In the temple

Today I present you with a persimmon sitting on a rather special Fijian wooden dish, known as a daveniyaqona vakaga.

The Wesleyan missionary the Rev. Thomas Williams, was the principal authority upon the state of society among the Fijians when Europeans first came into contact with them. With his wife and a few other dedicated colleagues he conducted his ministry in the considerable hardship and danger of the cannibal islands of Fiji between 1840 and 1852. He described his experiences in Fiji and the Fijians: The Islands and their inhabitants published in 1858. In the book he illustrated a dish of similar style and described it as a priest's inspirational yaqona dish in duck form, in Fijian a daveniyaqona vakaga, used within the Spirit Temple. Yaqona, a mildly narcotic brew made from the plant Piper methysticum was drunk from the dish by the bete, the priest, via a straw.

By the way, in Korean folklore dried persimmons are renowned for keeping tigers at bay. It seems to work as far as Newburgh is concerned!