Forlong - Rivers of Life

38
Rivers of Life, or Faiths of Man in all Lands.
“garden” signfies merely “a place of pleasure” or of love, so that I cannot accord to
either Gotama Boodha, or even the previous Boodhas, the origin of this very old
Phallo-tree cult. We have many traces of it in and about the cradle of the Aryan
races not confined to the Bo or Ficus Religiosa, though in. most cases Boodhism has so
very early appropriated all such trees and shrines, that it is difficult to separate the
faiths. Cunningham, in his Ancient Geography of India, p. 79, tells us of a celebrated
Ficis (Peepbl) which Sang-Yang the Chinese pilgrim of 500 A.C., there calls the Bodi
tree. He says it was always held in tho highest veneration, if not worshipped.
Kanishka, the great king of North West India, built here his magnificent Stoopa, and,
report says, planted it about 30 B.C.; but another tradition says that Sakya Mooni sat
under it and predicted the rise of this great king to propagate Boodhism. The
Emperor Baber in 1505 A.C. says he “immediately rode out to see this stupendous
tree of Begram” which is one and a half miles to the south-east of Peshawar. The
Stoopa of Kanishka beside it, is described by two different pilgrims as 400 feet
high, and a quarter of a mile in circumference, and as adorned with all sorts of
precious things. The tree is said to be 1500 years old, and the Stoopa to have been a
celebrated place of pilgrimage for a century or two later. Boodha, it is said, prayed
and meditated for seven weeks under four different kinds of trees before starting on
his mission, which I fancy rather refers to his seven years of meditation and prayer;
it is a somewhat mythical and rather too solar-looking a number to be accepted as a fact.
At Alahabad—ancient Prayāga—there exists the celebrated “undying Banian
tree,” or Akshaybat, which to this hour is an object of worship, as it probably was in
Asoka’s day—235 B.C.—when he there erected his stone pillar. Was he, the Boodhist-
King, then. still pandering to tree and phallic worships? Further on I shall have occasion
to show how this Prayaga tree “renews its youth” according to the manner of priests.
A very holy Brahmanical temple is built facing the tree which the Chinese Priest
Hweng Tsang (7th centnry A.C.) says “was surrounded by human bones, the remains
of pilgrims who had sacrificed their lives before the ternple, a practice which had been
observed from time immemorial. The tree was said to be the abode of a man-eating
demon.” This tree is now situated under ground, apparently at one side of a pillared
court where the temple must have stood. A flight of steps leads down to the tree;
the court was probably open to the sky, but is now closed over head to secure darkness
and mystery, priestly favourites. In Akbar’s time the historian Abdool Khādir says
that from this “tree of Prāg” people cast themselves into the river. Now this
undoubtedly tells us that the temple was Siva’s, for he loves human sacrifice. The
fruitful tree faced the Phallic emblem as we so constantly see to this hour.
To aid my readers in following me in these Eastern details, I here give a Sivaic
(Hindoo) temple, with all the usual accessories, as Linga-in-Yoni, below and
above ground, Pole and Serpent Streamers, Well, and Holy Tree, and Devotees.
The Prayāg Pillar was possibly there long before Asoka’s day, indeed he may have