ld[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
nowh