32 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 8o 



8. WOMAN AND TREE MOTIF 



Enough has been said in the course of the present article, or will be 

 found in the accompanying illustrations, to indicate the intimate con- 

 nection subsisting between spirits and trees/ For the. rest it will 

 suffice in the present connection to recall the Epic passage, " god- 

 desses born in trees, to be worshipped by those desiring children," 

 such goddesses being designated as dryads (Vrksaka, Vrddhika). 

 There is no motif more fundamentally characteristic of Indian art 

 from first to last than is that of the Woman and Tree. In early 

 sculptures (reliefs on pillars of ' gateways and railings at Bharhut, 

 Bodhgaya, Sand, and Mathura) the female figures associated with 

 trees are voluptuous beauties, scantily clothed, and almost nude, but 

 always provided with the broad jewelled belt (mekhala) which ap- 

 pears already on the pre-Maurya terra-cotta figures of fertility god- 

 desses,' and which the Atharva Veda (6, 133) tells us was a long-life 

 (ayiisya) charm. Sometimes these dryads stand on a vehicle {vaha- 

 nam) such as a Yaksa (Guhya), elephant, or crocodile (makara). 

 Sometimes they are adorning themselves with jewels, or using a 

 mirror. Very often they hold with one hand a branch of the tree 

 under which they stand, sometimes one leg is twined round the stem 

 of the tree (an erotic conception, for lata is both " creeper " or 

 "vine," and "woman," and cf. Atharva Veda, VI, 8, i, "As the 

 creeper embraces the tree on all sides, so do thou embrace me"). 

 Sometimes one foot is raised and rests against the trunk of the tree. 

 Sometimes there are children, either standing beside the dryad 

 mother, or carried astraddle on her hip. Of the trees represented the 



^ For pre- and non-Buddhist trees, tree-spirits, and sacred groves generally, 

 see Hopkins, Epic Mythology, p. 6 f., and Keith, Religions and Philosophy of 

 the Veda, pp. 184, 185. Trees and tree-deities play but an insignificant part in the 

 Rg Veda and even in the Atharva Veda (Macdonnell, Vedic Mythology, p. 154) 

 but even here they are connected with human life and productivity ; the beings 

 inhabiting trees being called Gandharvas and Apsarases. The Athama Veda, 

 of course, contains many elements incorporated from aboriginal non-Aryan 

 sources. It is perhaps also significant (in view of possible Sumero-Dravidian 

 connections) that in Babylonian tradition immortality and productiveness are 

 original functions of the tree of Fortune (Ward, Seal Cylinders of Western 

 Asia, pp. 233, 237, etc.). 



opiate 4, fig. 2; pi. s; pi. 6, figs. 2, 3; pi. 11, figs, i, 2, 3: pi. 14, fig. 2; 

 pi. 19; pi. 22, figs. I, 2. 



'Also the so-called Earth goddess of Lauriya-Nandangarh (HIIA, fig. 105) : 

 this nude goddess, who is represented also in very early terracottas (see M. F. A. 

 Bulletin, No. 152), may not be a Yak§T. 



