380, II. 348; Ouseley, I. 359 seqq. and 391;
Herodotus, VII. 31; Pliny, XII. 5; Chardin, VII. 410, VIII. 44 and
426; Fabricius, Vet. Test. Pseud. I. 80 seqq.; Cathay, p. 365;
Beal's Fah-Hian, 72 and 78; Pelerins Bouddhistes, II. 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.
