The Majority Of
Such Holy Trees In Persia Appear To Be Plane-Trees.
Admiration for the
beauty of this tree seems to have occasionally risen into superstitious
veneration from a very old date.
Herodotus relates that the Carians, after
their defeat by the Persians on the Marsyas, rallied in the sacred grove
of Plane-trees at Labranda. And the same historian tells how, some years
later, Xerxes on his march to Greece decorated a beautiful Chinar with
golden ornaments. Mr. Hamilton, in the same region, came on the remains of
a giant of the species, which he thought might possibly be the very same.
Pliny rises to enthusiasm in speaking of some noble Plane-trees in Lycia
and elsewhere. Chardin describes one grand and sacred specimen, called
King Hosain's Chinar, and said to be more than 1000 years old, in a suburb
of Ispahan, and another hung with amulets, rags, and tapers in a garden at
Shiraz.[7] One sacred tree mentioned by the Persian geographer Hamd Allah
as distinguishing the grave of a holy man at Bostam in Khorasan (the
species is not named, at least by Ouseley, from whom I borrow this) comes
into striking relation with the passage in our text. The story went that
it had been the staff of Mahomed; as such it had been transmitted through
many generations, until it was finally deposited in the grave of Abu
Abdallah Dasitani, where it struck root and put forth branches. And it is
explicitly called Dirakht-i-Khushk, i.e. literally L'ARBRE SEC.
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