This Japanese legend preserves the intimate connection between paradise and the cosmic tree, which is often found to have dropped out of other versions of the tradition. There can be no doubt, however, that originally the mystical tree was the essential feature of paradise, and the garden was merely its precinct or setting—one of the many conceptions which grew up around the central idea of the cosmic tree. Each nation, according to its stage of culture or its prevailing habit of thought, emphasised one feature of it. The monster tree which, according to primitive cosmogony, was believed to support the universe by material branches, became in the minds of more cultivated races the central tree of a dimly-realised paradise, and eventually the symbol of an abstract idea. The intellectual Buddhist saw in it the emblem of knowledge; the Persian thought of it as the tree of immortality; the Hebrew, filled with the idea of man’s frailty and with the longing to explain it, made it the tree of temptation.[322]
But in all these various conceptions we find a central idea, derived no doubt from an antecedent and universal tree-worship, an idea which places a tree at the root of all philosophy, refers all phenomena to the existence of a central tree, serviceable to man here or hereafter, and concentrating upon itself the reverent devotion which had outgrown its earthly counterpart.
There are many facts to prove the importance attached in ancient times to this conception of a glorified tree. Amongst the gorgeous decorations of the palaces of Eastern kings a symbolical representation of the tree of paradise was frequently found.
Tall as the cedar of the mountain, here
Rose the gold branches, hung with emerald leaves,
Blossomed with pearls, and rich with ruby fruit.
Sir John Maundeville describes one which he saw in the palace of the Chan of Cathay. “It is a vine made of fine gold, which spreads all about the hall, and it has many clusters of grapes, some white, some green, some yellow, some red, and some black, all of precious stones; the white are of crystal, beryl, and iris; the yellow of topazes; the red of rubies, grenaz, and alabraundines; the green of emeralds and perydoz and of chrysolites; and the black of onyx and garnets. And they are all so properly made that it appears a real vine, bearing natural grapes.”[323]
According to an Arab writer, quoted by Gibbon,[324] there existed in the magnificent palace of the Caliph of Bagdad, in 917 A.D., amongst other spectacles of rare and stupendous luxury, a tree of gold and silver, spreading into eighteen large branches, on which and on the lesser boughs sat a variety of birds made of the same precious metals. While the machinery effected spontaneous motions the several birds warbled their natural harmony. The intention was, no doubt, to represent the traditional luxuriance of paradise, and a similar motive is met with in Eastern design even in the present day.
The tradition of a king who built a false paradise, like Sheddad in Southey’s Thalaba, seems always to have been current in Western Asia. There is in the British Museum a sculpture from Koyunjik representing a palace, or may be a temple, constructed in imitation of a paradise. The artificial hill, representing the world-mountain on which it stands, is planted with trees and flowers, and watered by a stream that issues from a hanging garden.