Sir James Emerson Tennent was appointed as the Acting Governor of British Ceylon for a very brief period during the mid-late 1840s, which was followed by his appointment as the Colonial Secretary of Ceylon. His tenure as the Colonial Secretary did not last long due to political clashes within the British Administration. However, during his time in Ceylon, he travelled extensively within the island and, luckily for us, noted down so much detailed information about the society, culture, and practices from the mid-1800s. All the information he collected during his stay in Ceylon was published in his 2-volume book, “Ceylon” in 1859.
In his book, Sir James Emerson Tennent speaks of the “extraordinary” suitability of the soil of Ceylon in the coastal region for the growth of Coconuts. He goes on to say that a Coconut Plantation along the coast of Batticaloa 40 miles long and 1 to 3 miles broad was recently commenced – recently being in the 1840s. A similar plantation was already established in Kalpitiya which back then was known to the British as Calpentyn. He also mentions that “along the whole seaborde of Ceylon to the south and west, the shore for the breadth one or two miles exhibits almost continuous groves of coco-nut palms.”
He also makes a note that compared to the Coconut palms cultivated in the mountainous regions, the fruits borne by the palms along the coast are larger in size or weight and more abundant.
Coconut palm, according to Sri James Emerson Tennent played a central role in the life of the Ceylonese so much so that “wherever man has encroached on the solitude (of sandy plains and thorny jungles a little further inland), groves coco-nut palms mark the vicinity of his habitations.”
You may have noticed that when Europeans painted tropical islands, one of the most notable features of the painting would be Palms. Such was the case with paintings of Ceylon drawn by the Europeans who came to the island. This can be observed in this painting by Andrew Nicholl. It is assumed by experts that Andrew Nicholl drew the painting by memory due to the incorrect dimensions between the man and the guard stone to his left. If such is the case, it can also be assumed that he may have added the Coconut palms to highlight the tropical element of Ceylon. The reason I mentioned this painting and the role that Coconut palms play in it is that Sir James Emerson Tennent mentions in his book, “The Family of Trees which, from their singularity as well as their beauty, most attract the eye of the traveller in the forests of Ceylon, are the palms, which occur in rich profusion, although, of upwards of six hundred species which are found in other countries, not more than ten or twelve are indigenous to the island. At the head of these is the coco-nut, every particle of whose substance, stem, leaves, and fruit, the Singhalese turn to so many accounts, that one of their favourite topics to a stranger is to enumerate the hundred uses to which they tell us this invaluable is tree is applied.”
He has listed the following as the many uses of the Coconut palm as listed by the natives;
1. Leaves: Used for roofing, mats, baskets, torches or chiles, fuel, brooms, fodder for cattle, and manure.
2. Stem of the leaf: Used for fences, pingoes (or yokes), fishing rods, and innumerable domestic utensils.
3. The Cabbage or Cluster of unexpanded leaves: Used for pickles and preserves.
4. The Sap: Used for toddy, distilling arrack, and for making vinegar and sugar.
5. The Unformed Nut: Used for Medicine and Sweetmeats.
6. The Young Nut and its milk: Used for drinking and for dessert.
7. The Green Husk: Used for preserves.
8. The Nut: Used as food, for curry, for milk, for cooking.
9. The Oil: Used for Rheumatism, anointing the hair, soap, candles, and light.
10. The Poonak or the refuse of the nut after expressing the oil: Given to Cattle and Poultry.
11. The Shell of the Nut: Used as drinking cups, charcoal, toothpowder, spoons, medicine, hookahs, beads, bottles, and knife handles.
12. The Coir or the fibre which envelopes the shell within the outer husk: Used in mattresses, cushions, ropes, cables, cordage, canvas, fishing nets, brushes, oakum and floor mats. It was also used as fuel.
13. The Trunk: Used for rafters, laths, railing, boats, troughs, furniture, and firewood.
14. The first shoots: Used as a vegetable for the table.
According to Sir James Emerson Tennent, there was a superstition among the Ceylonese that the Coconut would not grow out of the sound of the human voice and would die if the village it had previously flourished in became deserted. Tennent however goes on to say, “the solution of the mystery being in all probability the superior care and manuring which it receives in such localities.”
According to his records, even during the 1800s, the Coconut palms were not safe from the Pol Kuruminiya or the Coconut Beetle.
Sir James Emerson Tennent also addresses the curious case of the Coconut palm being rarely mentioned in the Mahavamsa eventhough by the 1800s, it was an integral part of the domestic economy of the island of its people. The reason for this, Sir James Emerson Tennent assumes, “… probably referable to the fact that its author resided and wrote in the interior of the island; over which, unlike the light seeds of other plants, its ponderous nuts could not have been distributed accidentally, where down to the present time it has been but partially introduced, and nowhere in any considerable number. Its presence throughout Ceylon is indicative of the vicinity of man and at a distance from the shore, it appears in those places only where it has been planted by his care. The Singhalese believe that the coco-nut will not flourish “unless you walk under it and talk under it” but its proximity to human habitations is possibly explained by the consideration that if exposed in the forest, it would be liable, when young to be forced down by the elephants, who delight in its delicate leaves.”
However, he mentions a legend linked to a statue carved into a rock. The statue he is referring to is the Kushtaraja Gala which, according to tradition, is a monument to Kushta Raja, an Indian Prince, who claims to be the first person to have taught the Sri Lankans the use of the coconut.
Coconut cultivation in different parts of the island
Galle to Colombo
When Sir James Emerson Tennent visited Galle during the late 1840s, the chief trade in that particular region consisted of coconut-based products. He states that “… the coconut tree with which the Southern province is so densely covered that the country in every direction for some distance from the sea, appears a continuous forest of palms.”
He also describes the scenery of the coast as far as Dondra being particularly lovely with “… the currents having scooped the line of the short into coves and bays of exquisite beauty, separated by precipitous headlands covered with forests and crowned by groves of coco-nut palms.”
Tennent goes on to say, “There is no quarter of the world in which the coco-nut flourishes in such luxuriance as in this corner of Ceylon.” which is quite the compliment.
Tennent states that at the time when the English took possession of Colombo, it was estimated that the area lying between Dondra and Kalpitiya contained approximately ten million coconut trees which by the 1850s increased to twenty million trees island-wide.
He explains the depiction of the many uses of the coconut tree that he witnessed between Galle and Colombo as follows;
“There is hardly one of these multifarious uses that may not be seen in active illustration during the drive between Galle and Colombo. Houses are timbered with its wood, and roofed with its plaited fronds, which, under the name of cajans, are likewise employed for constructing partitions and fences. The fruit, in all its varieties and form and colour, is ripened around the native dwellings, and the women may be seen at their doors rasping its white flesh to powder, in order to extract from it the milky emulsion which constitutes the essential excellence of a Singhalese curry. In pits by the roadside, the husks of the nut are steeped to convert the fibre into coir, be decomposing the interstitial pith;– its flesh is dried in the sun preparatory to expressing the oil; vessels are attached to collect the juice of the unexpanded flowers to be converted to sugar, and from early morn, the toddy drawers are to be seen ascending the trees in quest of the sap drawn from the spathes of the unopened to be distilled into arrack, the only pernicious purpose to which the gifts of the bounteous tree are perverted.”
An interesting feature in the two volumes of Sir James Emerson Tennent’s “Ceylon” is that he does not fail to include little stories and his own experience in the book rather than listing out facts. As he travelled from Galle to Colombo, he mentions that the drive takes you “through the long succession of gardens and plantations of coco-nuts which the road traverses throughout its entire extent”. In these gardens, there are certain trees (Coconuts and others) around the stem of which a “band of leaves had been fastened by the owner.” Apparently, this signifies that the particular tree has been devoted to a god (Such as Vishnu, Kataragama, etc.) On other occasions, trees have been dedicated to Buddhist Temples and even to the Roman Catholic alters. Tennent notes, “When coco-nut palms are so preserved, the fruit is sometimes converted into oil and burned before the shrine of the demon (i.e. gods such as Vishnu, Kataragama, Ganesh, etc.). The superstition extends throughout other parts of Ceylon; and so long as the wreath continues to hang upon the tree, it is presumed that no thief would venture to plunder the garden.”
Sir James Emerson Tennent notes that to a Ceylonese, the most precious inheritance is his ancestral garden of coconuts. During an attempt to tax coconut gardens in 1797, the people rebelled against it. Tennent shares an interesting story where in a case that was decided in the district court of Galle, the subject of the dispute was a claim to the 2,520th part of ten coconut trees!! The person making the claim would have barely gotten a leaf out of the coconut tree and yet here he was fighting for his claim. It goes to show how precious coconuts were to the people and that there is a certain amount of prestige linked to owning a coconut garden or in this case 2520th part of ten coconut trees.
It is also interesting to note the King Coconuts, which are native to Sri Lanka, were generally planted near temples and a draught of it was offered by the priests to visitors of distinction as an honour.=
According to Tennent, Kalutara was one of the principal places for the distillation of arrack resulting from the great extent of the coconut groves which surround it. Moratuwa, which was initially heavily cultivated with Cinnamon had replaced Cinnamon with Coconuts by the 1850s due to Coconuts being more profitable. It was also in Moratuwa where casks for the shipment of Coconut oil were manufactured.
Batticaloa
According to Tennent, the natural embankment on the line of the coast of north and south of Batticaloa, “…is covered from one extremity to the other with plantations of coconut trees, many of them of very ancient growth, the peculiar adaptation of the soil having been discovered at an early period by the Moors, whose descendants have settled themselves in a dense colony at this favourite spot. The success of the cultivation, the remarkable luxuriance of the trees, and the unusual weight and richness of the fruit, attracted the attention of European speculators, and the entire line of coast for sixteen miles north of Batticaloa, and for twenty-seven miles to the south, is now one continuous garden of palms, pre-eminent for beauty and luxuriance. One unripe nut was brought to me weighing fifteen pounds, and of these a tree in full bearing produces annually from one hundred and twenty to one hundred and fifty, equal to a ton of fruit from a single coco-palm in the course of a year.”
Jaffna
According to Sir James Emerson Tennent, at the time of his visit and in the past, the Palmyrah was used instead of the coconut in that particular region due to the abundance of Palmyrah and the lack of Coconut palms in the area. However, during the 1850s, coconut cultivation was being introduced to the region with new plantations and estates being established at a brisk pace.
Near the vicinity of Elephant Pass numerous coconut plantations had been recently opened at the time of Tennent’s visit to the northern province. It was in 1842 that the suitability for the growth of Coconuts in Jaffna was identified and by the late 1850s, more than ten thousand acres of government land had been purchased and partially planted and upwards of fifty estates were under cultivation in the area of Pachelapalle. It was in the hopes of gaining significant profits from the trade of coconut oil that led to the establishment of large-scale coconut plantations in the region but the trees failing to reach maturity despite them flourishing as young palms discouraged the enterprise to a certain degree. The fruit collected from the trees that did reach maturity was stripped of their outer bark, which is macerated to convert the fibre into coir, whilst the fleshy lining of the shell is dried by exposure to the sun, preparatory to expressing the oil. The ordinary estimate at the time was that one thousand full-grown nuts of Jaffna would yield 525 pounds of copra when dried, which in turn would produce 25 gallons of coconut oil.
Tennent quotes from Georg Eberhard Rumphius’s (1627 – 1702 AD) book “Herbarium Amboinense” tell of a tradition to which he adds his own experiences regarding the growth of palmyra and coconuts. “It is truly remarkable that the two nuts of India, the coconut and the palmyra, cherish such secret envy and hatred towards each other, that they will not grow in the same field, nor in one and the same region, which however must be attributed to the great wisdom of the Creator, who is unwilling that these trees, so productive and so necessary to the human race, should grow in the same locality. We see that in all the western parts of Hindustan and Ceylon, the coconut tree grows abundantly and vigorously, but there we rarely or never see a palmyra. On the other hand, in the eastern parts of Ceylon and Coromandel, the palmyra predominates, the coconut is rare, and those few that do grow are always to be found in some solitary place. It is true that instances may be known where the two are growing together, but always in less numbers and sickly. I have seen an Amboina or Palmyra tree perfect and of full growth, which had been cultivated with great labour and was nevertheless always barren, because that it stood amongst many coconut trees.”
During his travels in Jaffna, Sir James Emerson Tennent also came across a native oil mill of which he was kind enough to add the following illustration;
He accompanied the above picture with the following explanation;
“The crushing of coconut for the expression of the oil is another flourishing branch of trade, and for this purpose, the natives erect their creaking mills under the shade of groves of palm trees near their houses. These consist of the trunk of a tree hollowed into a mortar, in which a heavy upright pestle is worked round by a bullock yoked to a transverse beam.”
Chilaw to Negombo
During a tour around the island in 1848 in the hopes of quelling the impending rebellion which was about to blow any day, Sir James Emerson Tennent passes through Chilaw to Negombo on a road which passed through coconut plantations and “… in the shade of the palms one hears the creaking of the primitive mills, which, from time immemorial, have been used by the natives for expressing the oil.” The mill he is referring to is the one mentioned above.
Gardens
It is also interesting to note that during his travels across the country, Sir James Emerson Tennent noted how houses in various districts would have coconut palms in their gardens. A few areas he mentions are Galle, Peradeniya, Kurunegala, Kalutara and Badulla. While the gardens consisted of other plants besides coconuts, it shows the essential and key role that coconut trees played in the lives of the Ceylonese.
Ceylon through the eyes of the travellers during the Medieval Times
Tennent mentions that Sopater, a Greek trader, was one of the first travellers to describe Ceylon from personal knowledge. Sopater visited Ceylon during the early 6th Century AD and in his records, it is mentioned that “Around it (Ceylon) there are a multitude of exceedingly small islets, all containing fresh water and coco-nut palms; these islands lie as close possible together.”
Chinese travellers who visited Ceylon during the 4th and 5th Centuries AD have mentioned Coconuts and arrack distilled from the Coco-nut palm as two of the many vegetable productions which took place in the island at the time of their visit.
Marco Polo, the renowned Venetian traveller, during his visit to Ceylon during the 13th century, had mentioned in his records that the Ceylonese drank coconut toddy which Marco Polo had called “wine drawn from the trees.”
Another Genoese named Girolama Di Santo Stefano, who on the way back from his journey to India had visited Ceylon for a day and saw only coconuts, jewels, and cinnamon.
Coconut cultivation under the British Administration by the late 1850s
The Ceylon Observer of the 25th December 1858, contains the following summary of the extent of the coconut cultivation on the island:-
“In the quinquennial period ending 1841, the average export of coconut oil did not greatly exceed 400,000 gallons, the value being under £ 26,000. In 1857, the export rose to the enormous figure of 1,767,413 gallons, valued at £ 212,184. At 40 nuts to a gallon of oil, the above export represents no fewer than 70,696,520 coconuts. We should think that at least as much oil is consumed in the colony as is sent out of it. If so we get 141,393,040 nuts, converted into 3,534,826 gallons of oil, besides poonack or oil-cake, which is valuable as food for animals and as manure. Say that there are 20,000,000 coconut trees in Ceylon, oil would seem to be made from the product of one-sixth of them, say 3,500,000. We should think that not less than 5,000,000 more of the trees are devoted to ‘Toddy’ drawing, the liquor being drunk fermented, distilled into arrack or converted into sugar. We should then have 11,500,000 of trees, yielding 460,000,000 of nuts to meet the food requirements of the people besides the quantity exported in their natural state or as copperah.”
While the Portuguese and the Dutch extorted Cinnamon and Pearls of Ceylon for their own enrichment, the English during their occupation of the island covered its mountains with plantations of coffee and later tea, and its coasts with gardens of coconut palms. By the time Sir James Emerson Tennent left Ceylon during the 1850s, the cultivation of Cinnamon was superseded by that of Coconuts due to its higher profitability.
Throughout the two volumes, no other plant is talked of as much as Sir James Emerson Tennent does about the Coconut Palm. It also highlights how the people of Sri Lanka almost revered the Coconut palm so much that it has almost become a sort of identity with how much it has been embedded into the lives of the people.
1.Ceylon (Vol. 1) by Sir James Emerson Tennent, Part I, Chapter 1 p. 42
2. Ceylon (Vol. 1) by Sir James Emerson Tennent, Part 1, Chapter 3 p. 72
3. Ceylon (Vol. 1) by Sir James Emerson Tennent, Part 1, Chapter 3, p. 90
4. Ceylon (Vol. 1) by Sir James Emerson Tennent, Part 1, Chapter 3, p. 91
5. Ceylon (Vol. 1) by Sir James Emerson Tennent, Part 1, Chapter 3, pp. 98-99
6. Ceylon (Vol. 1) by Sir James Emerson Tennent, Part II, Chapter 6, p. 209
7. Ceylon (Vol. 1) by Sir James Emerson Tennent, Part IV, Chapter 2, p. 370
8. Ceylon (Vol. 1) by Sir James Emerson Tennent, Part IV, Chapter 2, p. 370
9. Ceylon (Vol. 2) by Sir James Emerson Tennent, Part VII, Chapter 1, pp. 633-634
10. Ceylon (Vol. 2) by Sir James Emerson Tennent, Part VII, Chapter 1, p. 636
11. Ceylon (Vol. 2) by Sir James Emerson Tennent, Part VII, Chapter 2, p. 645
12. Ceylon (Vol. 2) by Sir James Emerson Tennent, Part VII, Chapter 2, pp. 646-648
13. Ceylon (Vol. 1) by Sir James Emerson Tennent, Part IV, Chapter 11, pp. 456-457
14. Ceylon (Vol. 2) by Sir James Emerson Tennent, Part VII, Chapter 2, p. 648
15. Ceylon (Vol. 2) by Sir James Emerson Tennent, Part VII, Chapter 2, p. 647
16. Ceylon (Vol. 2) by Sir James Emerson Tennent, Part VII, Chapter 2, pp. 659-661
17. Ceylon (Vol. 2) by Sir James Emerson Tennent, Part IX, Chapter 4, p. 920
18. Ceylon (Vol. 2) by Sir James Emerson Tennent, Part IX, Chapter 6, pp. 976-977
19. Ceylon (Vol. 2) by Sir James Emerson Tennent, Part IX, Chapter 6, p. 978
20. Ceylon (Vol. 2) by Sir James Emerson Tennent, Part IX, Chapter 6, pp. 971-972
21. Ceylon (Vol. 2) by Sir James Emerson Tennent, Part IX, Chapter 6, p. 987
22. Ceylon (Vol. 2) by Sir James Emerson Tennent, Part X, Chapter 2, p. 646
23. Ceylon (Vol. 1) by Sir James Emerson Tennent, Part V, Chapter 1, pp. 479-480
24. Ceylon (Vol. 1) by Sir James Emerson Tennent, Part V, Chapter 3, p. 520
25. Ceylon (Vol. 1) by Sir James Emerson Tennent, Part V, Chapter 4, p. 538
26. Ceylon (Vol. 1) by Sir James Emerson Tennent, Part V, Chapter 4, p. 540
27. Ceylon (Vol. 2) by Sir James Emerson Tennent, Part VII, Chapter 2, p. 646