TheBanyanTree: Banyan days and banyan thoughts

[Peter Macinnis]

I have been off on a briefish sojourn in Vanuatu, a collection of coral
and volcanic bits which were once known as the New Hebrides (there was a
faint resemblance to some rather chillier northern isles, fanciful as
that may seem now -- but then James Cook named my stamping ground 'New
South Wales', and that one fails to gel as well.  Then again, New Guinea
isn't that far off, and Abel Tasman labelled something to the south 'New
Zealand'.  With the exception of New South Wales which is old geology, 
most of them *are* rather new, especially Vanuatu, which is just off the 
edge of the Australian plate, so the place is heavily volcanic.

We missed a trip to Tanna, this time around, where the world's most
active Strombolian volcano, Yasur is to be found.  No matter, this trip
was to snorkel, gather some atmospherics, and get some quiet
snorkelling, coral walking and reading done.  Still, we poked around a
bit, getting away into the countryside.

James Michener lived on Vanuatu's main island, Efate, at one stage,
close to a large US hospital, which was later demolished.  This
positioning must have had something to do with the origins of 'Tales 
from the South Pacific', and while travelling, we were shown the place 
where Bali Hai can occasionally be seen, out to sea from Michener's old 
home.

The old New Hebrides were jointly ruled by Britain and France, which
would account for the odd mix of people found in Michener's tales.  The
Americans left something of a mark -- the airstrip at Port Vila is
Bauerfield, named after Harry Bauer, a USMC flying ace, last seen in the
water in his Mae West.  So Efate offered American armed forces, nurses,
French planters, a view of Bali Hai -- and Michener nearby to watch over
it all.

I seem to have been following Michener's footsteps a bit this year --
in July, we were in Waikiki, where he wrote perhaps his most famous
book, 'Hawaii', but Chris took me to have high tea at the Bangkok 
Oriental hotel  in March, in a tea room that had been previously graced 
by literary  greats like Michener, Joseph Conrad, Somerset Maugham, John 
Galsworthy,  Rudyard Kipling, Graham Greene, Noel Coward -- and Barbara 
Cartland. Hmmm, don't think I will pursue that further . . . no 
parallels will be drawn.

Our guide on Efate discovered that Chris and I were botanists by
inclination, so shared some extra insights with us.  Some years ago,
while looking more closely at Cook, I learned some curious facts about
banyans which I may have shared before, but which I append below in any
case.  Before I do, let me add what Levi-the-driver told us of the 
banyan while conducting us to the wreckage of a B17 that crashed in the 
jungle:

On the island of Efate, when cyclones (hurricanes to some of you) get
up, it is custom to cut away a few of the roots of a banyan tree so as
to allow a family to shelter in the centre of the trunkless tree.  So to
those of you who find shelter and comfort in the Banyan Tree, be aware
that you are at one with the cunning and surviving folk of Efate.

The banyan is a strangler fig, which flourishes in the rain forest by
being deposited as a sticky seed, high up on some other tree, and then
sends many roots down to the ground.  In the end, its supporting tree
dies, and the banyan lives on, perched comfortably atop its many, many
prop roots.  No mere cyclone bowls over a banyan.  Let us not attempt 
parallels there, either.


Now back to some earlier researches:

The name of James Cook, commonly known as 'Captain Cook', will forever
be associated with the use of vitamin C foods against scurvy, in part
because another James Cook published the notes on scurvy of John Hall,
the physician son-in-law of William Shakespeare, in 1657.

I say in part, because the noted seafarer did also play a part, which he
describes in his journal for April 13, 1769, just after he arrived at
Tahiti -- I have preserved his spelling, the mark of a bluff and honest
seaman:

"At this time we had but a very few men upon the Sick list and thes[e]
had but slite complaints, the Ships compney had in general been very
healthy owing in a great measure to the Sour Krout, Portable Soup and
Malt; the first two were serve'd to the People, the one on Beef Days and
the other on Banyan Days, Wort was made of the Malt and at the
discrition of the Surgeon given to every man that had the least symptoms
of Scurvy upon him . . ."

To people (as opposed to "the People", who are the ship's crew) unused
to naval language, this may be a little puzzling to those who know that 
a banyan is a tree of the fig genus, either Ficus religiosa, or Ficus 
indica. Since the Banyan Days appear to be meat-free days, I wondered: 
could it be that a Banyan diet is based on the leaves or fruit of these 
trees?

While that might be an attractive derivation, it turned out to be a 
wrong one.  The word 'banyan' (or 'banian' as some sources prefer) word 
is Portuguese, from the Arabic, from the Gujerati vaniyo, from the 
Sanskrit vanij, meaning "merchant" — among other things. The banyan tree 
gets its name from a specimen near Gombroon on the Persian Gulf, beneath 
which Banian settlers had erected a pagoda, which became known as "the 
Banian tree".

Some Banyan trees send out branches which drop roots, which become
trunks, which send out branches, and so it goes. Big banyans occupy five
acres (2 hectares) or more, and you will sometimes encounter claims that
the largest living thing in the world is a banyan tree, though some
fungi are close to the same mark, and if you regard colonies of animals
like corals and ant nests as organisms, the banyan tree may have some
serious competition to face.  The Vanuatan ones are big, but not THAT big!

A Banyan, says the Oxford English Dictionary, which persists with the
Banian spelling, is one of four things: a Hindu, a native broker in an
Indian firm, a loose flannel shirt, jacket or gown, or lastly, a tree,
but that is all — the OED has missed Cook's usage altogether.

Still, if anybody gives you figs in your Banyan diet, you needn't be too
fussy — and considering the other Banyans that might appear there, the
figs might even prove to be a welcome offering, though that was not how
Cook's crew saw the "Sour Krout" he wanted to dose them with. But the 
wily Whitby sailor was ready for them, as he explained in the same entry 
in his journal:

"The Sour Krout the Men at first would not eate untill I put in practice
a Method I never once knew to fail with seamen, and this was to have
some of it dress'd every Day for the Cabbin Table, and permitted all of
the Officers without exception to make use of it and left it to the
option of the Men either to take as much as they pleased or none at all;
but this practice was not continued above a week before I found it
necessary to put every one on board to an Allowance, for such are the
tempers and dispossissions of Seamen in general that . . . the Moment
the see their Superiors set a Value upon it, it becomes the finest stuff
in the World, and the inventer a damn'd honest fellow."



-- 
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