TREES IN MYTH AND LEGEND. 1 99 



The Buddhist books show clearly that in the early days of 

 their religion it was a matter of controversy whether trees had 

 souls, and, therefore, whether they might lawfully be injured. 

 Orthodox Buddhism decided against the tree-souls, and con- 

 sequently against the scruple of harming them, declaring trees to 

 have no mind or sentient principle, though admitting that certain 

 spirits do reside within the bodies of trees and speak from within 

 them. 



When we consider the doctrine of the transmigration of souls, 

 we find that it clearly recognises the idea of trees being animated 

 by human souls. The soul of Buddha himself was forty-three 

 times in all in a tree. 



Again, when a tree springs from a grave, it was assumed to 

 be tenanted by the departed spirit or to be actually the dead 

 man himself living once more in the form of a tree. This is 

 confirmed by the common belief held by English peasants that 

 the tree cries and bleeds when it is cut. So the bushes which 

 grew on the grave (barrow) of Polydorus bled when Aeneas 

 plucked them up, like Dante's trees in the Inferno. Actual 

 instances of the belief that sacred trees are the dead transformed, 

 or are the habitation of the ghost, are found in Australia and 

 the Philippine Islands, where it is affirmed that the good are 

 transformed into trees at death. 



6. Whether a tree is looked upon as inhabited, like a man, by 

 its own proper life and soul, or as possessed by some other 

 spirit which has entered it and uses it as a body, is hard to 

 determine, but is really immaterial. The conceptions of the 

 inherent soul and of the embodied spirit are but modifications 

 of one and the same deep-lying animistic thought. The belief 

 in tree-spirits and the practice of tree-worship involves notions 

 more or less coinciding with that of tree-souls, as when the 

 south-eastern Asiatic prays before cutting down a tree, the tree 

 being considered as having a demon or spirit. Africa shows us 

 well-defined examples of the idea of tree-spirits. The negro 

 woodman cuts down certain trees in fear of the anger of their 

 inhabiting demons, but he finds a way out of his difficulty by a 

 sacrifice to his own good genius; or when he is laying in the 

 tree, and its indwelling spirit comes out to chase him, he 

 cunningly drops palm oil on the ground, and makes his escape 

 while the spirit is licking it up. The demon is then pacified, 

 and the work can be proceeded with. In Africa, too, we find 



