A History of Sanskrit Literature c9.15

c9.15

Among large trees mentioned in the *Rigveda*, the most important is the Açvattha ("horse-stand") or sacred fig-tree (*Ficus religiosa*). Its fruit (*pippala*) is described as sweet and the food of birds. Its sacredness is at least incipient, for its wood was used for soma vessels, and, as we learn from the *Atharva-veda*, also for the drill (later-called *pramantha*) employed in producing the sacred fire. The latter Veda further tells us that the gods are seated in the third heaven under an Açvattha, which may indeed have been intended in the *Rigveda* itself by the "tree with fair foliage," in whose shade the blessed revel with Yama. This tree, now called Peepal, is still considered so sacred that a Hindu would be afraid to utter a falsehood beside it. But the *Rigveda* does not mention at all, and the *Atharva-veda* only twice, the tree which is most characteristic of India, and shades with its wide-spreading foliage a larger area than any other tree on the face of the earth—the Nyagrodha ("growing downwards") or banyan (*Ficus indica*). With its lofty dome of foliage impenetrable to the rays of the sun and supported by many lesser trunks as by columns, this great tree resembles a vast temple of verdure fashioned by the hand of Nature. What the village oak is in England, that and much more is the banyan to the dwellers in the innumerable hamlets which overspread the face of agricultural India.