Mediaeval Sinhalese Art c14.18

c14.18

The relation between tree and dēva is symbolically represented in art and literature in various ways. Often a face is drawn amidst the branches‡ to suggest rather than to show the indwelling dēva, whose life is, in a strange way, the tree’s life, or bound up with it, yet is not the tree itself. At other times the tree dēva is represented as dwelling in a mansion which is in, or perhaps rather ‘at’ or ‘through,’ the tree, and which is not ordinarily visible to human beings.§ This is a form of the well-known folk-lore conception of the ‘invisible house.’