Page:EB1911 - Volume 27.djvu/252

 stump as a new home for the spirit. In the Gold Coast the silk cotton and odum (poison) trees are especially sacred as the abode of the two deities, who are honoured by sacrifices-even of human victims; these indwelt trees must not be cut, and, since all trees of these species are under their protection, they can be felled only after certain purificatory ceremonies. In general the evidence shows that sacred trees must not be injured unless they (i.e. their spirits) have been appeased, or means taken to provide the occupant with another abode. That the difference between the sacred object and the sacred occupant was not always clearly drawn is quite intelligible from those beliefs of much less rudimentary religions which confuse the unessential with the essential.

Again, when the jungle-races of India clear the forests, they leave behind certain trees which are carefully protected lest the sylvan gods should abandon the locality (Crooke ii. 90). These trees embody the local deities much in the same way as the north European homestead had a tree or a small grove for the guardian spirit or “lord of the home.” and they resemble the tree tutelary genius of old German villages and the Japanese trees which are the terrestrial dwelling-places of the guardian of the hamlets. Such beliefs as these are more significant when trees are associated with the spirits of the dead. Trees were planted around graves in Greece, and in Roman thought groves were associated with the mane; of the pious. The Baduyas of the central provinces of India worship the souls of their ancestors in groves of Saj trees, and this may be supplemented by various modern burial usages where the dead are buried in trees, or where the sacred tree of the village enshrines the souls of the dead forefathers. Thus among the natives of South Nigeria each village has a big tree into which the spirits of the dead are supposed to enter; when a woman wants a child or when a man is sick, sacrifice is made to it, and if the “Big God” Osòwo who lives in the sky is favourable the request is granted.

Often the tree is famous for oracles. Best known, perhaps, is the oak of Dodona tended by priests who slept on the ground. The tall oaks of the old Prussians were inhabited by gods who gave responses, and so numerous are the examples that the old Hebrew “ terebinth of the teacher ” (Gen. xii. 6), and the “terebinth of the diviners” (Judg. ix. 37) may reasonably be placed in this category. Important sacred trees are also the object of pilgrimage, one of the most noteworthy being the branch of the Bo tree at Ceylon brought thither before the Christian era. The tree-spirits will hold sway over the surrounding forest or district, and the animals in the locality are often sacred and must not be harmed. Thus, the pigeons at the grove of Dodona, and the beasts around the north European tree-sanctuaries, were left untouched, even as the modern Dyak would allow no interference with the snake by the side of the bush which enshrined a dead kinsman. Sacred tires burned before the Lithuanian Perkuno and the Roman Jupiter; both deities were closely associated with the oak, and, indeed, the oak seems to have been very commonly used for the perpetual holy fires of the Aryans. The powers of the tree deities. though often especially connected with the elements, are not necessarily restricted, and the sacred trees can form the centre of religious, and sometimes, also, of national life. Such deities are not abstract beings, but are potent and immediate, and the cultus is primarily as utilitarian as the duties of life itself. They may have their proper ministrants (a) the chief sanctuary of the old Prussians was a holy oak around which lived priests and a high priest known as God’s mouth; (b) in Africa there are sacred groves into which the priest alone may enter, and (c) among the Kissil-Bashi (or Kizilbashes) of the Upper Tigris and Euphrates, the holy tree of the village stands in an enclosure to which only the father-priest has access. The trees may be the scene of religious festivals, and—what sometimes goes with these—of periodical fairs and markets. Among the Lousiade group in British New Guinea the religious feasts are held under the sacred tree and a portion is laid aside for the spirit-occupants. That the invisible spirit naturally enjoyed only the spiritual part of the offerings is a belief which may have been shared by others than the African negro. Human sacrifice is known on the Slave Coast and in the Punjab; it was practised among the Druids, and at Odin's grave at Upsala. It is also said that the pollution of old Prussian sacred groves and springs by the intrusion of Christians was atoned for by human victims. Indeed, to judge from later popular custom and tradition, and from the allusion in ancient writers, various grisly rites and acts of licentiousness (such as the more advanced Hebrew prophets denounced) were by no means unusual features in the cults of trees and vegetation.

Although trees have played so prominent a part in the history of religions, the utmost caution is necessary in any attempt to estimate the significance of isolated evidence and its relation to the contemporary thought. Let it suffice notice that in West Equatorial Africa the death of the sacred tree near the temples leads to the abandonment of the village, that in Rome the withering of the sacred fig-tree of Romulus in the Forum caused the greatest consternation. One can now understand in some measure why so much importance should be attached to a venerated tree, but these examples will illustrate the different historical and religious conditions which require study in any investigation of tree-worship. Unfortunately one constantly reaches the point where the ancient writer or the modern observer has failed to record the required information. Moreover, we do not encounter tree-cults at their rise: in every case we arrest the evidence at a certain stage of development. It is often impossible to determine why certain trees are sacred; sometimes it may be that the solitary tree is the survivor of a forest or grove, or it has attracted attention from its curious or uncanny form, or again it stands on a spot which has an immemorial reputation for sanctity. The persistence of sacred localities is often to be observed in the East, where more rudimentary forms of tree-cults stand by the side of or outlive higher types of religion. The evolution of sacred trees and of religious beliefs and practices associated therewith have not always proceeded along parallel lines. As ideas advanced, the spirits associated with trees were represented by posts, idols, or masks; altars were added, and the trunk was roughly shaped to represent the superhuman occupant. There is reason to believe that the last-mentioned transformation has frequently happened in the development of iconography. Indeed, the natives of the Antilles suppose that certain trees instructed sorcerers to shape their trunks into idols, and to instal them in temple-huts where they could be worshipped and could inspire their priests with oracles.