aspect of an endless beach of shell sand, quite innocent of coral, on
which the surf breaks continually into dazzling white foam against a
dark background of pensive palms. He might naturally suppose that they
had grown up of themselves, like the screw-pines and aloes which
sometimes share the beach with them; but that would be a great mistake.
Everyone of them has been planted and carefully watered for years and
manured annually with fresh foliage of forest trees buried in a moat
round the root. And so it grew in stature, but not in girth, until its
head was sixty, seventy or even eighty feet above the ground, and a
hundred nuts of various sizes hung in bunches from long, shiny, green
arms, each as thick as a man's, which had thrust themselves out from
between the lower fronds.
There is no production of Nature that I know of less negotiable than a
coconut as the tree presents it. The man who first showed the way into
it deserved a place in mythology with Prometheus, Jason and other heroes
of the dawn. There is a crab, I know, which lives on coconuts, enjoying
the scientific name of _Birgus latro_, the Burglar; but it seems to be a
special invention, as big as a cat and armed with two fearful pairs of
pincers in front for rending the outside casings of the fruits, and a
more delicate tool on its hind-legs for picking out the meat. Other
animals have to do without it, as had man, I opine, in the stone and
copper ages. With the iron age came a chopper, called in Western India a
"koita," with which he can hack his way through most of the obstructions
of life. When, with this, he has slashed off the tough outer rind and
the inch-thick packing of agglutinated fibres, like metal wires, he has
only to crack the hard shell which contains the kernel.
How little we can conceive the spaces in his life that would be empty
without that firm pulp, at once nutritious, sweet and fragrant! Curry
cannot be made without it, the cook cannot advance three steps in its
absence, pattimars laden with it are sailing north, south, east and
west, a thousand creaky wooden mills are squeezing the limpid oil out of
it, a hundred thousand little earthen lamps filled with that oil are
making visible the smoky darkness of hut and temple, brightening the
wedding feast and illuminating the sad page over which the candidate for
university honours nods his shaven head. That oil fed lighthouses of the
first order and illuminated viceregal balls and durbars before paraffin
and kerosene inundated the earth. And it has other uses. For arresting
premature baldness and preventing the hair turning grey its virtues are
equalled by no other oil known to us, and there is a fortune awaiting
the hairdresser who can find means effectually to remove or suppress its
peculiar and penetrating odour. Joao Gomez, my faithful "boy," did not
object to the odour, and when he had been tempted to pass my comb
through his raven locks as he was dusting my dressing table, I always
knew it.
When the white kernel has been turned to account, the utilities of the
coconut are not exhausted. The shell, neatly bisected, makes a pair of
teacups, and either of these, fitted with a wooden handle, makes a handy
spoon. Laurenco de Gama demands one or two of these inexpensive spoons
to complete the furnishing of my kitchen. As for the obstinate casing
that wraps the coconut shell, it is an article of commerce. It must
first be soaked for some months in a pit on the slimy bank of the
backwater, until all the stuff that holds it together in a stiff and
obdurate mass has rotted away and set free those hard and smooth fibres
which nothing can rot. These, when thoroughly purged of the foul black
pollution in which they have sweltered so long, will go out to all
quarters of the world under the name of "coir" to make indestructible
door mats and other indispensable things. It will penetrate to every
corner of India in which a white man lives, to mat his verandahs and
stuff his mattresses.
And who shall recount a tithe of its other uses? Of course, the nude man
under the coconut tree knows nothing of all this. He does without a
mattress, and has no use for a door mat. But he cannot do without
cordage, and if you took from him his coconut fibre, life would almost
stop. Wherewith would he bind the rafters of his hut to the beams, or
tether the cow, or let down the bucket into the well? What would all the
boats do that traverse the backwater, or lie at anchor in the bay, or
line the sandy beach? From the cable of the great pattimar, now getting
under weigh for the Persian Gulf with a cargo of coconuts, to the
painter of the dugout, "hodee," every yard of cordage about them is made
of imperishable coir.
When the axe is at last laid to the old coconut tree, a beam will fall
to the earth sixty feet in length, hard as teak and already rounded and
smoothed. True, you cannot saw it into planks, but no one will complain
of that in a village which does not own a saw. It cleaves readily enough
and straightly, forming long troughs most useful for leading water from
the well to the plantation and for many other purposes. It can also be
chopped into lengths suitable for the ridge poles of the hut, or for
bridges to span the deep ditches which drain the rice fields or feed the
salt pans. When out in quest of snipe I have sometimes had to choose
between crossing by one of those bridges, innocent of even a handrail,
and wading through the black slough of despond which it spanned.
Choosing neither, I went home, but the "Kolee" and the "Agree" trip over
them like birds, balancing household chattels on their steady heads.
We must not think, however, of the trunk as, at the best, anything more
than a by-product of the coconut tree, whose head is more than its body.
Even while it lives its head is shorn once a year, for, as fresh fronds
push out and upward from the centre, those of the outer circle get old
and must be cut away. And when one of those feathery, fern-like fronds,
toying with the breeze, comes crashing to the ground, it is ten or
twelve feet long, and consists of a great backbone, as thick at the base
as a man's leg, with a close-set row of swords on either side, about a
yard in length. They are hard and tough, but supple yet and of a shiny
green colour; but they will turn to brown as they wither.
Now observe that this gigantic, unmanageable-looking leaf, like
everything else about the coconut tree, is almost a ready-made article,
demanding no machinery to turn it to account, except the "koita" which
hangs ever ready from the nude man's girdle. With it he will cleave the
backbone lengthwise, and then, taking each half separately, he will
simply twist backwards every second sword and plait them all into a mat
two feet wide, eight or ten feet long, and firmly bounded and held
together on one side by the unbreakable backbone. This is a "jaolee,"
lighter than slates, or tiles, and more handy than any form of thatch.
You have just to arrange your "jaolees" neatly on your bamboo frame,
each overlapping the one below it, then tie them securely in their
places with coir rope and your roof is made for a year.
There is yet another benevolence of the coconut tree which I have left
to the last, and the simple folk of whom I am trying to write with
fellow feeling would certainly have named it first. I ought to refer to
it as a curse: they, without qualm or question, call it a blessing. Let
me try to describe it dispassionately. If you wander in any palm grove
in Western India, looking upward, it will soon strike you that a large
number of the trees do not seem to bear coconuts at all, but black
earthen pots. If your visit should chance to be made early in the
morning, or late in the afternoon, the mystery will soon be revealed.
You will see a dusky, sinewy figure, not of a monkey, but of a man,
ascending and descending those trees with marvellous celerity and ease,
grasping the trunks with his hands and fitting his naked feet into
slight notches cut in them. The distance between the notches is so great
that his knee goes up to his chin at each step, but he is as supple as
he is sinewy and feels no inconvenience. For he is a Bhundaree, or
Toddy-drawer, and his forefathers have been Bhundarees since the time, I
suppose, when Manu made his immortal laws.
His waistcloth is tightly girded about him, in his hand he carries a
broad billhook as bright and keen as a razor, and from his caudal region
depends a tail more strange than any borne by beast or reptile. It looks
like a large brown pot, constructed in the middle. It is, in fact, a
large gourd, or calabash, hanging by a hook from the climber's
waistband. When he has reached the top of a tree, he gets among the
branches and, sitting astride of one of them, proceeds to detach one of
the black pots from the stout fruit stem on which it is fastened, and
empty its contents into his tail. Then, taking his billhook, he
carefully pares the raw end of the stem, refastens the black pot in its
place and hurries down to make the ascent of another tree, and so on
until his tail is full of a foaming white liquor spotted with drowned
honey bees and filling the surrounding air with a rank odour of
fermentation. This liquor is "toddy."
If I were a Darwin I would not leave that word until I had traced the
agencies which wafted it over sea and land from the shores of Hindustan
to the Scottish coast, where it first took root and, quickly adapting
itself to a strange environment, developed into a new and vigorous
species, spread like the thistle and became a national institution. At
first it was only the Briton's way of mouthing a common native word,
"tadi" (pronounced ta-dee), which meant palm juice; but it became
current in its present shape as early as 1673, when the traveller Fryer
wrote of "the natives singing and roaring all night long, being drunk
with toddy, the wine of the cocoe." About a century later Burns sang,
The lads and lasses, blythely bent,
To mind baith saul and body,
Sit round the table, weel content,
And steer about the toddy.
Between these I can find no vestigia, but imagination easily fills the
gap. I see a company of jovial Scots, met in Calcutta, or Surat, on St.
Andrew's Day. European wines and beer are expensive, whisky not
obtainable at all; but the skilful khansamah makes up a punch with toddy
spirit, hot water, sugar and limes, and they are "well content." After
many years I see the few of them who still survive foregathered again in
the old country, and one proposes to have a good brew of toddy for auld
lang syne. If real toddy spirit cannot be had, what of that? Whisky is
found to take very kindly to hot water and sugar and limes, and the old
folks at home and the neighbours and the minister himself pronounce a
most favourable verdict on "toddy." In short, it has come to stay. But
we must return to the liquor in the Bhundaree's gourd. It is the rich
sap which should have gone to the forming of coconuts, which is
intercepted by cutting off the point of the fruit stalk and tying on an
earthen pot. If the pot is clean, the juice, when it is taken down in
the morning, not fermented yet but just beginning to sparkle with minute
bubbles, not too sweet and not so oily as the milk of the coconut, is
nectar to a hot and thirsty soul. No summer drink have I drunk so
innocently restorative after a hot and toilsome march on a broiling May
morning. But the Bhundaree will not squander it so: he takes care not to
clean his pots, and when he takes them down in the morning the liquor is
already foaming like London stout. Not that he means to drink it
himself, for you must know that, by the rules of his caste, he is a
total abstainer, being a Bhundaree, whose function is to draw toddy, not
to drink it. This is one of those profound institutes by which the
wisdom of the ancients fenced the whole social system of this strange
land.
But, while the Bhundaree must refuse all intoxicating drinks himself, it
is his duty to exercise a large tolerance towards those who are not so
hindered. He is, in fact, a partner in the business of Babajee, Licensed
Vendor of Fresh Toddy, towards whose spacious, open-fronted shop,
thatched with "jaolees," he now carries his gourds. There the contents
will stand, in dirty vessels and a warm place, maturing their
exhilarating qualities until the evening, when the Tam o' Shanters and
Souter Johnnies of the village begin to assemble and squat in a ring in
the open space in front. They may be Kolees, or fishermen, and Agrees,
who make salt, and aboriginal Katkurrees from the jungle, with their
bows and arrows, most bibulous of all, but among them all there will be
no Bhundaree. Babajee sits apart, presiding and serving, beside a dirty
table, on which are many bottles and dirty tumblers of patterns which
were on our tables thirty years ago. The assembly begins solemnly,
discussing social problems and bartering village gossip, for the Hindu
is by nature staid. After a while, at the second bottle perhaps,
cheerfulness will supervene, then mirth and garrulity, ending, as the
night closes round, with wordy contention and a general brawl. But
nothing serious will happen, for toddy, though decidedly heady, is at
the worst a thin potation. A strong and very pure spirit is distilled
from it, which has its devotees, but the rustic, as a rule, prefers
quantity to quality. We are often told that the British Government
taught the people of India to drink, but the scene that I have tried to
describe is indigenous conviviality, much older than any European
connection with the country.
Is it any wonder that the coconut has become an emblem of fertility and
prosperity and all good luck? When a new house is building you will see
a high pole over the doorway, bearing coconuts at the top, with an
umbrella spread over them. Do not ask the owner the meaning of the sign,
for he does not know. He does not think about such matters, but he feels
about them and he knows that that is the right thing to do. Besides, he
might ask you why you nail a horseshoe over your door. The difference
between us and him is that we do such things in jest, no longer
believing in them. They are the husks of a dead faith with us. But the
Hindu's faith is very living still. So, when he breaks a coconut at the
launching of a pattimar, he is a gainer in hope, if nothing else; while
we squander our champagne and gain nothing. That nut follows him even to
the grave, or burning ground, with mystic significances which I cannot
explain. I have been told that, when a very holy man dies, who always
clothed himself in ashes and never profaned his hands with work, his
disciples sometimes break a coconut over his head. If the spirit can
escape from the body through the sutures of the skull instead of by any
of the other orifices, it is believed to find a more direct route to
heaven, so the purpose of this ceremony may be to facilitate its exit
that way. In that case the breaking of the nut is perhaps only an
accident, due to its not being so hard as the holy man's skull.
XVI
THE BETEL NUT
One half the world does not know how the other half lives. Noticing a
pot of areca nut toothpaste on a chemist's counter, I asked him what the
peculiar properties of the areca nut were--in short, what was it good
for. He replied that it was an astringent and acted beneficially on the
gums, but he had never heard that it was used for any other purpose than
the manufacture of an elegant dentifrice. I felt inclined to question
him about the camel in order to see whether he would tell me that it was
a tropical animal, chiefly noted for the fine quality of its hair, from
which artist's brushes were made. Here was a man whose special business
it is to know the properties and uses of all drugs and their action on
the human system, and he had not the faintest notion that there are
nearly 300 millions of His Majesty's subjects, and many millions more
beyond his empire, who could scarcely think of life as a thing to be
desired if they were obliged to go through it without the areca nut. For
the areca nut is the betel nut.
In the Canarese language and the kindred dialects of Malabar it is
called by a name which is rendered as _adike_, or _adika_, in scientific
books, but would stand more chance of being correctly pronounced by the
average Englishman if it were spelled _uddiky_. The coast districts of
Canara and Malabar being famed for their betel nuts, the trade name of
the article was taken from the languages current there, and was tortured
by the Portuguese into _areca_. Over the greater part of India the
natives use the Hindustanee name _supari_, but by Englishmen it is best
known as the betel nut, because it is always found in company with the
betel leaf, with which, however, it has no more connection than
strawberries have with cream. The one is the leaf of a kind of pepper
vine, and the other is the seed, or nut, of a palm. But nature and man
have combined to marry them to one another, and it is difficult to think
of them separately.
In life the betel vine climbs up the stem of the areca palm, and in
death the areca nut is rolled in a shroud of the betel leaf and the two
are munched together. Other things are often added to the morsel, such
as a clove, a cardamom, or a pinch of tobacco, and a small quantity of
fresh lime is indispensable.
What is the precise nature of the consolation derived from the chewing
of this mixture it is not easy to say. Outwardly it produces effects
which are visible enough, to wit, a most copious flow of saliva, which
is dyed deep red by the juice of the nut, so that a betel nut chewer
seems to go about spitting blood all the day. As every Hindu is a betel
nut chewer, those 943,903 superficial miles of country which make up our
Indian Empire must be bespattered to a degree which it dizzies the mind
to contemplate. This is one of the difficulties of Indian
administration. In large towns and centres of business it is found
necessary to fortify the public buildings in various ways. The Custom
House in Bombay has the wall painted with dark red ochre to a height of
three or four feet from the ground.
But these are the outward results. What is the inwardness of the thing?
In a word, why do the people chew betel nut? Surely not that they may
spit on our public buildings. That is a chance result, not sought for
and not shunned. There is, of course, some deeper reason. Early
travellers in India were much exercised about this and used to question
the people, from whom they got some curious explanations. One reports,
"They say they do it to comfort the heart, nor could live without it."
Another says, "It bites in the mouth, accords rheume, cooles the head,
strengthens the teeth and is all their phisicke." A Latin writer gets
quite eloquent. "_Ex ea mansione_"--by that chewing--he says, "mire
recreantur, et ad labores tolerandos et ad languores discutiendos."
But the remarkable thing is that the betel nut has these effects only on
the Hindu constitution. To a European the strong, astringent taste and
penetrating odour of the betel nut are alike insufferable, and there is
no instance on record, as far as I know, of an Englishman becoming a
betel nut chewer. But wherever Hindu blood circulates, not in India
only, but all through the islands of the Malay Archipelago, as far as
the Philippines, the betel nut is an indispensable ingredient of any
life that is worth living. Mohammedanism forbids spirits and Brahminism
condemns all things that intoxicate or stupefy, but the betel nut is
like the cup that cheers yet not inebriates. No religion speaks
disrespectfully of it. It flourishes, blessed by all, and takes its
place among the institutions of civilisation. Indeed it is the chief
cement of social intercourse in a country where all ordinary
conviviality between man and man is almost strangled by the quarantine
enforced against ceremonial defilement. Friend offers friend the betel
nut box just as Scotsmen offered the snuff-box in the hearty old days
that are passing away. And all visits of ceremony, durbars, receptions,
leave-takings, and public functions of the like kind are brought to an
august close by the distribution of _pan supari_. To go through this
rite without visible repugnance is part of the training of our young
Civil Servants. When the interview or ceremony has lasted as long as it
was intended to last, there enter, with due pomp, bearers of
heavy-scented garlands, woven of jasmine and marigold, and in form like
the muffs and boas that ladies wear in winter. These are put upon the
necks and wrists of the guests in order of rank. Silver vases and
sprinklers follow, containing rose-water and attar of roses. You may
ward off the former from your person by offering your handkerchief for
it, and you may present the back of your hand for the latter, of which
one drop will be applied to your skin with a tiny silver or golden
spoon.
Finally, when everybody is reeking with incongruous odours and trying
not to be sick, a silver tray appears with the daintiest little packets
of _pan supari_, each pinned with a clove, and every guest is expected
to transfer one to his mouth, for they have been prepared by a Brahmin
and cannot hurt the most delicate caste. To an Englishman, however, it
is now generally conceded to compromise by keeping the morsel in his
hand, as if waiting an opportunity to enjoy it more at his leisure. When
you get home your servant craves it of you and contrasts real rajah's
_pan supari_ with the stuff which the poor man gets in the bazaar.
The chewing of betel nut requires more apparatus and makes greater
demands on a man's time and personal care than the smoking of tobacco or
any of the allied vices. To cut the nut neatly an instrument is used
like an enormous pair of nutcrackers with a sharp cutting edge. The lime
should be made from oyster shells and it must be freshly burned and
slaked. Exposure to the air soon spoils it, so a small, air-tight tin
box is required to keep it in. Lastly, the betel leaf must be fresh,
and in a hot climate green leaves do not keep their freshness without
special care.
But the necessity for attending to all these matters no doubt adds
greatly to the interest which a chewer of _pan supari_ is able to find
in life. Moreover, his taste and wealth have scope for expression in the
elegance of his appointments, and by these you may generally judge of a
man's rank and means. A well-to-do Mahratta cartman will carry in his
waistband a sort of bijou hold-all of coloured cloth, which, when
unrolled, displays neat pockets of different forms for the leaves,
broken nuts, lime box, spices, etc.; but a native magistrate, who goes
about attended by a peon and need not carry his own things, will have a
box of polished brass, or even silver, divided into compartments.
One may easily infer that to meet such a universal want there must be a
correspondingly great industry, and the cultivation of the betel nut is
indeed a great industry, and a most beautiful one. Surely since Adam
first began to till the ground in the sweat of his face, his children
have found no tillage so Eden-like as this. India has produced no Virgil
to take the common charms of a farmer's life and put them into immortal
song, so we search her literature in vain to learn how her simple,
rustic people feel about these things, and in what we see of their life
there is little sign that they feel about them at all; but when the
Englishman, wandering, gun in hand, up a steaming valley among
forest-clad hills, suddenly finds the path lead him into a betel nut
garden, with no wire fence, or locked gate, or inhospitable notice
threatening prosecution to trespassers, he feels as if he had entered
some region of bliss where the earthly senses are too narrow for the
delights that press for entrance to the soul.
In the first place, the areca nut palm is almost, if not altogether, the
most graceful of all its graceful tribe. Unlike the coconut, it grows as
erect as a flagstaff, and the effect of this is increased by its extreme
slenderness, for though it may attain a height of fifty feet, its
diameter scarcely exceeds six inches. At the top of the stem there is a
sheath of polished green, from the top of which again there issues a
tuft of the most ethereal, feathery fronds, diverging and drooping with
matchless grace. Under these hang the clusters of reddish-brown nuts.