Report No. 4 (1917). 



THE INDIAN BECHE-DE-MER INDUSTRY: ITS 

 HISTORY AND RECENT REVIVAL, 



BY 

 JAMES HORNELL, F.L.S., 



Government Marine Biologist, Madras. 



Beche-de-mer, also known widely as trepang, is the commercial 

 name of a marine food product held in great esteem among the 

 Chinese. It consists of the dried body-wall of certain species of 

 large Holothurians, a group of animals known popularly in 

 England as sea-cucumbers owing to their characteristic cylindrical 

 or sausage-like shape, and intimately related to sea-urchins and 

 starfishes in spite of the great dissimilarity in outward form. 

 Hence the group belongs to that assemblage of animals known 

 zoologically as Echinodermata. 



The term heche-dc-mer is the French rendering of the Portuguese 

 name hicho-do-mar, signifying sea-slug; in Tamil it is known as 

 attai or leech, this being more familiar to Indians than the slug. 



HISTORY OF THE TRADE IN INDIA. 

 The cured product has been from time immemorial a valued 

 Chinese delicacy; strangely enough appreciation of its flavour has 

 never spread to the epicures of other races, and all but an infinites- 

 imal amount of the total production is consumed by the Chinese 

 at home and abroad. In its quest the Chinaman has penetrated 

 alike to the shores of Southern India and to the lagoons of 

 Polynesia, and from Japan in the north to Australia in the south he 

 has pioneered the trade and introduced appropriate curing methods. 

 We know that the Chinese had constant trade with Southern 

 India and with Ceylon a full thousand years ago, maintained by 

 junks of large size and fine equipment; so numerous and large 

 were the vessels of their trading fleet that on one occasion it 

 transported a Chinese army to Ceylon which defeated the Sinhalese 

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