Similarly, in the courtyard of a Bodo house is planted the sacred euphorbia of Batho, the national god, to which a priest offers prayer and kills a pig. In the island of Tjumba, in the East Indies, a festival is held after harvest, and vessels are filled with rice as a thank-offering to the gods. Then the sacred stone at the foot of a palm tree is sprinkled with the blood of a sacrificed animal, and rice is laid on the stone for the gods. When the Khonds settle a new village, a sacred cotton tree must be planted with solemn rites, and beneath it is placed the sacrificial stone which embodies or represents the village deity. Among the Semites, says Professor Robertson Smith, “no Canaanite high place was complete without its sacred tree standing beside the altar.” We shall only fully understand the importance of these facts, however, when we come later to consider the subject of the manufacture of gods by deliberate process, and the nature of the bloody ceremonial which always accompanies it.
In some of the above instances it is incidentally mentioned that the trunks of sacred trees are occasionally draped, as we saw to be also the case with sacred stones, sacred stakes, idols, and relics. Another example of this practice is given in the account of the holy oak of Romowe, venerated by the ancient Prussians, which was hung with drapery like the ashera, and decked with little hanging images of the gods. The holy trees of Ireland are still covered with rag offerings. Other cases will be noticed in other connexions hereafter.
Once more, just as stones come to be regarded as ancestors, so by a like process do sacred trees. Thus Galton says in South Africa, “We passed a magnificent tree. It was the parent of all the Damaras.... The savages danced round it in great delight.” Several Indian tribes believe themselves to be the sons of trees. Many other cases are noted by Mr. Herbert Spencer and Dr. Tylor. I do not think it is necessary for our argument to repeat them here. Sometimes, however, especially in later rationalising times, the sacred tree is merely said to have been planted by the god or hero whom it commemorates. Thus the cypresses of Herakles at Daphne were believed to have been set on the spot by that deity, while the tamarisk at Beersheba was supposed to have been placed there by Abraham.
I hope it is clear from this rapid resume that all the facts about the worship of sacred trees stand exactly parallel to those with regard to the worship of graves, mummies, idols, sacred stones, sacred stakes, and other signs of departed spirits. Indeed, we have sometimes direct evidence of such affiliation. Thus Mr. Turner says of a sacred tree on a certain spot in the island of Savaii, which enjoyed rights of sanctuary like the cities of refuge or a mediæval cathedral: “It is said that the king of a division of Upolu, called Atua, once lived at that spot. After he died, the house fell into decay; but the tree was fixed on as representing the departed king, and out of respect for his memory it was made the substitute of a living and royal protector.” By the light of this remark we may surely interpret in a similar sense such other statements of Mr. Turner’s as that a sweet-scented tree in another place “was held to be the habitat of a household god, and anything aromatic which the family happened to get was presented to it as an offering;” or again, “a family god was supposed to live” in another tree; “and hence no one dared to pluck a leaf or break a branch.” For family gods, as we saw in a previous chapter, are really family ghosts, promoted to be deities.
In modern accounts of sacred trees much stress is usually laid upon the fact that they are large and well-grown, often very conspicuous, and occupying a height, where they serve as landmarks. Hence it has frequently been taken for granted that they have been selected for worship on account of their size and commanding position. This, however, I think, is a case of putting the cart before the horse, as though one were to say that St. Peter’s and Westminster Abbey, the Temple of Karnak or the Mosque of Omar, owed their sanctity to their imposing dimensions. There is every reason why a sacred tree should grow to be exceptionally large and conspicuous. Barrows are usually built on more or less commanding heights, where they may attract general attention. The ground is laboured, piled high, freed from weeds, and enriched by blood and other offerings. The tree, being sacred, is tended and cared for. It is never cut down, and so naturally on the average of instances grows to be a big and well-developed specimen. Hence I hold the tree is usually big because it is sacred, not sacred because it is big. On the other hand, where a tree already full-grown is chosen for a place of burial, it would no doubt be natural to choose a large and conspicuous one. Thus I read of the tree under which Dr. Livingstone’s heart was buried by his native servant, “It is the largest in the neighbourhood.”
Looking at the question broadly, the case stands thus. We know that in many instances savages inter their dead under the shade of big trees. We know that such trees are thereafter considered sacred, and worshipped with blood, clothes, drapery, offerings. We know that young shrubs or trees are frequently planted on graves in all countries. We know that whatever comes up on or out of a grave is counted as representative of the ghost within it. The presumption is therefore in favour of any particular sacred tree being of funereal origin; and the onus of proving the opposite lies with the person who asserts some more occult and less obvious explanation.
At the same time I am quite ready to allow here, as in previous instances, when once the idea of certain trees being sacred has grown common among men, many trees may come to possess by pure association a sanctity of their own. This is doubtless the case in India with the peepul, and in various other countries with various other trees. Exactly the same thing has happened to stones. And so, again, though I believe the temple to have been developed out of the tomb or its covering, I do not deny that churches are now built apart from tombs, though always dedicated to the worship of a God who is demonstrably a particular deified personage.
Another point on which I must touch briefly is that of the sacred grove or cluster of trees. These often represent, I take it, the trees planted in the temenos or sacred tabooed space which surrounds the primitive tomb or temple. The koubbas or little dome-shaped tombs of Mahommedan saints so common in North Africa are all surrounded by such a walled enclosure, within which ornamental or other trees are habitually planted. In many cases these are palms—the familiar sacred tree of Mesopotamia, about which more must be said hereafter in a later chapter. The well-known bois sacré at Blidah is a considerable grove, with a koubba in its midst. A similar temenos frequently surrounded the Egyptian and the Greek temple. I do not assert that these were always of necessity actual tombs; but they were at any rate cenotaphs. When once people had got accustomed to the idea that certain trees were sacred to the memory of their ancestors or their gods, it would be but a slight step to plant such trees round an empty temple. When Xenophon, for example, built a shrine to Artemis, and planted around it a grove of many kinds of fruit trees, and placed in it an altar and an image of the goddess, nobody would for a moment suppose he erected it over the body of an actual dead Artemis. But men would never have begun building temples and consecrating groves at all if they had not first built houses for the dead god-chief, and planted shrubs and trees upon his venerated tumulus. Nay, even the naïve inscription upon Xenophon’s shrine—“He who lives here and enjoys the fruits of the ground must every year offer the tenth part of the produce to the goddess, and out of the residue keep the temple in repair”—does it not carry us back implicitly to the origin of priesthood, and of the desire for perpetuity in the due maintenance of the religious offices?
I shall say nothing here about the evolution of the great civilised tree-gods like Attis and Adonis, so common in the region of the eastern Mediterranean, partly because I have already treated them at some length in the essay on Tree-Worship to which I have alluded above, and partly because they would lead us too far afield from our present subject. But a few words must be devoted in passing to the prevalence of tree-worship among the Semitic peoples, intimately connected as it is with the rise of certain important elements in the Christian cult.
“In all parts of the Semitic area,” says Professor Robertson Smith, “trees were adored as divine.” Among the species thus honoured he enumerates especially the pines and cedars of Lebanon, the evergreen oaks of the Palestinian hills, the tamarisks of the Syrian jungles, and the acacias of the Arabian wadies. Most of these, it will be noted, are evergreens. In Arabia, the most striking case on record is that of the sacred date-palm at Nejran. This was adored at an annual feast, when it was “all hung with fine clothes and women’s ornaments.” A similar tree existed at Mecca, to which the people resorted annually, and hung upon it weapons, garments, ostrich eggs, and other offerings. In a sacred acacia at Nakla a goddess was supposed to live. The modern Arabs still hang pieces of flesh on such sacred trees, honour them with sacrifices, and present them with rags of calico and coloured beads.