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:
