BANYAN TREE (Ficus indica).
You pass the sala and enter an area, generally consisting of several acres of ground, laid out with trees and ornamental shrubbery. Here are shady walks, always hard and smooth, sometimes paved with marble; fruit- and flower-gardens; not seldom artificial grottoes; pools with fish and playing fountains; and miniature mountains. There is also one large tree, claimed to be a shoot of the veritable tree under which Shakyamuni sat when he attained to Buddha-ship—the sacred Bôdhi tree.
SIAMESE TEMPLE.
“You may remark,” says Dr. Eitel, “that the tree before you is by no means a Ficus religiosa, but a Ficus indica, or it may happen that it is neither of the two, but a palm tree (most probably then the Borassus flabelliformis); but the attendant priest who acts as your guide will tell you nevertheless, with a bland smile, that it is a Ficus religiosa, and that only ignorant and wantonly skeptical persons can have any doubt on the subject. Is there not a plate erected at the foot of the tree stating that this tree grew out of a shoot brought directly from the holy land, cut off the very Bôdhi tree at Gâya?
“It is a remnant of the ancient tree-worship that almost every religious sect of Asia has a sacred tree of its own. The Brahmans revered the Ficus indica, for which Buddhism originally substituted the Ficus religiosa. But in course of time the Buddhists either reverted to the former tree or confounded the two. They were probably led to do so by the intuitive apprehension that Buddhism as it grew and spread singularly followed the mode of growth which is a distinctive mark of the sacred tree of the Brahmans, the Ficus indica. It is a peculiarity of the latter that it extends itself by letting its branches droop and take root, planting nurseries of its own, and thus so multiplying itself that a single tree forms a curiously arched grove.
“This is precisely the way in which Buddhism propagated itself. It germinated in India, but sent out branches south and north, each taking root, and each perpetuating itself by further offshoots, whilst the parent stock was gradually withered, and finally decayed. Buddhism left but few traces behind in India, but it still lives in Ceylon and in the offshoots of the Singhalese Church in Burmah, Siam and Pegu. When Buddhism became almost totally extinct in India, the whole force of its vitality seemed to throw itself northward, and it spread with renewed vigor and widening shade over Cashmere and Nepaul to China and Thibet. Chinese Buddhism threw forth new branches, northward into Corea and Japan and southward over Cochin-China, Cambodia and Laos, whilst Thibetan Buddhism pushed its branches into Mongolia, Mantchuria and the greater part of Central Asia.
“Now, in each of these countries Buddhism established separate churches, each having its own locally diversified life, its own saplings, its own fruits, and yet all these many branches from one grove connected with each other and the old withered parent stock in India by a network of intertwining roots. Shivanism and Shananism, which saturated and leavened the churches of the north to a very considerable extent, now influenced the minds of Southern Buddhists. They clung to the old traditions, retained the ancient dogma, preserved their primitive monastic and ecclesiastical forms in languid torpor, but with tolerable fidelity. Yet still, Burmese and Siamese Buddhism under the influence of Brahmanism went so far as to amalgamate with the Buddhist religious notions derived from the primitive tree- and serpent-worship, which was a form of religion not only prior to Buddhism, but indigenous in Burmah and Siam. The consequence is, that practical Buddhist worship there is marked by the prevalence of Brahmanic mythology.”
At the cremations, during plagues, epidemics and floods, our missionaries tell us, more attention is given to spirit-worship than to Buddhism proper. During the rice-planting and harvest the favor of the spirits of the air, earth and water is sought. Spirit-offerings may be found in the homes of the people, in the boats, fish-poles, threshing-floors, and even hanging to the sacred Bô tree itself.