Stories illustrating the peculiar reverence with which this tree is regarded are tolerably plentiful, and but for the limitations of our space, might be almost indefinitely multiplied. A writer in Notes and Queries relates that an old woman in the neighbourhood of Benares, was observed walking round and round a certain peepul-tree. At every round she sprinkled a few drops of water from the water vessel in her hand on the small offering of flowers she had laid beneath the tree. A bystander who was questioned as to this ceremony, replied—“This is a sacred tree; the good spirits live up amidst its branches, and the old woman is worshipping them.”
Then some half-a-dozen years ago, when Mr. Barnum, the showman, of America, was completing the purchase of a certain white elephant, it was narrated in an Indian paper, that under the terms of sale, the purchaser was required to swear by the holy and sacred Bo-Tree that the animal should receive every kindness and consideration.
CHAPTER V.
Sacred Trees very ancient in Egypt—Hebrew Trees—The Sycamore at Matarea—Ionic forms—The Koran on Mary and the Palm Tree—Sacredness of the Palm in Egypt—Tree Worship in Dahome—The sacred tree of the Canary Isles.
“Among the Egyptians, from the earliest period of their monumental history to the latest, we find represented on tombs and stèts the figure of a sacred tree, from which departed souls in human form, receive the nourishment of everlasting life.
“The monuments of the ancient Assyrians also show a sacred tree symbolical of the divine influence of the life-giving deity. So also do those of the ancient Persians, and it was preserved by them, almost as represented on the Assyrian monuments, until the invasion of the Arabs.
“The Hebrews had a sacred tree which figured in their temple architecture along with the cherubim; it was the same sort of tree as that which had previously been in use among the Egyptians, and was subsequently, in a conventional form, adopted by the Assyrians and Persians, and eventually by the Christians, who introduced it in the mosaics of their early churches associated with their most sacred rites. This tree, which occurs also as a religious symbol on Etruscan remains, and was abbreviated by the Greeks into a familiar ornament of their temple architecture, was the date palm, Phœnix dactylifera.
“But although the earliest known form of the Tree of Life on Egyptian monuments is the date palm, at a later period the sycamore fig tree was represented instead, and eventually even this disappeared in some instances and a female personification came in its place.