“In a country like India, anything that offers a cool shelter from the burning rays of the sun is regarded with a feeling of grateful respect. The wide-spreading Banyan tree is planted and nursed with care, only because it offers a shelter to many a weary traveller. Extreme usefulness of the thing is the only motive perceivable in the careful rearing of other trees. They are protected by religious injunctions, and the planting of them is encouraged by promises of eternal bliss in the future world. The injunction against injuring a banyan or fig tree is so strict, that in the Ramayana even Rávana, an unbeliever, is made to say ‘I have not cut down any fig tree, in the month of Vaisakha, why then does the calamity (alluding to the several defeats his army sustained in the war with Rámachandra and to the loss of his sons and brothers) befall me?’”
The medicinal properties of many plants soon attracted notice, and were cultivated with much care. With the illiterate the medicinal virtues of a drug are increased with its scarcity; and to enhance its value it was soon associated with difficulties, and to keep it secret from public knowledge, it was culled in the dark and witching hours of night.
Trees have frequently been identified with gods: thus in the Panma Purána, the religious fig tree is an incarnation of Vishnu, the Indian fig tree of Rudra, and the Palasa of Brahma.
In the Varáka Purana, the planter of a group of trees of a particular species is promised heavenly bliss, and it is needless to point out that from the names of the trees recommended, the extensive utility of the act must be acknowledged. Thus it is said, “He never goes to hell who plants an asvatha, or a pichumarda, or a banian, or ten jessamines, or two pomegranates, a panchámra, or five mangoes.”
The Tithitatva gives a slightly different list, substituting two champakas, three kesara, seven tala-palms, and nine cocoanuts, instead of the banian, the jessamines, the pomegranates, and the panchámra.
As early as the Rāmāyana, the planting of a group of trees was held meritorious. The celebrated Panchavati garden where Sitá was imprisoned, has been reproduced by many a religious Hindu, and should any of them not have sufficient space to cultivate the five trees, the custom is to plant them in a small pot where they are dwarfed into small shrubs. Such substitutes and make-shifts are not at all uncommon in the ecclesiastical history of India. In Buddhist India, millions of miniature stone and clay temples, some of them not higher than two inches, were often dedicated when more substantial structures were not possible. The Panchavati consists of the asvatha planted on the east side, the vilva or Ægle marmelos on the north, the banian on the west, the Emblica officinalis on the south, and the asoka on the south-east.
The Skanda Purána recommends a vilva in the centre, and four others on four sides; four banians in four corners, twenty-five asokas in a circle, with a myrobalan on one side, as the constituents of a great punchavati.
Superstition has always been active in drawing nice distinctions between the auspicious and the inauspicious, and it is curious to observe how the auspicious qualities of some plants have been extolled. Some are considered auspicious when planted near a dwelling house.
No tree with fruit or blossoms can be cut down, as the sloka threatens the cutter with destruction of his family and wealth. Therefore never cut down any tree that bears good flowers or fruits if you desire the increase of your family, of your wealth and of your future happiness.
Superstition has associated supernatural properties with many plants, and several have been identified with the gods.