________________
232
BUDDHIST INDIA
of fire was held to be a inystcry -- was of the wood of the Pippal tree. And in one passage the tree in heaven under which the souls of the blessed recline is likened to a Pippal. Whether this would be sufficient reason for the rise of the tradition inay be doubtful. But such associations would certainly add to its hold on popular imagination, if it had once otherwise arisen.
It is, however, never to the Pippal tree to which the folklore quoted above attributed divine power. It happens always to be some other tree. And we know too little to be able to be quite sure that this is merely a matter of chance. The tree-deities were called Nāgas, and were able at will, like the Nāgas, to assume the human forin; and in one story? the spirit of a banyan tree who reduced the merchants to ashes is called a Nāga-rāja, the soldiers le sends forth from his tree are Nāgas, and the tree itself is "the dwelling-place of the Nāga." This may explain wliy it is that the tree-gods are not specially and separately mentioned in the Mahā Samaya list of deitics who are there said by the poet to have come to pay reverence to the Buddha. In any case we must add tree worship, the worship of powerful spirits supposed to dwell in trees, 'to the list of those beliefs, scarcely noticed in the Vedas, that were an important part of the religion of the peoples of Northern India at the time of the rise of Buddhism.
In neither of these two lists is Indra, the great god
See, on all these points, the passages quoted by Zimmer, Altindisches Leben, p. 58. ? Jataka No. 493.
Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat
www.umaragyanbhandar.com
