292; Della Valle, II.

276-277.)

[Illustration: Chinar, or Oriental Plane]

He who injured the holy tree of Bostam, we are told, perished the same day: a general belief in regard to those Trees of Grace, of which we have already seen instances in regard to the sacred trees of Zoroaster and the Oak of Hebron. We find the same belief in Eastern Africa, where certain trees, regarded by the natives with superstitious reverence, which they express by driving in votive nails and suspending rags, are known to the European residents by the vulgar name of Devil Trees. Burton relates a case of the verification of the superstition in the death of an English merchant who had cut down such a tree, and of four members of his household. It is the old story which Ovid tells; and the tree which Erisichthon felled was a Dirakht-i-Fazl:

"Vittae mediam, memoresque tabellae Sertaque cingebant, voti argumenta potentis." (Metamorph. VIII. 744.)

Though the coincidence with our text of Hamd Allah's Dry Tree is very striking, I am not prepared to lay stress on it as an argument for the geographical determination of Marco's Arbre Sec. His use of the title more than once to characterise the whole frontier of Khorasan can hardly have been a mere whim of his own: and possibly some explanation of that circumstance will yet be elicited from the Persian historians or geographers of the Mongol era.

Meanwhile it is in the vicinity of Bostam or Damghan that I should incline to place this landmark. If no one very cogent reason points to this, a variety of minor ones do so; such as the direction of the traveller's journey from Kerman through Kuh Banan; the apparent vicinity of a great Ismailite fortress, as will be noticed in the next chapter; the connection twice indicated (see Prologue, ch. xviii. note 6, and Bk. IV. ch. v.) of the Arbre Sec with the headquarters of Ghazan Khan in watching the great passes, of which the principal ones debouche at Bostam, at which place also buildings erected by Ghazan still exist; and the statement that the decisive battle between Alexander and Darius was placed there by local tradition. For though no such battle took place in that region, we know that Darius was murdered near Hecatompylos. Some place this city west of Bostam, near Damghan; others east of it, about Jah Jerm; Ferrier has strongly argued for the vicinity of Bostam itself. Firdusi indeed places the final battle on the confines of Kerman, and the death of Darius within that province. But this could not have been the tradition Polo met with.

I may add that the temperate climate of Bostam is noticed in words almost identical with Polo's by both Fraser and Ferrier.

The Chinar abounds in Khorasan (as far as any tree can be said to abound in Persia), and even in the Oases of Tun-o-Kain wherever there is water. Travellers quoted by Ritter notice Chinars of great size and age at Shahrud, near Bostam, at Meyomid, and at Mehr, west of Sabzawar, which last are said to date from the time of Naoshirwan (7th century). There is a town to the N.W. of Meshid called Chinaran, "The Planes." P. Della Valle, we may note, calls Tehran "la citta dei platani."

The following note by De Sacy regarding the Chinar has already been quoted by Marsden, and though it may be doubtful whether the term Arbre Sec had any relation to the idea expressed, it seems to me too interesting to be omitted: "Its sterility seems to have become proverbial among certain people of the East. For in a collection of sundry moral sentences pertaining to the Sabaeans or Christians of St. John ... we find the following: 'The vainglorious man is like a showy Plane Tree, rich in boughs but producing nothing, and affording no fruit to its owner.'" The same reproach of sterility is cast at the Plane by Ovid's Walnut: -

"At postquam platanis, sterilem praebentibus umbram, Uberior quavis arbore venit honos; Nos quoque fructiferae, si nux modo ponor in illis, Coepimus in patulas luxuriare comas." (Nux, 17-20.)

I conclude with another passage from Khanikoff, though put forward in special illustration of what I believe to be a mistaken reading (Arbre Seul): "Where the Chinar is of spontaneous growth, or occupies the centre of a vast and naked plain, this tree is even in our own day invested with a quite exceptional veneration, and the locality often comes to be called 'The Place of the Solitary Tree.'" (J. R. G. S. XXIX. 345; Ferrier, 69-76; Fraser, 343; Ritter, VIII. 332, XI. 512 seqq.; Della Valle, I. 703; De Sacy's Abdallatif, p. 81; Khanikoff, Not. p. 38.)

[See in Fr. Zarncke, Der Priester Johannes, II., in the chap. Der Baum des Seth, pp. 127-128, from MS. (14th century) from Cambridge, this curious passage (p. 128): "Tandem rogaverunt eum, ut arborem siccam, de qua multum saepe loqui audierant, liceret videre. Quibus dicebat: 'Non est appellata arbor sicca recto nomine, sed arbor Seth, quoniam Seth, filius Adae, primi patris nostri, eam plantavit.' Et ad arborem Seth fecit eos ducere, prohibens eos, ne arborem transmearent, sed [si?] ad patriam suam redire desiderarent. Et cum appropinquassent, de pulcritudine arboris mirati sunt; erat enim magnae immensitatis et miri decoris. Omnium enim colorum varietas inerat arbori, condensitas foliorum et fructuum diversorum; diversitas avium omnium, quae sub coelo sunt. Folia vero invicem se repercutientia dulcissimae melodiae modulamine resonabant, et aves amoenos cantus ultra quam credi potest promebant; et odor suavissimus profudit eos, ita quod paradisi amoenitate fuisse. Et cum admirantes tantam pulcritudinem aspicerent, unus sociorum aliquo eorum maior aetate, cogitans [cogitavit?] intra se, quod senior esset et, si inde rediret, cito aliquo casu mori posset. Et cum haec secum cogitasset, coepit arborem transire, et cum transisset, advocans socios, iussit eos post se ad locum amoenissimum, quem ante se videbat plenum deliciis sibi paratum [paratis?] festinare. At illi retrogressi sunt ad regem, scilicet presbiterum Iohannem.

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