The tree embodies in itself many utilities necessary to human life, and many qualities which menace its existence. Its wood is the source of fire, itself a fetish. Its fruits, juices, flowers or bark are sources of food or possess intoxicating or poisonous attributes, which are naturally connected with demoniacal influences. Trees often develop into curious or uncanny forms, which compel fear or adoration. Thus according to the old ritual[5] trees which have been struck by lightning, or knocked down by inundation, or which have fallen in the direction of the south, or which grew on a burning ground or consecrated site, or at the confluence of large rivers, or by the roadside; those which have withered tops, or an entanglement of heavy creepers upon them, or are the receptacles of many honey-combs or birds’ nests, are reckoned unfit for the fabrication of bedsteads, as they are inauspicious and sure to bring disease and death. The step from such beliefs to the worship of any curious and remarkable tree is easy.
Hence the belief that the planting of a grove is a work of religious merit, which is so strongly felt by Hindus, and the idea that the grove has special religious associations, shown by the marriage of its trees to the well, and other rites of the same kind. In the Konkan it is very generally believed that barrenness is caused by uneasy spirits which wander about, and that if a home be made for the spirit by planting trees, it will go and reside there and the curse of barrenness will be removed.[6]
Though this branch of the subject has been pushed to quite an unreasonable length in some recent books,[7] there may be some association of tree worship with the phallic cultus, such as is found in the Asherah or “groves” of the Hebrews, the European Maypole, and so on. This has been suggested as an explanation of the honour paid by the Gypsy race in Germany to the fir tree, the birch and the hawthorn, and of the veneration of the Welsh Gypsies to the fasciated vegetable growth known to them as the Broado Koro.[8] In the same way an attempt has been made to connect the Bel tree with the Saiva worship of the Lingam and the lotus with the Yonî. But this part of the subject has been involved in so much crude speculation that any analogies of this kind, however tempting, must be accepted with the utmost caution.
Further than this, it may be reasonably suspected that this cultus rests to some extent on a basis of totemism. Some of the evidence in support of this view will be discussed elsewhere, but it is, on the analogy of the various modes in which the Brâhmanical pantheon has been recruited, not improbable that trees and plants, like the Tulasî and the Pîpal, may have been originally tribal totems imported into Brâhmanism from some aboriginal or other foreign source.
On the whole it is tolerably certain that there is more in tree worship than can be accounted for either by Mr. Ferguson’s theory that the worship sprang from a perception of the utility or beauty of trees, or by Mr. Spencer’s theory of nicknames. It is sufficient to say that both fail to account for the worship of insignificant and comparatively useless shrubs, weeds, or grasses.
Tree worship holds an important part in the popular ritual and folk-lore. This is shown by the prejudice against cutting trees. The jungle tribes are very averse to cutting certain trees, particularly those which are regarded as sacred. If a Kharwâr, except at the time of the annual feast, cuts his tribal tree, the Karama, he loses wealth and life, and none of these tribes will cut the large Sâl trees which are fixed by the Baiga as the abode of the forest godling. This feeling prevails very strongly among the Maghs of Bengal. Nothing but positive orders and the presence of Europeans would induce them to trespass on many hill-tops, which they regarded as occupied by the tree demons. With the Europeans, however, they would advance fearlessly, and did not hesitate to fell trees, the blame of such sacrilege being always laid on the strangers. On felling any large tree, one of the party was always prepared with a green sprig, which he ran and placed in the centre of the stump when the tree fell, as a propitiation to the spirit which had been displaced so roughly, pleading at the same time the orders of the strangers for the work. In clearing one spot an orderly had to take the dâh or cleaver and fell the first tree himself before a Magh would make a stroke, and was considered to bear all the odium of the work with the disturbed spirits till the arrival of the Europeans relieved him of the burden.[9]
In folk-lore we have many magic trees. We have the Kalpataru or Kalpadruma, also known as Kalpavriksha, or Manoratha dayaka, the tree which grows in Swarga or the paradise of Indra and grants all desires. There is, again, the Pârijâta, which was produced at the churning of the ocean, and appropriated by Indra, from whom it was recovered by Krishna. The tree in the Meghadûta bears clothes, trinkets, and wine, which is like the Juniper tree of the German tale, which grants a woman a son. Many such trees appear in the Indian folk-tales. The King Jimutaketu had a tree in his house which came down from his ancestors, and was known as “the giver of desires”; the generous Induprabha craved a boon from Indra, and became a wishing tree in his own city; and the faithful minister of Yasaketu sees a wave rise out of the sea and then a wishing tree appears, “adorned with boughs glittering with gold, embellished with sprays of coral, bearing lovely fruits and flowers of jewels. And he beheld on its trunk a maiden, alluring on account of her wonderful beauty, reclining on a gem-bestudded couch.”[10] So, in the story of Devadatta, the tree is cloven and a heavenly nymph appears. We have trees which, like those in the Odyssey, bear fruit and flowers at the same time, and in the garden of the Asura maiden “the trees were ever producing flowers and fruits, for all seasons were present there at the same time.”[11]
We have many trees, again, which are produced in miraculous ways. In one of the modern tales the tiger collects the bones of his friend, the cow, and from her ashes spring two bamboos, which when cut give blood, and are found to be two boys of exquisite grace and beauty.[12] So in Grimm’s tale of “One Eye, Two Eyes, and Three Eyes,” the tree grows from the buried entrails of the goat. In another of Somadeva’s stories the heroine drops a tear on the Jambu flower and a fruit grew, within which a maiden was produced.[13] The incident of the tree which grows on the mother’s grave and protects her helpless children is the common property of folk-lore. Again, we have the heavenly fruit which was given by the grateful monkey, and freed him who ate it from old age and disease, like the tree in Aelian which makes an old man become younger and younger until he reaches the antenatal stage of non-existence.[14]
We have many instances of trees which talk. The mango tree shows the hero how the magic bird is to be cut out of it; the heroine is blessed and aided by the plantain tree, cotton tree, and sweet basil; she is rewarded by a plum and fig tree for services rendered to them.[15] In one of the Kashmîr tales the tree informs the hero of the safety of his wife. So, in Grimm’s tale of the “Lucky Spinner,” the tree speaks when the man is about to cut it down.[16]
In one of the stories, as a link between tree and serpent worship, the great palace of the snake king is situated under a solitary Asoka tree in the Vindhyan forest. In the same collection we meet continually instances of tree worship. The Brâhman Somadatta worships a great Asvattha, or fig tree, by walking round it so as to keep it on his right, bowing and making an oblation; Mrigankadatta takes refuge in a tree sacred to Ganesa; and Naravâhanadatta comes to a sandal tree surrounded with a platform made of precious jewels, up which he climbs by means of ladders and adores it.[17]