[Footnote 1:  Mahawanso, ch. lxxii.]

As the other species of the same genus of palms are confined to the New World[1], a doubt has been raised whether the coco-nut be indigenous in India, or an importation.  If the latter, the first plant must have been introduced anterior to the historic age; and whatever the period at which the tree may have been first cultivated, a time is indicated when it was practically unknown in Ceylon by the fact, that a statue, without date or inscription, is carved in high relief in a niche hollowed out of a rock to the east of Galle, which tradition says is the monument to the Kustia Raja, an Indian prince, whose claim to remembrance is, that he first taught the Singhalese the use of the coco-nut.[2]

[Footnote 1:  BROWN’S Notes to TUCKEY’S Expedition to the Congo, p. 456.]

[Footnote 2:  The earliest mention of the coco-nut in Ceylon occurs in the Mahawanso, which refers to it as known at Rohuna to the south, B. c, 161 ( ch. xxv. p. 140).  “The milk of the small red coco-nut” is stated to have been used been used by Dutugaimunu in preparing cement for building the Ruanwelle dagoba (Mah. ch. xxx. p. 169).  The south-west of the island, and especially the margin of the sea is still the locality in which the tree is found in greatest abundance in Ceylon.  Hither, if originally self-sown, it must have been floated and flung ashore by the waves; and as the north-east coast, though washed by a powerful current, is almost altogether destitute of these palms, it is obvious that the coco-nut; if carried by sea from some other shore, must have been brought during the south-west monsoon from the coast near Cape Comorin, AELIAN notices as one of the leading peculiarities in the appearance of the sea coast of Ceylon, that the palm trees (by which, as the south of the island was the place of resort, he most probably means the coco-nut palms) grew in regular quincunxes, as if planted by skilful hands in a well ordered garden. [Greek:  “HE nesos, hen kalousi Taprobanen, echei phoinikonas men thaumastes pephuteumenous eis stoichon, hosper oun en tois habrois ton paradeison oi touton meledonoi phuteuousi ta dendra ta skiadephora."]—­Lib. xvi. cp. 18.  The comparative silence of the Mahawanso in relation to the coco-nut may probably be 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 always 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.  See DAVY’S Angler in the Lake Districts, p. 245.]