Page:Siam and Laos, as seen by our American missionaries (1884).pdf/280

 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,