Mediaeval Sinhalese Art c14.19

c14.19

The tree-dēva is able to leave the tree, and has its own divine form, conceived as anthropomorphic, yet can assume other forms at will, and on returning, ‘enters’ the tree and becomes invisible; the dēva’s life is ended with that of the tree. Tree dēvas may be either malignant or beneficent. In Ālavakadamanaya the tree-spirit is a man-eating devil; in the Sutasoma Jātaka, a gentle dryad, to whom the man-eating rājā endeavours to make human offerings, in complete misunderstanding of her true character. But otherwise, the tree-spirit is realised as gentle and beneficent, and honoured as such by offerings of flowers and sandal paste, and the love of the people; his or her home must be kept clean and pure. There is a wonderful delicacy and beauty in these pagan ideas. There is nothing more characteristic of paganism, than its ideal conception of the purity and delicacy of the personified powers of nature, and of the local habitations of the gods. Just as in Iceland Thorolf Mostbeard laid down that ‘no man unwashed should turn his eyes to Holyfell, and that nought should he done to death there, either man or beast,’* so in Ceylon, even the Kapurāla may not enter the dēvāle sanctum unless free from ceremonial defilement, the threshing floor is a sacred and pure place, and the worshipper in a Hindu temple must bathe and put on a clean cloth washed by his own hands ere worshipping, and the inner precincts are closed to those of lower caste who are eaters of meat and otherwise follow the less spiritual modes of life.