addressing himself to a senseless thing, which hears and knows nothing.1 As for the famous Bo tree, its miraculous glories are not confined to the ancient Buddhist annals; for its surviving descendant, grown from the branch of the parent tree sent by King Asoka from India to Ceylon in the 3rd century B.C., to this day receives the worship of the pilgrims who come by thousands to do it honour, and offer prayer before it. Beyond these hints and relics of the old worship, however, Mr. Fergusson's recent investigations, published in his 'Tree and Serpent Worship,' have brought to light an ancient state of things which the orthodox Buddhist literature gives little idea of. It appears from the sculptures of the Sanchi tope in Central India, that in the Buddhism of about the 1st century A.D., sacred trees had no small place as objects of authorized worship. It is especially notable that the representatives of indigenous race and religion in India, the Nagas, characterized by their tutelary snakes issuing from their backs between their shoulders and curving over their heads, and other tribes actually drawn as human apes, are seen adoring the divine tree in the midst of unquestionable Buddhist surroundings.2 Tree-worship, even now well marked among the indigenous tribes of India, was obviously not abolished on the Buddhist conversion. The new philosophic religion seems to have amalgamated, as new religions ever do, with older native thoughts and rites. And it is quite consistent with the habits of the Buddhist theologians and hagiologists, that when tree-worship was suppressed, they should have slurred over the fact of its former prevalence, and should even have used the recollection of it as a gibe against the hostile Brahmans. Conceptions like those of the lower races in character, and rivalling them in vivacity, belong to the mythology of Greece and Rome. The classic thought of the tree inhabited by a deity and uttering oracles, is like that of 1 Hardy, 'Manual of Budhism,' pp. 100, 443. 2 Fergusson, 'Tree and Serpent Worship,' pl. xxiv. xxvi. &c. 3 other regions. Thus the sacred palm of Negra in Yemen, whose demon was propitiated by prayer and sacrifice to give oracular response,1 or the tall oaks inhabited by the gods, where old Slavonic people used to ask questions and hear the answers,2 have their analogue in the prophetic oak of Dodona, wherein dwelt the deity, 'vaîev δ ̓ ἐνὶ πυθμένι φηγοῦ. The Homeric hymn to Aphrodite tells of the tree-nymphs, long-lived yet not immortal— they grow with their high-topped leafy pines and oaks upon the mountains, but when the lot of death draws nigh, and the lovely trees are sapless, and the bark rots away and the branches fall, then their spirits depart from the light of the sun :— • Νύμφαι μιν θρέψουσιν ὀρεσκῷοι βαθύκολποι, άλλο ἀλλ' ὅτε κεν δὴ μοῖρα παρεστήκῃ θανάτοιο, The hamadryad's life is bound to her tree, she is hurt when it is wounded, she cries when the axe threatens, she Idies with the fallen trunk :: 'Non sine hamadryadis fato cadit arborea trabs.' 5 How personal a creature the tree-nymph was to the classic mind, is shown in legends like that of Paraibios, 1 Tabary in Bastian, 1.c. p. 295. 2 Hartknoch, 'Alt. und Neues Preussen,' part i. ch. v. 3 See Pauly, 'Real-Encyclopedie.' Homer. Odyss. xiv. 327, xix. 296, 4 Hymn. Homer. Aphrod. 257. 5 Ausonii Idyll. De Histor. 7. whose father, regardless of the hamadryad's entreaties, cut down her ancient trunk, and in himself and in his offspring suffered her dire vengeance.1 The ethnographic student finds a curious interest in transformation-myths like Ovid's, keeping up as they do vestiges of philosophy of archaic type-Daphne turned into the laurel that Apollo honours for her sake, the sorrowing sisters of Phaethon changing into trees, yet still dropping blood and crying for mercy when their shoots are torn.2 Such episodes mediæval poetry could still adapt, as in the pathless infernal forest whose knotted dusk-leaved trees revealed their human animation to the Florentine when he plucked a twig, 'Allor porsi la mano un poco avante, E colsi un ramoscel da un gran pruno: E'l tronco suo gridò: Perchè mi schiante?'3 or the myrtle to which Ruggiero tied his hippogriff, who tugged at the poor trunk till it murmured and oped its mouth, and with doleful voice told that it was Astolfo, enchanted by the wicked Alcina among her other lovers, 'D' entrar o in fera o in fonte o in legno o in sasso.' 94 If these seem to us now conceits over quaint for beauty, we need not scruple to say so. They are not of Dante and Ariosto, they are sham antiques from classic models. And if even the classic originals have become unpleasing, we need not perhaps reproach ourselves with decline of poetic taste. We have lost something, and the loss has spoiled our appreciation of many an old poetic theme, yet it is not always our sense of the beautiful that has dwindled, but the old animistic philosophy of nature that is gone from us, dissipating from such fancies their meaning, and with 1 Apollon. Rhod. Argonautica, ii. 476. See Welcker, 'Griech. Götterl.' vol. iii. p. 57. 2 Ovid. Metamm. i. 452, ii. 345, xi. 67. 3 Dante, 'Divina Commedia,' 'Inferno,' canto xiii. 4 Ariosto, 'Orlando Furioso,' canto vi. their meaning their loveliness. Still, if we look for living. men to whom trees are, as they were to our distant forefathers, the habitations and embodiments of spirits, we shall not look in vain. The peasant folklore of Europe still knows of willows that bleed and weep and speak when hewn, of the fairy maiden that sits within the fir-tree, of that old tree in Rugaard forest that must not be felled, for an elf dwells within, of that old tree on the Heinzenberg near Zell, which uttered its complaint when the woodman cut it down, for in it was Our Lady, whose chapel now stands upon the spot.1 One may still look on where Franconian damsels go to a tree on St. Thomas's Day, knock thrice solemnly, and listen for the indwelling spirit to give answer by raps from within, what manner of husbands they are to have.2 In the remarkable document of mythic cosmogony, preserved by Eusebius under the alleged authorship of the Phoenician Sanchoniathon, is the following passage: 'But these first men consecrated the plants of the earth, and judged them gods, and worshipped the things upon which they themselves lived and their posterity, and all before them, and (to these) they made libations and sacrifices.'3 From examples such as have been here reviewed, it seems that direct and absolute tree-worship of this kind may indeed lie very wide and deep in the early history of religion. But the whole tree-cultus of the world must by no means be thrown indiscriminately into this one category. It is only on such distinct evidence as has been here put forward, that a sacred tree may be taken as having a spirit embodied in or attached to it. Beyond this limit, there is a wider range of animistic conceptions connected with tree and forest worship. The tree may be the spirit's perch or shelter or favourite haunt. Under this definition come the 1 Grimm, 'D. M.' p. 615, &c. Bastian, 'Der Baum,' l. c. p. 297; Hanusch, 'Slaw. Myth.' p. 313. 2 Wuttke, 'Volksaberglaube,' p. 57, see 183. 3 Euseb. 'Præp. Evang.' i. 10. trees hung with objects which are the receptacles of diseasespirits. As places of spiritual resort, there is no real distinction between the sacred tree and the sacred grove. The tree may serve as a scaffold or altar, at once convenient and conspicuous, where offerings can be set out for some spiritual being, who may be a tree-spirit, or perhaps the local deity, living there just as a man might do who had his hut and owned his plot of land around. The shelter of some single tree, or the solemn seclusion of a forest grove, is a place of worship set apart by nature, of some tribes the only temple, of many tribes perhaps the earliest. Lastly, the tree may be merely a sacred object patronized by or associated with or symbolizing some divinity, often one of those which we shall presently notice as presiding over a whole species of trees or other things. How all these conceptions, from actual embodiment or local residence or visit of a demon or deity, down to mere ideal association, can blend together, how hard it often is to distinguish them, and yet how in spite of this confusion they conform to the animistic theology in which all have their essential principles, a few examples will show better than any theoretical comment.1 Take the groups of malicious wood-fiends so obviously devised to account for the mysterious influences that beset the forest wanderer. In the Australian bush, demons whistle in the branches, and stooping with outstretched arms sneak among the trunks to seize the wayfarer; the lame demon leads astray the hunter in the Brazilian forest; the Karen crossing a fever-haunted jungle shudders in the grip of the spiteful 'phi,' and runs to lay an offering by the tree he rested under last, from whose boughs the malaria-fiend came down upon him; the negro of Senegambia seeks to pacify the long-haired tree-demons that send diseases; the terrific cry of the wood-demon is heard in the Finland 1 Further details as to tree-worship in Bastian, 'Der Baum,' &c., here cited; Lubbock, 'Origin of Civilization,' p. 206, &c.; Fergusson, 'Tree and Serpent Worship,' &c. |