The position of tree-worship in Southern Asia in relation to Buddhism is of particular interest. To this day there are districts of this region, Buddhist or under strong Buddhist influence, where tree-worship is still displayed with absolute clearness of theory and practice. Here in legend a dryad is a being capable of marriage with a human hero, while in actual fact a tree-deity is considered human enough to be pleased with dolls set up to swing in the branches. The Talein of Burmah, before they cut down a tree, offer prayers to its 'kaluk ' (i.q., 'kelah'), its inhabiting spirit or soul. The Siamese offer cakes and rice to the takhien-tree before they fell it, and believe the inhabiting nymphs or mothers of trees to pass into guardian-spirits of the boats built of their wood, so that they actually go on offering sacrifice to them in this their new condition.[1] These people have indeed little to learn from any other race, however savage, of the principles of the lower animism. The question now arises, did such tree-worship belong to the local religions among which Buddhism established itself? There is strong evidence that this was the case. Philosophic Buddhism, as known to us by its theological books, does not include trees among sentient beings possessing mind, but it goes so far as to acknowledge the existence of the 'dewa' or genius of a tree. Buddha, it is related, told a story of a tree crying out to the brahman carpenter who was going to cut it down, 'I have a word to say, hear my word!' but then the teacher goes on to explain that it was not really the tree that spoke, but a dewa dwelling in it. Buddha himself was a tree-genius forty-three times in the course of his transmigrations. Legend says that during one such existence, a certain brahman used to pray for protection to the tree which Buddha was attached to; but the transformed teacher reproved the tree-worshipper for thus
- ↑ Bastian, 'Oestl. Asien,' vol. ii. pp. 457, 461, vol. iii. pp. 187, 251, 289, 497. For details of tree-worship from other Asiatic districts, see Ainsworth, 'Yezidis,' in 'Tr. Eth. Soc.' vol. i. p. 23; Jno. Wilson, 'Parsi Religion,' p. 262.
