Note 258 — Chapter I · Continued.—Alexander advancing farther into the interior of India, passes through forests and deserts—Crosses the Hydraotes—Besieges and captures Sangala, and enters the kingdom of Sopithes, who receives him with great hospitality and shows him a dog and lion fight
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This is the ficus Indica, commonly called the banyan-tree, because of the frequent use made of its shelter by traders who dealt in grain, called in India Banyans. Strabo (XV. i. 21) describes this tree from Onesikritos, who saw it growing in the country of Mousikanos. Pliny also (N. H. xii. 11) describes the tree and its fruit, adding that it grows chiefly in the neighbourhood of the Acesines (Chenâb); see also Theophrastos, De Plantis, iv. 5, and Arrian’s Indika, c. 11. Several English poets have made it the subject of their verse—Ben Jonson, Milton, Tickell, and Southey. Its stately stems rise in solemn grandeur like the basaltic pillars of Fingal’s Cave, and with the over-arching boughs form a vast and wondrous dome—
“Where as to shame the temples decked By skill of earthly architect, Nature herself, it seems, would raise A minster to her Maker’s praise.”