Everybody knows the agreeable tamarind preserve we receive from the
West Indies; everybody has occasionally produced by its aid a cooling
and welcome beverage; and everybody (at least in Scotland) has
conferred, by its means, upon the insipid gruel recommended for a cold
a finely-acidulated taste. Everybody likewise knows that the tamarind
is pretty largely employed in our Materia Medica, and that its effect,
when eaten uncompounded, is gently aperient: but for all that, very few
persons are acquainted with certain curious particulars connected with
the tree which produces this popular fruit.
The tamarind-tree is one of the _fabaceæ_, or order of leguminous
plants; 'an order,' says Lindley, 'not only among the most extensive
that are known, but also one of the most important to man, whether
we consider the beauty of the numerous species, which are among the
gayest-coloured and most graceful plants of every region, or their
applicability to a thousand useful purposes.' To give an idea of the
wide extension of this order, we may say that it includes the acacia,
the logwood and rosewood of commerce; the laburnum, the furze, and the
broom; the bean, pea, vetch, clover, trefoil, indigo, gum-arabic, and
other gums and drugs. There are two species of tamarinds--the East
and the West Indian--exhibiting some considerable difference, more
especially in the pods, which are much shorter in the latter species,
and the pulp less rich and plentiful. In the West Indies, the shell is
removed, and the legume preserved, by being placed in jars intermixed
with layers of sugar; or else the vessel is filled up with boiling
sugar, which penetrates to the bottom. The Turks and Arabs use this
fruit, prepared either with sugar or honey, as an article of food; and
for its cooling properties it is a favourite in journeys in the desert.
In Nubia it is formed into cakes, baked in the sun; and these are
afterwards used in producing a cooling drink. In India, likewise, it is
used both as food and drink; but there it is never treated with sugar,
but merely dried in the sun. When eaten as food, it is toasted, soaked
in water, and then boiled, till the taste, it is said, resembles that
of the common bean.
In India the tamarind-tree is a very beautiful object, its spreading
branches flinging even with their tiny leaves an extensive shade. In
one season its pretty straw-coloured flowers refresh the eye; and in
another its long brown pods, which are shed plentifully, afford a more
substantial refreshment to the traveller. The Hindoos, however, prize
it chiefly as a material for cleaning their brass vessels, although
they likewise use it as a condiment for their curries and other dishes,
and likewise make it into pickles and preserves. For the last-mentioned
purpose a red variety is the most esteemed, both the timber and the
fruit being of a sanguine hue. The tamarind, however, is chiefly
planted by the roadside, or on the rising banks of a tank; and in the
lower parts of Bengal, where it grows in the natural forests of the
Sunderbunds, it is the most common kind of firewood, being never used
for any more dignified purpose. The native never chooses this beautiful
tree, as he does the palm, the neem, or the mourungosh, to overshadow
his hut; and it is never admitted into the mango groves sacred to the
gods, although the silk-cotton and the mouwha are not forbidden that
consecrated ground.
But the prejudice goes further still. No _khitmutgar_, or cook, will
hang a piece of meat on a tamarind-tree: he believes that meat thus
exposed does not keep well, and that it becomes unfit for salting. A
traveller, though very willing to eat of the fruit, will not unload
his pack or rest under its branches; and a soldier, tired as he may be
with a long march, will rather wander farther on than pile his arms in
its shade. There is an idea, in fact, at least in Bengal, that there
is something unlucky or unhealthy, some antique spell or some noxious
vapour, surrounding this beautiful tree; although we are not aware that
science has yet discovered that there is anything really hurtful in its
exhalations.
Another strange notion connected with the tamarind-tree is thus
mentioned by a correspondent:--'Often have I stood as a youngster
gazing with astonishment at a couple of bearers belabouring a large
knotty root, of some eight feet in girth, with their axes, making the
chips fly off in every direction; which, upon picking up, I used to
find covered over with unintelligible scribbles, which the bearers
gravely told me was the writing of the gods.'
Here we have our tree in a new light: this outcast from the sacred
groves is inscribed with holy characters! Who shall interpret their
meaning? Are they like the mark set upon the forehead of Cain? Or is
the legend intended as a perpetual consolation under the prejudices and
indignities of men? All we know is, that the white fir-like grains of
the tamarind wood are written over in an unknown tongue by means of a
small thread-like vein of a black colour.
There is a similar superstition connected with another Indian tree, the
kulpa briksha, or silver-tree, so called from the colour of the bark.
The original kulpa, which now stands in the garden of the god Indra in
the first heaven, is said to have been one of the fourteen remarkable
things turned up by the churning of the ocean by the gods and demons.
But however this may be, the name of Ram and his consort Seeta is
written upon the silvery trunks of all its earthly descendants! Colonel
Sleeman, when travelling in Upper India, had the curiosity to examine
many of these trees on both sides of the road; and sure enough the name
of the incarnation of Vishnu mentioned was plainly enough discernible,
written in Sanscrit characters, and apparently by some supernatural
hand--'that is, there was a softness in the impression, as if the
finger of some supernatural being had traced the characters.' The
traveller endeavoured to argue his attendants out of their senses; but
unluckily he could find no tree, however near or distant, without the
names; the only difference being in the size of the letters, which in
some cases were large, and in others small. At length he observed a
kulpa in a hollow below the road, and one on a precipice above, both in
situations accessible with such difficulty, that he was sure no mortal
scribe would take the trouble to get at them. He declared confidently
his opinion that the names would not be found on these trees, and it
was proved that he was right. But this was far from affecting the
devout faith of his Hindoo followers. 'Doubtless,' said one, 'they have
in some way or other got rubbed off; but God will renew them in His
own time.' 'Perhaps,' remarked another, 'he may not have thought it
necessary to write at all upon places where no traveller could decipher
them.' 'But do you not see,' said the traveller, losing patience,
'that these names are all on the trunk within reach of a man's hand?'
'Of course they are,' replied they, 'since the miracle could not be
distinguished by the eyes of men if they were written higher up!'
A shrub called the trolsee is a representation of the same goddess
Seeta, and is every year _married_ with great ceremony to a sacred
stone called Saligram, a rounded pebble supposed to represent the good
Vishnu, of whom Ram was an incarnation. On one occasion described, the
procession attending this august ceremony consisted of 8 elephants,
1200 camels, and 4000 horses, all mounted and elegantly caparisoned.
Above 100,000 persons were present at this pageant, at which the little
pebble was mounted on the leading elephant, and thus carried in state
to his tree goddess. All the ceremonies of a Hindoo marriage were gone
through, and then the god and goddess were left to repose together till
the next season in the temple of Sudora.
Indian trees, however, it must be said, are, from all accounts, much
more worthy of the honours of superstition than those of less fervid
climes. A traveller mentions an instance of the 'sentient principle'
occurring among the denizens of an Indian forest. Two trees, he tells
us, of different kinds, although only three feet apart, had grown to
the height of fifty or sixty feet, when one of them took the liberty of
throwing out a low branch in such a way as to touch the trunk of his
neighbour, and thus occasion much pain and irritation. 'On this the
afflicted tree in turn threw out a huge excrescence, which not only
enveloped the offending branch, but strangled it so completely as to
destroy it utterly; the ends of the deadened boughs projecting three
or four feet beyond the excrescence, while the latter was carried on a
distance of three feet across to the shaft of the tree, so as to render
all chances of its future movement wholly impossible!' This appears to
our traveller to display as much forethought and sagacity as taking up
an artery for aneurism, or tying splints round a broken bone.
But in a country where trees are the objects of such veneration,
and where those that are neither holy nor sagacious are admitted
without scruple to the best arborical society, how comes it that the
beautiful, the umbrageous, and the beneficent tamarind is looked upon
as the outlaw of the plantation, the pariah of the forest? This is a
very puzzling circumstance, and one that, in the present state of our
knowledge, we can only set down to the caprice and ingratitude of man.