Everybody knows the agreeable tamarind preserve we receive from the West Indies; everybody has occasionally produced by its aid a cooling and welcome beverage; and everybody (at least in Scotland) has conferred, by its means, upon the insipid gruel recommended for a cold a finely-acidulated taste. Everybody likewise knows that the tamarind is pretty largely employed in our Materia Medica, and that its effect, when eaten uncompounded, is gently aperient: but for all that, very few persons are acquainted with certain curious particulars connected with the tree which produces this popular fruit.

The tamarind-tree is one of the fabaceÆ, or order of leguminous plants; 'an order,' says Lindley, 'not only among the most extensive that are known, but also one of the most important to man, whether we consider the beauty of the numerous species, which are among the gayest-coloured and most graceful plants of every region, or their applicability to a thousand useful purposes.' To give an idea of the wide extension of this order, we may say that it includes the acacia, the logwood and rosewood of commerce; the laburnum, the furze, and the broom; the bean, pea, vetch, clover, trefoil, indigo, gum-arabic, and other gums and drugs. There are two species of tamarinds—the East and the West Indian—exhibiting some considerable difference, more especially in the pods, which are much shorter in the latter species, and the pulp less rich and plentiful. In the West Indies, the shell is removed, and the legume preserved, by being placed in jars intermixed with layers of sugar; or else the vessel is filled up with boiling sugar, which penetrates to the bottom. The Turks and Arabs use this fruit, prepared either with sugar or honey, as an article of food; and for its cooling properties it is a favourite in journeys in the desert. In Nubia it is formed into cakes, baked in the sun; and these are afterwards used in producing a cooling drink. In India, likewise, it is used both as food and drink; but there it is never treated with sugar, but merely dried in the sun. When eaten as food, it is toasted, soaked in water, and then boiled, till the taste, it is said, resembles that of the common bean.

In India the tamarind-tree is a very beautiful object, its spreading branches flinging even with their tiny leaves an extensive shade. In one season its pretty straw-coloured flowers refresh the eye; and in another its long brown pods, which are shed plentifully, afford a more substantial refreshment to the traveller. The Hindoos, however, prize it chiefly as a material for cleaning their brass vessels, although they likewise use it as a condiment for their curries and other dishes, and likewise make it into pickles and preserves. For the last-mentioned purpose a red variety is the most esteemed, both the timber and the fruit being of a sanguine hue. The tamarind, however, is chiefly planted by the roadside, or on the rising banks of a tank; and in the lower parts of Bengal, where it grows in the natural forests of the Sunderbunds, it is the most common kind of firewood, being never used for any more dignified purpose. The native never chooses this beautiful tree, as he does the palm, the neem, or the mourungosh, to overshadow his hut; and it is never admitted into the mango groves sacred to the gods, although the silk-cotton and the mouwha are not forbidden that consecrated ground.

But the prejudice goes further still. No khitmutgar, or cook, will hang a piece of meat on a tamarind-tree: he believes that meat thus exposed does not keep well, and that it becomes unfit for salting. A traveller, though very willing to eat of the fruit, will not unload his pack or rest under its branches; and a soldier, tired as he may be with a long march, will rather wander farther on than pile his arms in its shade. There is an idea, in fact, at least in Bengal, that there is something unlucky or unhealthy, some antique spell or some noxious vapour, surrounding this beautiful tree; although we are not aware that science has yet discovered that there is anything really hurtful in its exhalations.

Another strange notion connected with the tamarind-tree is thus mentioned by a correspondent:—'Often have I stood as a youngster gazing with astonishment at a couple of bearers belabouring a large knotty root, of some eight feet in girth, with their axes, making the chips fly off in every direction; which, upon picking up, I used to find covered over with unintelligible scribbles, which the bearers gravely told me was the writing of the gods.'

Here we have our tree in a new light: this outcast from the sacred groves is inscribed with holy characters! Who shall interpret their meaning? Are they like the mark set upon the forehead of Cain? Or is the legend intended as a perpetual consolation under the prejudices and indignities of men? All we know is, that the white fir-like grains of the tamarind wood are written over in an unknown tongue by means of a small thread-like vein of a black colour.

There is a similar superstition connected with another Indian tree, the kulpa briksha, or silver-tree, so called from the colour of the bark. The original kulpa, which now stands in the garden of the god Indra in the first heaven, is said to have been one of the fourteen remarkable things turned up by the churning of the ocean by the gods and demons. But however this may be, the name of Ram and his consort Seeta is written upon the silvery trunks of all its earthly descendants! Colonel Sleeman, when travelling in Upper India, had the curiosity to examine many of these trees on both sides of the road; and sure enough the name of the incarnation of Vishnu mentioned was plainly enough discernible, written in Sanscrit characters, and apparently by some supernatural hand—'that is, there was a softness in the impression, as if the finger of some supernatural being had traced the characters.' The traveller endeavoured to argue his attendants out of their senses; but unluckily he could find no tree, however near or distant, without the names; the only difference being in the size of the letters, which in some cases were large, and in others small. At length he observed a kulpa in a hollow below the road, and one on a precipice above, both in situations accessible with such difficulty, that he was sure no mortal scribe would take the trouble to get at them. He declared confidently his opinion that the names would not be found on these trees, and it was proved that he was right. But this was far from affecting the devout faith of his Hindoo followers. 'Doubtless,' said one, 'they have in some way or other got rubbed off; but God will renew them in His own time.' 'Perhaps,' remarked another, 'he may not have thought it necessary to write at all upon places where no traveller could decipher them.' 'But do you not see,' said the traveller, losing patience, 'that these names are all on the trunk within reach of a man's hand?' 'Of course they are,' replied they, 'since the miracle could not be distinguished by the eyes of men if they were written higher up!'

A shrub called the trolsee is a representation of the same goddess Seeta, and is every year married with great ceremony to a sacred stone called Saligram, a rounded pebble supposed to represent the good Vishnu, of whom Ram was an incarnation. On one occasion described, the procession attending this august ceremony consisted of 8 elephants, 1200 camels, and 4000 horses, all mounted and elegantly caparisoned. Above 100,000 persons were present at this pageant, at which the little pebble was mounted on the leading elephant, and thus carried in state to his tree goddess. All the ceremonies of a Hindoo marriage were gone through, and then the god and goddess were left to repose together till the next season in the temple of Sudora.

Indian trees, however, it must be said, are, from all accounts, much more worthy of the honours of superstition than those of less fervid climes. A traveller mentions an instance of the 'sentient principle' occurring among the denizens of an Indian forest. Two trees, he tells us, of different kinds, although only three feet apart, had grown to the height of fifty or sixty feet, when one of them took the liberty of throwing out a low branch in such a way as to touch the trunk of his neighbour, and thus occasion much pain and irritation. 'On this the afflicted tree in turn threw out a huge excrescence, which not only enveloped the offending branch, but strangled it so completely as to destroy it utterly; the ends of the deadened boughs projecting three or four feet beyond the excrescence, while the latter was carried on a distance of three feet across to the shaft of the tree, so as to render all chances of its future movement wholly impossible!' This appears to our traveller to display as much forethought and sagacity as taking up an artery for aneurism, or tying splints round a broken bone.

But in a country where trees are the objects of such veneration, and where those that are neither holy nor sagacious are admitted without scruple to the best arborical society, how comes it that the beautiful, the umbrageous, and the beneficent tamarind is looked upon as the outlaw of the plantation, the pariah of the forest? This is a very puzzling circumstance, and one that, in the present state of our knowledge, we can only set down to the caprice and ingratitude of man.