It is difficult to identify the cassia tree of Chinese religious literature. “The Chinese word Kwei occurs at an early date, but it is a generic term for Lauraceæ; and there are about thirteen species of Cassia, and about sixteen species of Cinnamomum in China. The essential [[142]]point is that the ancient texts maintain silence as to cinnamon; that is, the product from the bark of the tree. Cinnamomum cassia is a native of Kwan-si, Kwan-tun, and Indo-China; and the Chinese made its first acquaintance under the Han, when they began to colonize and to absorb southern China.” The first description of this tree goes no farther back than the third century. “It was not the Chinese, but non-Chinese peoples of Indo-China who first brought the tree into civilization, which, like all other southern cultivations, was simply adopted by the conquering Chinese.”[17] It has been suggested that the cinnamon bark was imported into Egypt from China as far back as the Empire period (c. 1500 B.C.) by Phœnician sea-traders.[18] Laufer rejects this theory.[19] Apparently the ancient Egyptians imported a fragrant bark from their Punt (Somaliland, or British East Africa). At a very much later period cinnamon bark was carried across the Indian Ocean from Ceylon.
The Egyptians imported incense-bearing trees from Punt to restore the “odours of the body” of the dead, and poured out libations to restore its lost moisture.[20] “When”, writes Professor Elliot Smith, “the belief became well established that the burning of incense was potent as an animating force, and especially a giver of life to the dead, it naturally came to be regarded as a divine substance in the sense that it had the power of resurrection. As the grains of incense consisted of the exudation of trees, or, as the ancient texts express it, ‘their sweat’, the divine power of animation in course of time became transferred to trees. They were no [[143]]longer merely the source of the life-giving incense, but were themselves animated by the deity, whose drops of sweat were the means of conveying life to the mummy.… The sap of trees was brought into relationship with life-giving water.… The sap was also regarded as the blood of trees and the incense that exuded as sweat.” As De Groot reminds us, “tales of trees that shed blood, and that cry out when hurt are common in Chinese literature (as also in Southern Arabia, notes Elliot Smith); also of trees that lodge, or can change into maidens of transcendent beauty.”[21]
Apparently the ancient seafarers who searched for incense-bearing trees carried their beliefs to distant countries. The goddess-tree of the peach cult was evidently the earliest in China. It bore the fruit of life. The influence that led to the foundation of this cult probably came by an overland route. The cassia-tree cult was later, and beliefs connected with it came from Southern China; these, too, bear the imprint of ideas that were well developed before they reached China.
There are references in Chinese lore to a gigantic cassia tree which was 10,000 feet high. Those who ate of its fruit became immortal. The earlier belief connected with the peach tree was that the soul who ate one of its peaches lived for 3000 years.
This cassia world-tree appears first to have taken the place of the peach tree of the “Royal Mother of the West”. It was reached by sailing up the holiest river in China, the Hoang-Ho (Yellow River), the sources of which are in the Koko-Nor territory to the north of Tibet. It wriggles like a serpent between mountain barriers before it flows northward; then it [[144]]flows southward for 200 miles on the eastern border of Shensi province (the Chinese homeland), and then eastward for 200 miles, afterwards diverging in a north-easterly direction towards the Gulf of Chihli, in which the Islands of the Blest were supposed to be situated.
It was believed that the Hoang-Ho had, like the Ganges of India and the Nile of Egypt, a celestial origin. Those sages who desired to obtain a glimpse of Paradise sailed up the river to its fountain head. Some reached the tree and the garden of Paradise. Others found themselves sailing across the heavens. The Western Paradise was evidently supposed by some to be situated in the middle of the world, and by others to have been situated beyond the horizon.
Chang Kiʼen, one of the famous men attached to the court of Wu Ti, the reviver of many ancient beliefs and myths, was credited with having followed the course of the sacred river until he reached the spot where the cassia tree grew. Beside the tree were the immortal animals that haunt the garden of the “Royal Mother of the West”. In addition, Chang Kiʼen saw the moon-rabbit or moon-hare, which is adored as a rice-giver. In the Far East, as in the Near East and in the West, the moon is supposed to ripen crops. The lunar rabbit or hare is associated with water; in the moon grow plants and a tree of immortality. There is also, according to Chinese belief, a frog in the moon. It was originally a woman, the wife of a renowned archer, who rescued the moon from imprisonment in masses of black rain-clouds. The “Royal Mother of the West” was so grateful to the archer for the service he had rendered that she gave him a jade cup filled with the dew of immortality. His wife stole the cup and drank the dew. For this offence the “Royal Mother of the West” transformed her into a frog, and [[145]]imprisoned her in the moon. In Egypt the frog was a symbol of resurrection or rebirth, and the old frog-goddess Hekt is usually regarded as a form of Hathor, the Great Mother.
The lunar tree is sometimes identified with the cassia tree of immortality. Its leaves are red as blood, and the bodies of those who eat of its fruit become as transparent as still water.
The moon-water which nourishes plants and trees (eight lunar trees of immortality are referred to in some legends), and the dew of immortality in the jade cup, appear to be identical with the Indian soma and the nectar of the classical gods. In Norse mythology the lunar water-pot (a symbol of the mother-goddess) was filled at a well by two children, the boy Hyuki and the girl Bil,[22] who were carried away by the moon-god Mani. Odin was also credited with having recovered the moon-mead from the hall of Suttung, “the mead wolf”, after it had been stolen from the moon. The god flew heavenward, carrying the mead, in the form of an eagle.[23] Zeus’s eagle is similarly a nectar-bringer.
In Indian mythology the soma was contained in a bowl fashioned by Twashtri, the divine artisan, and was drunk by the gods, and especially by Indra, the rain-bringer. A Vedic frog-hymn was chanted by Aryo-Indian priests as a rain-charm when Indra’s services were requisitioned. In one of the Indian legends an eagle or falcon carries the soma to Indra. The souls who reach Paradise are made immortal after they drink of the soma. In India the soma was personified, and the lunar god, Soma, became a god of love, immortality, and fertility. The soma juice was obtained by the Vedic priests from [[146]]some unknown plant. There are also references in Indian mythology to the “Amrita”, which was partaken of by the gods. It was the sap of sacred trees that grew in Paradise. Trees and plants derived their life and sustenance from water. The Far-Eastern beliefs in “the dew of immortality”, “the fungus of immortality”, and “the fruit of immortality” have an intimate connection with the belief that the mother-goddess was connected with the moon, which exercised an influence over water. The mother-goddess was also the love-goddess, the Ishtar of Babylonia, the Hathor of Egypt, the Aphrodite of Greece. Her son, or husband, was, in one of his phases, the love-god.