Mango fruit in ancient times

History indicates that Indian mango cultivation is very ancient, of about 4000 years old. Ancient Indians value mango not merely for its sentiment or religious consideration, but they realized its importance in economic and cultural life of the society.

Fa-Hien and Sung-Yun mentioned in their travel notes that the Gautama Buddha was presented with a mango grove by Amradarika in 500 BC as a place for meditation.

The spread of Buddhism assisted in the distribution of mangoes in Southeastern Asia. Buddhist monks took mango plants on voyages to Malaya and eastern Asia in the 4th and 5th centuries BC.

According to German born botanist, Georg Eberhard Rumphius in his Het Amboinsche kruidboek or Herbarium Amboinense (1741), the mango was introduced into certain islands of the Indonesia archipelago within recent times; however, the mango was in cultivation in Java as early as early as AD 900-1100, when the temple at Borobudur was built and faced with carvings of the Buddha in contemplation under a mango tree.

Mangoes were carried to Africa during the 16th century and later found their way aboard Portuguese ships to Brazil in the 1700s.
Mango fruit in ancient times