The nut is chewed by both sexes indiscriminately in Malabar as well as on the Coromandel coast. In Malabar they mix it with betel leaf, chunam, and tobacco; but in Tinnevelly and other parts, tobacco is never added. The three ingredients for the betel, as commonly used, are, the sliced nut, the leaf of the betel pepper, in which the nut is rolled, and chunam, or powdered lime, which is smeared over the leaf.
The areca nut is commonly known by the Malay name of Pinang, but in the Acheenese language it is called Penu, and the palm producing it Ba Penu. The ripe nut is called also Penu massa, and the green Penu mudr. The leaf of the betel pepper is called either Ranu or Siri, and the lime Chunam or Gapu. Tobacco, when used, is called Bakun.
In China, the principal consumption of the nut as a masticatory is in the provinces of Quangton, Quang-se, and Che-keang; and it may be seen exposed for sale on little stalls about the suburbs of Canton with the other additional articles used in its consumption. It is also used in dyeing. In the central provinces of Hoo-kwang and Kang-si the nut is, after being bruised and pounded, mixed with the green food of horses as a preventive against diarrhœa, to which some kinds of food subjects them. The Chinese state that it is used as a domestic medicine in the North of China, some pieces being boiled, and the decoction administered. From them is also prepared a kind of cutch, or catechu, which is exported in great quantities, and is now used largely in this country, together with other kinds, as a tanning and dyeing material.
In Ceylon these instruments are used: the Girri (No. 1.) for cutting the areca nut, and the Wanggedi (No. 2) and Moolgah (No. 3), a kind of mortar and pestle for mincing and intimately mixing the ingredients together.
No. 1. GIRRI, FOR CUTTING ARECA.
No. 2. WANGGEDI OR MORTAR and No. 3. MOOLGAH OR PESTLE
FOR MIXING THE INGREDIENTS.
In Virginia, tobacco was at one period used as a currency at a fixed value per pound. In Peru, the labourer is paid in coca, and in the Philippines, betel rolls have been used in the same manner as a currency. To the Malay it is as important as meat and drink, and many would rather forego the latter than their favourite Pinang. The same thing might also be said of the inveterate quidder of tobacco; we remember one of this description, who for years used one ounce per day, and declared often that he had rather be deprived of his dinner than his quid, although he liked both. Without his leaf, the confirmed “coquero” is the most miserable of beings, and when deprived of his customary pipe, the opium-smoker becomes sullen, ill, and utterly incapacitated for his employment. Habits of indulgence of this kind, when once commenced, are not so easily thrown off. It has been said that a “coquero” was never reclaimed from the use of his coca.
No estimate can be given of the absolute quantity of areca nuts which are used as a masticatory. Johnston calculates that they are chewed by not less than fifty millions of people, which, at the rate of ten pounds per year, or less than half an ounce per day, would amount to two hundred and twenty thousand tons, or five hundred millions of pounds, a quantity greater than that of any other narcotic except tobacco.
Areca nuts have been strung and made into walking sticks,[27] and, in this country, turned and formed into ornamental bracelets, as well as burnt into charcoal for tooth powder. We have engirdled the earth with pig-tail, let us apply the same kind of calculation to the estimated annual consumption of areca nuts, and strung together in the form of a bracelet, we have a string 505,050 miles in length, enough to go round the world 21 times; or, supposing these nuts to be arranged side by side, they would cover a road fourteen feet wide for the distance of not less than 3,000 miles. If arranged in like manner in the form of a square, they would occupy at least 5,000 acres of land.
The areca palm has given its name to the island of Penang, not from its growing there in larger numbers, or more luxuriant than elsewhere, but because it was the tree chiefly cultivated by the Malays who first occupied the island. It now better deserves the title, being the emporium for the betel nut raised on the east coast of Sumatra.