The ocean of story, being C.H. Tawney's translation of Somadeva's ...

APPENDIX II ROMANCE OF BETEL-CHEWING 269
it is to tell stories and eat betel, are unable to remain many
minutes without having it in their mouths. It is an exceedingly
common practice in India to offer betel leaf by way of
politeness, chiefly among the great men, who, when anyone
pays them a visit, offer betel at the time of leaving as a mark
of good will, and of the estimation in which they hold the
person who is visiting them. It would be a great piece of
rudeness to refuse it."
Fryer (1672-1681).
We now come to John Fryer, who gives us the following
curious account of the areca-palm * :
" Beetle, which . . . must not be slipt by in silence. . . .
" It rises out of the Ground to twelve or fourteen Feet
heighth, the Body of it green and slender, jointed like a Cane,
the Boughs flaggy and spreading, under whose Arms it brings
forth from its pregnant Womb (which bursts when her Month
is come) a Cluster of Green Nuts, like Wallnuts in Green
Shells, but different in the Fruit ; which is hard when dried,
and looks like a
"
Nutmeg.
The Natives chew it with Chinam (Lime of calcined
Oyster-Shells) and Arach, a Convolvulus with a Leaf like
the largest Ivy, for to preserve their Teeth, and correct an
unsavoury Breath. If swallowed, it inebriates as much as
Tobacco. Thus mixed, it is the only Indian Entertainment,
called Pawn"
Facing page 110 of Crooke's edition are Fryer's drawings
and diagrams of the areca-palm, areca-nuts, mango-trees, etc.
He then describes an areca-palm conservatory by comparing
it to a cathedral in the following way :
" These Plants set in a Row, make a Grove that might
delude the Fanatick Multitude into an Opinion of their being
sacred ;
and were not the Mouth of that Grand Impostor
Hermetically sealed up, where Christianity is spread, these
would still continue, as it is my Fancy they were of old, and
may
still be the Laboratories of his Fallacious Oracles : For
they, masquing the face of Day, beget a solemn reverence,
1 See Crooke's edition for the Hakluyt Society, vol. i, pp. 110-1 11. Other
references occur in vol. i, pp. 119, 136, 143, 151 ; vol. ii, pp. 42, 83, 96.