A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books
Part II
From Samalkotta to Calcutta
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| From Plants of the Coromandel |
William Roxburgh was appointed as a Surgeon seconded to the Norther Circars and he set up a botanical garden at Samalkotta, at the estuary of the River Godavari, not far rom Coringa, the bio diversity hot spot and the French territory of Yanam. He reached Sanalkota in 1781 and established his ressidence near the Garden and collected a large number of plants which were eventually published in Plants of the coromandel several years later. It is quite likely that the Herbariusm of Robert Koneig was inherited by Roxburgh. Collecting plants all over th Norther Circars at a time when the East India Company had not fully esatblished itself must have been quite challenging. While he was at Samalkta, Roxburgh initiated the training of "natives" into the making of botanical drawings which drew heavily on the Deccan School of natural drawings and paintings which in turn were derived from Mughal examples. The Deccan Sultanates especially of Bijapur and Bidar had a rich background of naturalistic painting.
The young Dr William Roxburgh was schooled in the methods and philosophy of the Scottish Enlightenment and believed as did his patrons in the East India Company that along withTrade and other commercial activities the Company must help in the formulation of knowledge and explore the natural word for the exploitation of its resources by England. We mut remember that the British Empire at this time was being challenged across the Atlantic by the American War of Independence and that was soon overshadowed by the looming war with France. Finance Profit and Economic well being were the key elements in the Company's strategy. To that end Roxburgh devoed his energy identifying economically profitable palnts that culd be acclamatised successfully in Indian geographical conditions and also prepare them for transfer to other scntres in the Joseph Banks' expanding network of botanical gardens: Cape of Good Hope, St. Helena and of course Kew Gardens.
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| Plants of the Coromandel |
At Samalkotta, Roxburgh experimented with plants of economic value such as (1) Coffee (2) Cinnamon (3) Nutmeg (4) Arrotto (5) Sappan wood (Breadfruit ( 6) Mulberry and (7) Pepper vines. It is clear that the Company still had its Spice Monopoly in mind while framing its botanical institutions. The VOC controlled the Spice Islands and with the outbreak of the Napoleonic Wars, the East India Company took advantage of its large military presence in the Southern part of the Peninsula and captured Java. Once again another Scotsman, Col Colin Mackenzie who collected and collated histrical documents in South India, teamed up with Sir Stamford Raffles another Scot to collect documents and historical artifacts from the Island of Java. Some of these artifacts belonging to the SriVijya Kingdom can be seen in the Museum at Calcutta.
William Roxburgh was perhaps married at the time he lived in Samalkota though ater the death of his wife he ook up with an ndian woman in Calcutta and had a son with her who was educated in Edinburg but unfortunately died before reaching the age of 40. He too was a namesake of his father. The idallyic existence was shattered on the night of May 19th and 20th, 1787. What happended on that fateful night; By the time the night of horror was through, Roxburgh had lost his valuable Library, his drawings of botanical specimens, his Herbarium, his house his house and 10,000 pagodas of cloth.And herein lies a tale.
May is generally not cyclone season along the Coromandel Coast, November is the month when the historically devastating Cyclones of the Coromandl hve struck. Yey Roxburgh writes in his acount that he could feel "great convulsion" from the morning of May 17th. The wind he says blew hard from the North East and Roburgh was a keen metreologists as he kept a detailed record of Tides and Winds during his stay at Madras measuing high tide every day. In fact his first published essay in The Journal of the Royal Society was a record of Tides he maintained at Madras, now Chennai. Roxburgh did sate that the weather was unusual at this season. And he goes on to sate that "we did not apprehend that it would become more ferocious, but on the night of the 19th t night it increased to a hard Gale and on 20th in the morning it blew a perfect hurricne". Waves to the hright of narly 15 feet came crashing on the sleeping inhabitants of Coringa and Samalkota. Roxburgh and his wife escaped the storm by taking refuge in ahouse built on top of a hill and in the morning when they ventured out saw death and devastation all around. He estimated that about 10,000 people had been killed in this freak perfect hurricane in an unsual time of the year.
Can the unusual storm and surge of the Sea which rose to the height of nearly 15 feet be expalined in terms of a tsunami caused by an erruption in the volcano in the Andaman chain, the one in Barren Island. There is a piece of evidnce in the historical record publised by Colebroke that recorded the erruption of the Barren Island volcano just a few days before the Sea surged towatd Samalkotta and Coringa. A sailor saw columns of smoke asending from the summit of the volcano from a distance of 7 leagues.
Thus the unusual fury of the May 19-20 Sea sure recorded by William Roxburgh may have been the effect of this Indian Ocean volcanic eruption'
To be continued in Part III
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