he Greeks. They venerated "the pines and cedars of
Lebanon, the evergreen oaks of the Palestinian hills, the tamarisks of
the Syrian jungles, the acacias of the Arabian wadies," besides such
cultivated trees as the palm, the olive, and the vine. But there is no
clear evidence to prove that they ever coupled a particular species of
tree with a particular god. In Phoenicia the cypress was sacred to
Astarte, but it was equally connected with the god Melcarth, who was
believed to have planted the cypress-trees at Daphne. "If a tree
belonged to a particular deity, it was not because it was of a
particular species, but because it was the natural wood of the place
where the god was worshipped."[87] It is true that the Chaldaeans
regarded the cedar as the special tree of the god Ea, but the
association was probably borrowed, like the god himself, from the
non-Semitic Accadians, while the connection of the Nabataean god,
Dusares, with the vine may be traced to Hellenic influence.

Outside the Semitic area individual gods are often found, as in Greece,
linked with particular kinds of trees. In Persia the cypress was the
sacred tree of the god Mithra, while in Egypt the acacia was intimately
associated with Osiris. On an ancient sarcophagus an acacia is
represented with the device, "Osiris shoots up."[88] And in mortuary
pictures the god is sometimes represented as a mummy covered with a tree
or with growing plants. In both cases the idea of life arising out of
death is probably implied.

[Illustration: Fig. 19.--The Bodhi-tree of Kanaka Muni (Ficus
glomerata).(The Stupa of Bharhut, by Major-General Cunningham, Plate
xxiv. 4.)]

In India each Buddha was associated with his own bodhi-tree or tree of
wisdom. The trumpet-flower, the sal-tree, the acacia, the pippala, and
the banian all belonged to different Buddhas, and are so depicted on the
Stupa of Bharhut. Here in the case of the earliest of the Buddhas whose
bodhi-tree has been found, the Buddha Vipasin, the particular tree
represented is the _patali_ or trumpet-flower. I