade sorghum'
  • 玉高粱 yu4 gao1 liang2 'jade sorghum'
  • 玉米 yu4 mi3 'jade rice'
  • 粟米 Cantonese suk1 mai5 'millet rice'
  • 包粟 Hakka bau1 siuk 'sheath millet'
  • 包穀 bao1 gu3, Hunanese bau1 gu6 ‘sheath grain’
  • 珍珠米 Shanghainese tsen tsy mi 'pearl millet'
  • 油甜苞 Fuzhounese iù diĕng báu 'oil sweet plant'
  • 粟米 su4 mi3 'millet rice'
  • 包兒米 bao1 er2 mi3 'sheath rice'
  • 西番麥 xi1 fan1 mai4 'Western barbarian (Tibetan) wheat'
  • 戎菽 rong2 shu1 'Western barbarian (Rong) pulse'

And likewise

  • Korean 옥수수 oksusu is 玉蜀黍 'jade sorghum' with a native name for jade.
  • Japanese トウモロコシ tōmorokoshi = 'Tang sorghum'.
  • Burmese ပြောင်းဖူး praun42 bu42 'sorghum gourd'.

Chinese Materia Medica, Vegetable Kingdom, (1911) by Dr. George Arthur Stuart, a medical missionary to China, s.v. Zea Mays, adds some ordinal terms, 八路 bālù 'eighth path' and 六粟 liù sù 'sixth grain'. This is a revision of Contributions Towards the Materia Medica and Natural History of China (1871) by Dr. Frederick Porter Smith, another medical missionary, a combination of translations of parts of Bencao Gangmu with the doctor's own observations. That latter's entry is more discursive, including the suggestion that maize was probably introduced from Japan, where it has the name 南蠻黍 nan-ban-kibi 'Southern barbarian millet'; this based on a multi-part discussion in Notes and Queries on China and Japan for 1867. Note that although Dr. Smith says Mr. Mayers comments were in No. 6, where there are indeed comments by others, his are, in fact, in No. 7, and include the same 玉蜀黍 illustration. The discussion there also takes up the possibility of maize being indigenous, but the concludes not. (As noted here before, Notes and Queries is the Victorian group blog; this variant added “missionaries and residents in the East generally” to its intended audience.)

In the infamous “Terminal Essay,” Burton acknowledged these controveries:

It has been suggested that Japanese tobacco is an indigenous growth and sundry modern travellers in China contend that the potato and the maize, both white and yellow, have there been cultivated from time immemorial.

Nor was he above himself hedging his bets on maize etymology:

The word is of doubtful origin, generally derived from the Haytian mahiz. But in northern Europe mayse (Irish maise) bread, and the Old High German maz (Hind. mans) means meat

mayse is a Prussian word for bread, cognate with Latvian màize. See 1.12 in Blažek (IE barley; cited above), which ultimately links this to a root meaning 'urinate'. I am not sure what is meant for the Irish, mais is just 'mass', which does come from Greek μᾶζα 'barley-cake', from a *meh₂ǵ root meaning 'knead'. OHG maz is indeed 'meat' in the sense of food in general.

Postscript: It is possible that someone will have noticed that, other than some gems pulled from the embers of 𝕏, most of the secondary sources in these recent posts are a decade or more old. Indeed, much of the material sat in the local file system waiting to get put into shape. The lingering pandemic has afforded an opportunity to do that. I do not think much has changed in this history, though I welcome additions. Even the program of government-mandated ignorance for American schoolchildren in certain areas, which might revert the opening premise, may not succeed. There are, naturally, new and expanded online resources, which cleared up some loose ends. Although copyright of obsolete but recent works remains a mess. Overall, I think there was a greater relevant difference between the time of the earliest post here and the last one before the hiatus than between then and these new ones. For instance, Unicode support for hieroglyphs or emoji. 🌽