Coconuts
- British colonial
Ships from the Maldive Islands brought coconuts to the Odisha coast every year, along with cowrie shells, coral and dried fish. River boats then carried some coconuts further inland, up the Mahanadi towards Sambalpur.
Maldive ships brought coconuts to Balasore and Dhamra every year, and boats carried them on up the Mahanadi.
A British officer named Stirling wrote about ships from the Maldive Islands. They sailed to Balasore and Dhamra every year. They carried coconuts, cowrie shells, coral and dried fish. Traders swapped these for rice and clay pots. [Stirling, 1825, p. 194]
An 1872 book tells a different story. River towns carried coconuts up the Mahanadi river to Sambalpur. Salt, spices and brass pots went on the same boats. [Hunter, 1872, vol. II Appendix III, p. 74]
For scholars
Stirling names the Maldive Islands as the source of the coconuts at Balasore and Dhamra. Hunter’s coconuts move inland, to Sambalpur. He does not say where they first came from. They might be coconuts grown on the Odisha coast itself, not imported ones. Read together, the two sources show that coconuts were a real trade good here. They do not prove one single import route. [Stirling, 1825, p. 194; Hunter, 1872, vol. II Appendix III, p. 74]
Facts
- Category
- Foodstuff
- Direction
- Imported into Kalinga
Scholar notes
Stirling names the Maldive Islands as the source of the coconuts landed at Balasore and Dhamra. Hunter's coconuts are recorded moving further inland from the coast to Sambalpur and do not state where they first came from, so they may include coconuts grown on the Odisha coast itself rather than imported ones; the two sources are read together as evidence that coconuts were a documented trade good on this coast, not as two independent proofs of the same import route.
- Andrew Stirling. *An Account, Geographical, Statistical, and Historical, of Orissa Proper or Cuttack*. in Asiatic Researches 15. 1825. public domain , p. 194 ('a small supply of couris, cocoanuts, coral, and dried fish is obtained from the few Maldive vessels, which resort annually to Balasore and Dhamra, to take on board cargoes of rice and earthen pots.')
- William Wilson Hunter. *Orissa: Or the Vicissitudes of an Indian Province under Native and British Rule*. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1872. public domain , vol. II Appendix III, p. 74 (Mahanadi river towns 'carry salt, spices, cocoa-nuts, and brass utensils up to Sambalpur... bringing thence, in exchange, cotton, wheat, oil-seeds, clarified butter, oil, molasses, iron, turmeric, tasar cloth, rice'.)