Forlong - Rivers of Life

Tree Worship.
The Jewish temple had, it is said, an enclosure planted with a Palm, Cedar, and
Olive, as the mosque which stands
on its site now has. We know
that the fruitful olive was Maiya’s
or Asherah’s or Mylita’s symbol,
as the cedar and the palm are
Mahadeva’s and Asher’s. The
last act of Joshua’s life—1427
B.C., says English orthodoxy—
and be it remembered he was the
great circumciser 1 of all the
tribes, was, “to set up a great
stone under an oak tbat was by
the Sactuary of the Jhavh at
Shechem (Jos. xxi. 26) as a
Fig. 21—AN ORTHODOX MOSQUE, WITH FICUS, PALM, AND CEDAR
witness,” lest the tribes should afterwards deny their Elohim; under this oak with its
sacred pillar stone—which stone could hear and no doubt speak—was Abimelech
crowned king of Israel 228 years later (Jud. ix. 6). In Smith’s BibIe Dictionary we read
that “this veneration throughout Old Testament history of particular trees was amongst
the heathen extended to a regular worship of them.” Surely by this it is not meant
that these Jewish tribes were other than heathens; but I doubt the applicability of this
word to any peoples. Eusebius writes that the tree under which God sat and talked
with Abram, a.nd arranged the great Covenant on the plains of Mamre, was
worshipped down to the days of Constantine, but that “he cut it down to build a
tempIe to St George!”
As the early Indian and Isrnelite worshipped under what they each thought most
beautiful and good—so do the pious of our own day; and so we in India find Asher and
Asherah, Baal and the Grove, and the sacred fire-ark-altar, set up under lovely and
sacred trees; it was in later timea that man built temples with domes and minarets,
and herein still symbolized his old faiths; and so do we still enshrine all we hold
sacred, in altars and cathedrals with spires and towers pointing to heaven and marked
hy that symbolic cross which carneg us back to the origin of Faiths in many lands.
If it was not the “Asyrian Grove”—(Asherah) or Asher, I believe we see the Jewish
idea of “grove” worship to the present hour all over India in the worship of Mâmojee;
numerous grotesque but very symbolical figures so commonly seen seated under a holy
banian tree in the outskirts of many villages, which are worshipped monthly throughout
the year by all classes. The picture at the bead of this chapter Is meant to represent
this worship. The usual figare is an elephant with a curiously shaped horse’s head; it
is always hoIlow, with a large orifice behind. The elephant represents power, and the
1 A religious rite ordered by the tribal god.
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