-
"The Third Beast Was A Libbard;
Four Eagle's Wings He Had;
This Signified The Grecian Alexander,
Who With Four Hosts
Went forth to conquer lands
Even to the World's End,
Known by its Golden Pillars.
In India he the Wilderness
Broke through
With Trees twain he there did speak," etc.
(In Schilteri Thesaurus Antiq. Teuton. tom. i.[1])
These oracular Trees of the Sun and Moon, somewhere on the confines of
India, appear in all the fabulous histories of Alexander, from the
Pseudo-Callisthenes downwards. Thus Alexander is made to tell the story in
a letter to Aristotle: "Then came some of the towns-people and said, 'We
have to show thee something passing strange, O King, and worth thy
visiting; for we can show thee trees that talk with human speech.' So they
led me to a certain park, in the midst of which were the Sun and Moon, and
round about them a guard of priests of the Sun and Moon. And there stood
the two trees of which they had spoken, like unto cypress trees; and round
about them were trees like the myrobolans of Egypt, and with similar fruit.
And I addressed the two trees that were in the midst of the park, the one
which was male in the Masculine gender, and the one that was female in the
Feminine gender. And the name of the Male Tree was the Sun, and of the
female Tree the Moon, names which were in that language Muthu and
Emausae.[2] And the stems were clothed with the skins of animals; the
male tree with the skins of he-beasts, and the female tree with the skins
of she-beasts.... And at the setting of the Sun, a voice, speaking in the
Indian tongue, came forth from the (Sun) Tree; and I ordered the Indians
who were with me to interpret it.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 620 of 1256
Words from 168403 to 168717
of 342071
