Language Matters | The enduring legacy of bamboo, a symbol of resilience, strength and adaptability in Asia
Bamboo is used in everything from construction to food throughout Asia, and even lends itself to global concepts like the ‘bamboo curtain’
Bamboo, a subfamily of typically fast-growing, tall, tree-like grasses, is found in tropical, subtropical and mild temperate regions across almost all continents, except Antarctica and Europe. In prehistoric South, East and Southeast Asia, it is well known for its use in tools, weapons, means of construction, transport and food.
Europeans’ encounters with the plant and its name during their age of exploration are first attested in the writings of Portuguese doctor, herbalist and naturalist Garcia de Orta, who worked primarily in Goa and Bombay in Portuguese India.
In his 1563 Coloquios dos Simples, the earliest European treatise on the medicinal and economic plants of India, he writes of “aquellas canas daquella arvore chamam os Indios, onde nasce, mambu”, describing “the canes of that tree the Indians, where it grows, call mambu”.
Similarly, bamboe is documented in the 1598 writings of Dutch merchant traveller J.H. van Linschoten, as (in the English translation) “a thicke reede, as big as a mans legge, which is called Bambus”.
While some point to Sumatran Malay, Sundanese and Javanese bambu, or an old Malay word samambu, as the source of this word in European languages, many accounts concur that the ultimate origin lies in the Dravidian language Kannada bănbŭ or banwu.