No. 57. — 1906.] coconut cultivation. 



51 



from the coconut palui) as produced in Ceylon. Elsewhere 

 in the same century the coconut is spoken of as the palm 

 tree that bears " the great Indian nut ;" and curiously enough 

 Robert Knox, 1,200 years later, writes of the same palm as 

 if it belonged to India rather than Ceylon.* Writing in 

 520 A.D., Sopater described Ceylon as surrounded by a 

 multitude of exceedingly small islets (referring to the Mal- 

 dives) " all containing fresh water and coconut palms." 



Henry Marshall (Deputy Inspector-General of Army 

 Hospitals in Ceylon about seventy years ago), who published 

 a Monograph on the Coco Palm in 1834 (2nd edition, 1836), 

 begins by stating : " The earliest notice of the coco tree 

 which the author has seen is contained in an account of the 

 travels of two Mohammedans in India and China in the 

 9th century." This reference seems to have been chiefly to 

 arrack, and was about 810 a d. 



The fact is that a very backward part of Ceylon up to 

 1000 A.D. or later was the south-west coast, where the palm 

 grew ; the people seem to have been of the aborigines or 

 Veddas, so primitive were their ways, and any trade 

 was in the hands of the Moors, who up to the beginning 

 of the 16th century controlled all commerce,! but these 



* " Here are also of Indian Fruits, coker-nuts " — Knox, page 28 

 (edit. 1817) ; and that is all he has to say, although he gives a long account 

 of the areca, talipot, jak, kitul, cinnamon, &c. 



f This is what Tennent says : " During the middle ages, when Ceylon 

 was the Tyre of Asia, these immigrant traders (the Moormen) became 

 traders in all the products of the Island, and thebrokers through whose hands 

 they passed in exchange for the wares of foreign countries. At no period 

 were they either manufacturers or producers in any department ; their 

 genius was purely commercial, and their attention exclusively devoted to 

 buying and selling what had been previously produced by the industry and 

 ingenuity of others. They were dealers in jewelry, connoisseurs in gems, 

 and collectors of pearls ; and whilst the contented and apathetic Sinhalese 

 in the villages and forests of the interior passed their lives in the cultivation 

 of their rice lands, and sought no other excitement than the pomp and 

 ceremonial of their temples, the busy and ambitious Mahometans of 

 the coast built their warehouses at the ports, crowded the harbour with 

 their shipping, and collected the wealth and luxuries of the Island, its 

 precious stones, its dye-woods, its spices, and ivory to be forwarded to 



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