Note 10 — Chapter II · TREE AND SERPENT WORSHIP.

In folk-lore we have many magic trees. We have the Kalpataru or Kalpadruma, also known as Kalpavriksha, or Manoratha dayaka, the tree which grows in Swarga or the paradise of Indra and grants all desires. There is, again, the Pârijâta, which was produced at the churning of the ocean, and appropriated by Indra, from whom it was recovered by Krishna. The tree in the Meghadûta bears clothes, trinkets, and wine, which is like the Juniper tree of the German tale, which grants a woman a son. Many such trees appear in the Indian folk-tales. The King Jimutaketu had a tree in his house which came down from his ancestors, and was known as “the giver of desires”; the generous Induprabha craved a boon from Indra, and became a wishing tree in his own city; and the faithful minister of Yasaketu sees a wave rise out of the sea and then a wishing tree appears, “adorned with boughs glittering with gold, embellished with sprays of coral, bearing lovely fruits and flowers of jewels. And he beheld on its trunk a maiden, alluring on account of her wonderful beauty, reclining on a gem-bestudded couch.”10 So, in the story of Devadatta, the tree is cloven and a heavenly nymph appears. We have trees which, like those in the Odyssey, bear fruit and flowers at the same time, and in the garden of the Asura maiden “the trees were ever producing flowers and fruits, for all seasons were present there at the same time.”11