CHAPTER XVI

TREE AND PLANT WORSHIP

THE savage's theory of causation is animistic; that is to say, he regards everything, animate or inanimate, which acts or produces an effect as possessing like powers and passions, motives and emotions, with himself. That trees and plants especially possessed like parts and passions with himself, was an inference in which he was confirmed not merely by the fact that they possess (vegetable) life, but by the blood-like sap which many exude when cut, and by the shrieks which they utter when felled. But animism is rather a primitive philosophical theory than a form of religious belief: it ascribes human, not superhuman, powers to non-human beings and things. When, however, the attention of the savage is directed by the occurrence of some incomprehensible or strikingly unexpected and unaccountable event to the sentiment of the supernatural latent in his consciousness; when he ascribes irresistible power over his own fortunes to some animate or inanimate object, then that object becomes marked off from other things and is distinguished from them by the possession of superhuman powers, and by the fact that in it the savage sees the external source of that sentiment of the supernatural of which he is conscious within himself. That the savage in his blind search for the supernatural amongst external objects was frequently in all lands led to believe that trees and plants exercised supernatural powers, is a well-known fact. That he would then seek to establish an alliance between his tribe and the species which he believed to possess any especial power over his own fate, is an inference which the existence of animal totems would justify us in drawing à priori. And as a matter of fact we

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have good evidence of the existence of plant and tree totems. "The Karama tree is the totem of the Dravidian Kharwárs and Mânjhis." Kujur is the name both of a Dravidian sept and of a jungle herb which the sept does not eat.2 "The Bara sept is evidently the same as the Barar of the Oráons, who will not eat the leaves of the bar tree or Ficus indica. In Mirzapur they will not cut this tree. . . A Tiga sept takes its name from a jungle root which is prohibited to them."3 In Berar and Bombay "it is said that a betrothal, in every other respect irreproachable, will be broken off if the two houses are discovered to pay honour to the same tree— in other words, if they worship the same family totem."" These family totems are called Devaks (guardian gods), and are animals or trees. "The Devak is the ancestor or head of the house, and so families which have the same guardian cannot marry. . . If the Devak be a fruit-tree. . . some families abstain from eating the fruit of the tree which forms their devak or badge." 5 In North America, " the Red Maize clan of the Omahas will not eat red maize," and they, like the Dravidian septs, seem to have believed themselves descended from their totem.7 On the Gold Coast of Africa, there is a clan called Abradzi-Fo, "plantain-family," and "in the interior members of this family still abstain from the plantain."8

We have already seen that animals may be chosen as totems of individuals as well as of tribes: thus, in Central America, "nagualism is one of the ancient forms of worship, and consists in choosing an animal as the tutelary divinity of a child, whose existence will be so closely connected with it that the life of one depends on that of the other." 10 So, too, in Europe, amongst Aryan peoples, Romans 11 and Teutons,12 there is evidence enough to show the existence of a belief that the fate and life of a man may be mystically involved with that of his "birth-tree," i.e. a tree planted at his birth:

1Crooke, Popular Religion and Folk-Lore of Northern India, 22.

his life depends on and terminates with that of the tree; he grows or withers as his tree grows or withers.

To return, however, to the clan totem. We may expect to find the history of the tree totem passing through much the same stages as that of the animal totem: thus an individual tree or some few individuals may come to enjoy the whole of the worship which was originally bestowed upon all the members of the species; and this was the case with the sacred olive of Athênê at Athens, and with the maypole of the Teutons, which was to the village what the "birthtree" was to the individual, "it was the genius tutelaris, the alter ego of the whole community," which afforded an asylum to every member of the village community, protected the villagers from all harm,3 and brought them all blessings.* Or, again, the species may continue to be worshipped; but, owing to the relaxation of the blood-tie consequent upon settled life and political development, the worship may be thrown open to all and not confined to the clan: thus in Greece and Rome the laurel and the ivy, in Assyria the palm-tree, were species of plants whose worship was general and not in historic times restricted to any one tribe; in India, "among the sacred trees the various varieties of the fig hold a conspicuous place . . . the various fig-trees hold an important part in the domestic ritual. . . . The pipal is worshipped by moving round it in the course of the sun. this regard for the pipal (Ficus religiosa) extends through Africa, New Zealand, Australia, Sumatra, and Java." 5

As the animal totem eventually in some cases assumes human form, and, after passing through various intermediate shapes, becomes an anthropomorphic god, so we may expect the tree totem to be anthropomorphised; and this is often the case. The Dryads or tree-nymphs of the Greeks will occur to the reader at once; and amongst the Aryans of Northern Europe, Mannhardt has shown conclusively that the tree-spirit was represented by a human being or a human figure tied to a tree or set on a tree-top, or enveloped in tree-leaves ("Jack in the green "), or otherwise associated with the tree. When, then, we find a Zeus evdevdpos or a 1 Mannhardt, B. K. 182.

2 Loc. cit.

3 Ibid. 53.

4 Ibid. 37.

Alóvvoos evdevopos, and that in Greece "images of the gods. were set on trees," and that the Ephesian Artemis was believed to dwell within the stem of an oak, we are justified in believing that these deities were either originally tree totems or that their worship has absorbed that of some tree totem; and the same conclusion holds good, when we find that a species of tree or plant is "associated with some god, e.g. the laurel with Apollo or the ivy with Dionysus.

As totem tribes name themselves after their animal totem, and continue to be designated by the name even when they have left the totem stage behind, so with plant totems. On the Gold Coast, the Abradzi-fo or Plantain family still abstain from the plantain, as the Leopard, Dog, and Parrot families abstain from leopards, dogs, and parrots respectively. We can therefore hardly refuse to believe that the Corn-stalk family and the Palm-oil Grove family had the corn-stalk and palm-tree for totems originally, though we do not happen to have evidence to show that they continue to show respect to the plants from which they take their name. Amongst the Greeks and Romans tree and plant worship may probably account for such names as Pnyaieis and Fabius; and in North Europe there are instances which may possibly be remote survivals of this practice.*

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As the animal totem was at certain seasons taken round the settlement in order to fortify the inhabitants with supernatural powers against supernatural dangers, e.g. the python procession in Whydah, so in North Europe "the begging processions with May-trees or May-boughs from door to door had everywhere originally a serious and, so to speak, sacramental significance; people really believed that the god of growth" [rather the tree totem] "was present unseen in the bough; by the procession he was brought to each house to bestow his blessing." So, too, the god presumably was originally present in the switch of rowan with which the Scottish milkmaid protects her cattle from evil spirits; and,

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1 Schrader, Prehistoric Antiquities, 278.

2 Ellis, Tshi-speaking Peoples, 206-7.

3 Corp. Inscrip. Att. ii. 108, 435, etc.

Mannhardt, B. K. 51. "Frazer, G. B. i. 86, translating B. K. 315.

on the same principle, in India "most Vaishnava sects wear necklaces and carry rosaries made of holy basil." 1

As in death the clansman was believed to rejoin the animal totem, so "the Oráons of Bengal revere the tamarind and bury their dead under its branches." 2 This is probably a contributing cause to the practice of suspension burial mentioned in a previous chapter.3 "Some of the semiHinduised Bengal Ghonds have the remarkable custom of tying the corpses of adult males by a cord to the mahua tree in an upright position previous to burial."4

Finally, tree totems, like animal totems, make their appearance in the marriage rite. Amongst some of the Dravidian races a branch of the sacred mahua tree "is placed in the hands of the bride and bridegroom during the ceremony," evidently to bring them under the immediate protection of the totem-god, and by way of worship "they also revolve round a branch of the tree planted in the ground," just as in Northern Europe amongst the Wends the bride had to worship the "life-tree" of her new home. Or the bride and bridegroom are married first to trees and then to each other."

Much more important, however, than tree totems for the history of religion and of civilisation in general are plant totems, for it was through plant-worship that cereals and food-plants came to be cultivated, and it was in consequence of their cultivation that the act of worship received a remarkable extension. With regard to the origin of cultivation, "it has usually been held that cultivation must have taken its rise from the accident of chance seeds being scattered about in the neighbourhood of the hut or of the domestic manure heap-the barbaric kitchen-midden."8 But something more, considerably more, than this is necessary to account for the origin of cultivation: seeds must be retained from one year to the next for the purpose of sowing them, and such retention implies, first, that primitive man was aware of the necessity of saving seeds, and, second, that he had the self-control to save them instead of eating them. To account