COCO-DE-MER
COCO-DE-MER, or DOUBLE COCO-NUT, s. The curious twin fruit so called, the produce of the
Lodoicea Sechellarum, a palm growing only in the Seychelles Islands, is cast up on the shores of
the Indian Ocean, most frequently on the Maldive Islands, but occasionally also on Ceylon and
S. India, and on the coasts of Zanzibar, of Sumatra, and some others of the Malay Islands. Great
virtues as medicine and antidote were supposed to reside in these fruits, and extravagant prices
were paid for them. The story goes that a country captain, expecting to make his fortune, took
a cargo of these nuts from the Seychelles Islands to Calcutta, but the only result was to destroy
their value for the future.
The old belief was that the fruit was produced on a palm growing below
the sea, whose fronds, according to Malay seamen, were sometimes seen in quiet bights on the
Sumatran coast, especially in the Lampong Bay. According to one form of the story among the
Malays, which is told both by Pigafetta and by Rumphius, there was but one such tree, the fronds
of which rose above an abyss of the Southern Ocean, and were the abode of the monstrous bird
Garuda (or Rukh of the Arabssee ROC).1 The tree itself was called Pausengi, which Rumphius
seems to interpret as a corruption of Buwa-zangi, Fruit of Zang or E. Africa. [Mr. Skeat writes: Rumphius
is evidently wrong.
The first part of the word is Pau, or Pauh, which is perfectly good Malay,
and is the name given to various species of mango, especially the wild one, so that Pausengi
represents (not Buwa, but) Pauh Janggi, which is to this day the universal Malay name for the
tree which grows, according to Malay fable, in the central whirlpool or Navel of the Seas. Some
versions add that it grows upon a sunken bank (têbing runtoh), and is guarded by dragons. This
tree figures largely in Malay romances, especially those which form the subject of Malay shadow-
plays (vide infra, Pl. 23, for an illustration of the Pauh Janggi and the Crab). Rumphius explanation
of the second part of the name (i.e. Janggi) is, no doubt, quite correct.Malay Magic, pp. 6 seqq.).]
They were cast up occasionally on the islands off the S.W. coast of Sumatra; and the wild people
of the islands brought them for sale to the Sumatran marts, such as Padang and Priamang. One
of the largest (say about 12 inches across) would sell for 150 rix dollars. But the Malay princes
coveted them greatly, and would sometimes (it was alleged) give a laden junk for a single nut.
In India the best known source of supply was from the Maldive Islands. [In India it is known as
Daryai nariyal, or cocoa-nut of the sea, and this term has been in Bombay corrupted into ja
hari (zahri) or poisonous, so that the fruit is incorrectly regarded as dangerous to life. The hard shell
is largely used to make Fakirs water-bowls.]
The medicinal virtues of the nut were not only famous
among all the peoples of the East, including the Chinese, but are extolled by Piso and by Rumphius,
with many details. The latter, learned and laborious student of nature as he was, believed in the
submarine origin of the nut, though he discredited its growing on a great palm, as no traces of
such a plant had ever been discovered on the coasts. The fame of the nuts virtues had extended
to Europe, and the Emperor Rudolf II. in his later days offered in vain 4000 florins to purchase
from the family of Wolfert Hermanszen, a Dutch Admiral, one that had been presented to that
commander by the King of Bantam, on the Hollanders relieving his capital, attacked by the Portuguese,
in 1602.
It will be seen that the Maldive name of this fruit was Tava-karhi. The latter word is coco-
nut, but the meaning of tava does not appear from any Maldive vocabulary. [The term is properly
Tavakarhi, the hard-shelled nut, (Gray, on Pyrard de Laval, Hak. Soc. i. 231).] Rumphius states
that a book in 4to (totum opusculum) was published on this nut, at Amsterdam in 1634, by Augerius
Clutius, M.D. [In more recent times the nut has become famous as the subject of curious speculations
regarding it by the late Gen. Gordon.]
1522.They also related to us that beyond Java Major
there is an enormous tree named Campanganghi,
in which dwell certain birds named Garuda, so large that they take with their claws, and carry away
flying, a buffalo and even an elephant, to the place of the tree.
The fruit of this tree is called Buapanganghi,
and is larger than a water-melon
it was understood that those fruits which are frequently found in the
sea came from that place,Pigufetta, Hak. Soc. p. 155.
1553.
it appears
that in some places beneath
the salt-water there grows
another kind of these trees, which gives a fruit bigger than the coco-nut; and