248 OUR COMMON PETJITS. 



deprive our familiar carica of this glory, ascribed to it by 

 common tradition, in favour of one quite foreign to us ; 

 and when we read of Banyan-trees being of such magni- 

 tude that a single one will cover an area of 1,700 square 

 feet, it seems questionable whether in the limited space 

 between the four Edenite rivers a tree would have been 

 included which required so very large a field for its single 

 self ; while the shape of the leaf a simple oval, 5 to 6 in. 

 long and 3 or 4 in. broad seems less fitted for the pur- 

 pose intended than the spreading lobes of the broad- 

 leaved common fig-tree. The Banyan Figs, which grow in 

 pairs, are about the size and colour of an ordinary cherry ; 

 and, being useless as food, except to birds, the tree seems 

 in every respect less likely than the common species to 

 have been favoured with a place in Eden. A more for- 

 midable rival might be found in the JFicus religiosa (or 

 Pippul-tree), so called because sacred to the idol Vishnu, 

 and the singular leaves of which are shaped like a heart, 

 but with the tip drawn out into a slender attenuated 

 point several inches in length,* an appendage which would 

 certainly favour their being sewn or interwoven to form 

 a connected web. While the Banyan is to the Brahmin 

 much what the oak was to the Druid, being called the 

 "priest's tree," and always planted in the vicinity of 

 temples, while to cut or break a twig from it is reckoned 

 a crime equal in enormity to that of breaking a cow's leg ; 

 in Ceylon, the stronghold of Buddhism, the Ficus reli- 

 giosa, called there the Bo-tree, is the tree of trees. It 

 was while reclining under a tree of this species that Go- 

 tama, the Messiah of the Cingalese, received Buddha- 

 hood ; " hence," says Tennent, " its adoption as an object 

 of reverence by his followers ;" the unceasing tremulous 

 motion of their slender-stalked foliage being attributed 

 to an awed reminiscence of this supernatural scene, as 

 the aspen's quivering was to the tradition of its having 

 been the wood selected for the " true cross." A branch, 

 said to be self-detached from this identical tree, was fetched 

 to Ceylon by special embassy 288 B.C., and, believed to 



* See Plate VL, fig. 7. 



