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CHAPTER VIII
SACRED TREES
In the book of Revelation (Chap. XXII) is mentioned " the
tree of life, which bore twelve manner of fruits and yielded
her fruit every month, and the leaves of the tree were for
the healing of the nations." One of the notions of the
primitive Aryan cosmogony was that of a prodigious tree
which overshadowed the whole world.
On a fragment of a terra-cotta vase in the Museum of
Antiquities at Copenhagen— it is supposed to belong to the
later Bronze Age— is figured a tree which the late Kaiiier
Herr Dr Worsaae called the tree of life. It is present in
connection with Sun symbols. A similar tree symbol has
been found in Ireland at New Grange, Drogheda.
It is most interesting to find the symbol of the tree with
its twelve leaves, or occasionally the same number of flowers
or fruits, on Persian carpets to this day. To quote Sir
George Birdwood's Industrial Arts of India, in which he
says, " In Yarkand carpets the tree is seen filling the whole
centre of the carpet stark and stiff as if cut out in metal.
In Persian art, and in Indian art derived from the Persian,
it becomes a beautiful flowering plant, or a simple sprig
of flowers; in purely Hindu art it remains in its pure
architectural form as seen in temple lamps and in the
models in brass or copper of the sacred fig, as the tree of