Many of these beautiful trees have acquired an historic celebrity; and the famous Cubbeer-burr, on the banks of the Nerbuddah, thus called by the Hindoos in memory of a favourite saint, is supposed to be the same as that described by Nearchus, the Admiral of Alexander the Great, as being able to shelter an army under its far-spreading shade. ‘High floods have at various times swept away a considerable part of this extraordinary tree, but what still remains is near 2,000 feet in circumference, measured round the principal stems; the overhanging branches not yet struck down cover a much larger space; and under it grow a number of custard-apple and other fruit trees. The large trunks of this single colossus amount to a greater number than the days of the year, and the smaller ones exceed 3,000, each constantly sending forth branches and hanging roots to form other trunks and become the parents of a future progeny.
‘About a century ago a neighbouring rajah, who was extremely fond of field diversions, used to encamp under it in a magnificent style, having a saloon, drawing-room, dining-room, bed-chamber, bath, kitchen, and every other accommodation, all in separate tents; yet the noble tree not only covered the whole, together with his carriages, horses, camels, guards, and attendants, but also afforded with its spreading branches shady spots for the tents of his friends, with their servants and cattle. And in the march of an army it has been known to shelter 7,000 men.’[12] Such is the banyan—more wonderful than all the temples and palaces which the pride of the Moguls has ever reared!
The nearly related Pippul of India, or Bo-tree (Ficus religiosa), which differs from the banyan (F. indica) by sending down no roots from its branches, is reverenced by the Buddhists as the sacred plant, under whose shade Gautma, the founder of their religion, reclined when he underwent his divine transfiguration. Its heart-shaped leaves, which, like those of the aspen, appear in the profoundest calm to be ever in motion, are supposed to tremble in recollection of that mysterious scene.
The sacred Pippul at Anarajapoora, the fallen capital of the ancient kings of Ceylon, is probably the oldest historical tree in the world; as it was planted 288 years before Christ, and hence is now 2,150 years old. The enormous age of the baobabs of Senegal, and of the wondrous Wellingtonias of California, can only be conjectured; but the antiquity of the Bo-tree is matter of record, as its preservation has been an object of solicitude to successive dynasties; and the story of its fortunes has been preserved in a series of continuous chronicles amongst the most authentic that have been handed down by mankind.
THE SACRED BO-TREE OF ANARAJAPOORA.
‘Compared with it, the Oak of Ellerslie is but a sapling, and the Conqueror’s Oak in Windsor Forest barely numbers half its years. The yew trees of Fountains Abbey are believed to have flourished there 1,200 years ago; the olives in the Garden of Gethsemane were full-grown when the Saracens were expelled from Jerusalem, and the cypress of Somma in Lombardy is said to have been a tree in the time of Julius Cæsar. Yet the Bo-tree is older than the oldest of these by a century, and would almost seem to verify the prophecy pronounced when it was planted, that it would ‘flourish and be green for ever.’[13]
Although far inferior to these wonders of the vegetable world in amplitude of growth, yet the Teak tree, or Indian oak (Tectona grandis), far surpasses them in value, as the ship-worm in the water, and the termite on land, equally refrain from attacking its close-grained strongly scented wood; and no timber equals it for ship-building purposes.
It grows wild over a great part of British India; in the mountainous districts along the Malabar coast, in Guzerat, the valley of the Nerbuddah, in Tenasserim and Pegu. Unlike the oak and fir forests of Europe, where large spaces of ground are covered by a single species, the teak forests of India are composed of a great variety of trees, among which the teak itself does not even predominate. After a long neglect, which, in some parts, had almost caused its total extirpation, Government has at length taken steps for its more effectual protection, and appointed experienced foresters to watch over this invaluable tree. Since 1843, millions of young plants have been raised from seeds, but unfortunately the teak is of as slow growth as our oak, and many years will still be necessary to repair the ruinous improvidence of the past.
On turning our attention to America we find that Nature, delighting in infinite varieties of development, and disdaining a servile copy of what she had elsewhere formed, covers the earth with new and no less remarkable forms of vegetation. Thus, while in Africa the baobab attracts the traveller’s attention by its colossal size and peculiarity of growth, the gigantic Ceiba (Bombax Ceiba), belonging to the same family of plants, raises his astonishment in the forests of Yucatan. Like the baobab, this noble tree rises only to a moderate height of sixty feet, but its trunk swells to such dimensions that fifteen men are hardly able to span it, while a thousand may easily screen themselves under its canopy from the scorching sun. The leaves fall off in January; and then at the end of every branch bunches of large, glossy, purple-red flowers make their appearance, affording, as one may well imagine, a magnificent sight.