INDONESIAN ANNOTATIONS ON THE VOCABULARY. 131 
The constituents of betel mixture, on the contrary, are always at hand. 
They are carried in the basket or bag ready for immediate use at any moment: 
the mixture is used by both sexes and at all ages, and both the areca nut 
and the betel pepper are abundant in the Solomons, so that even if they were 
brought from elsewhere by human agency it is evident that they have thriven 
abundantly. It is not unnatural that substances which can be used imme- 
diately, which are abundant and freely available to all, should have displaced 
in everyday life one which, if we are to judge from the evidence elsewhere, 
was scarce and only allowed to a small proportion of the population. 
If, then, kava was once present in the Solomons and other places invaded 
by a betel-chewing people, it is not difficult to see why the earlier use of kava 
should have been displaced by the practice of betel chewing, at any rate in 
the ordinary life of the people. It becomes readily intelligible why, in such 
islands as Vanikolo and Tikopia, where we may suppose the introduction of 
betel to have been relatively recent, the use of kava has wholly disappeared 
from ordinary life and is drunk only in connection with religious ceremonial, 
or is made only in order that it may be used as a religious offering. 
I can not conclude this chapter without a brief consideration of the origin 
of kava drinking. ‘The practice of betel chewing is widespread, and Melanesia 
forms but one corner of so large an area of distribution that we can be confi- 
dent that it was brought into Melanesia by an immigrant people as a fully 
developed practice. With kava the case is different. Its use is limited to 
Polynesia and Micronesia, Melanesia including the Admiralty Islands and 
New Guinea, and there can be little doubt that it is within this area that we 
must look for the origin of the practice. It is probable that it was not 
brought by the kava people as a fully developed custom, but arose through 
the needs and conditions of their new home. 
The suggestion I make concerning the origin of kava drinking is one which 
involves a conclusion which will only be reached at a later stage of my argu- 
ment. _I mention it only in order to be able to deal with the origin of kava now. 
This conclusion is that there was no very great difference between the 
cultures of the kava people and the betel people. Probably both peoples 
came from the same part of the world and the differences between them are 
perhaps to be explained merely by the lapse of time between the two streams 
of migration and by developments and changes which took place during the 
interval. Betel chewing is a complex practice which involves the use of three 
different substances (still more are used at present in some parts of the Malay 
Archipelago); it must have arisen by a process in which one substance was 
first added to another and then at a later stage the third substance added 
to the other two. It is possible that when the kava people left their old 
home the custom of betel chewing was still in process of development and that 
at this time the practice was limited to the chewing of the leaf of the betel 
pepper, or it may be that it was only this element of the mixture which they 
succeeded in carrying to their new home. Still another possibility is that the 
migrants may have been acquainted with betel chewing in its entirety, but 
brought none of its constituents with them, so that they could only use such 
ingredients of the mixture, or plants which resembled these ingredients, as 
they found in their new home. In either case it may be supposed that they 
first chewed the leaves until it was discovered, perhaps in the way suggested 
by the Pentecost story, that the root furnished a more potent means whereby 
to procure the desired effect of the plant. Having once discovered the 
properties of the root, it may be suggested that it became the custom to grate 
or pound it in some places and to chew it in others, and that from these 
beginnings there have developed the various methods of preparing the sub- 
stance which are found in different parts of Melanesia and Polynesia. 
