Our wonderful undergraduate research librarian came to "Religion of Trees" today to help students with their projects on trees in world religions. She invited us to follow along her various tricks and strategies, and I followed her advice. Before I knew it I'd found a digitized version of the 1897 book
The Sacred Tree. Its illustrations are included, among them one which pertained to our topic for the day - the pipal tree, one of whose religious roles is as the Bo tree at whose foot the Buddha attained enlightenment. Wild elephants worshipping the tree!
The drawing is of a relief from the ancient stupa site at Bharhut (2nd century BCE), one of the earliest Buddhist sites - and long long before representations of the Buddha found their way into iconography. I was happy to find a more recent image
online. Excited to see what students make of a religion of trees that's not just human.
The drawing is of a relief from the ancient stupa site at Bharhut (2nd century BCE), one of the earliest Buddhist sites - and long long before representations of the Buddha found their way into iconography. I was happy to find a more recent image online. Excited to see what students make of a religion of trees that's not just human.