seek, therefore, for the origin of tree-worship not in the character of the tree, but in that of the primitive mind which deifies mountains, waters, and trees, irrespective of their nature.  It is true, however, that the greater veneration due to some trees and plants has a special reason.  Thus soma intoxicates:  and the tulas[=i], ‘holy basil,’ has medicinal properties, which make it sacred not only in the Krishna-cult, but in Sicily.[32] This plant is a goddess, and is wed annually to the C[=a]lagr[=a]ma stone with a great feast.[33] So the cam[=i] plant is herself divine, the goddess Cam[=i].  Again, the mysterious rustle of the bo tree, pipal may be the reason for its especial veneration; as its seeming immortality is certainly the cause of the reverence given to the banian.  It is not necessary, however, that any mystery should hang about a tree.  The palm is tall, (Civa’s) acoka is beautiful, and no trees are more revered.  But trees are holy per se.  Every ‘village-tree’ (above, p. 374, and Mbh[=a]. ii. 5. 100) is sacred to the Hindu.  And this is just what is found among the wild tribes, who revere their hut-trees and village-trees as divine, without demanding a special show of divinity.  The birth-tree (as in Grecian mythology) is also known, both to Hindu sect and to wild tribe.  But here also there is no basis of Aryan ideas, but of common human experience.  The ancestor-tree (totem) has been noticed above in the case of the Gonds, who claim descent from trees.  The Bh[=a]rs revere the (Civaite!) bilva or bel, but this is a medicinal tree.  The marriage-tree is universal in the South (the tree is the male or female ancestor), and even the Brahmanic wedding, among its secondary after-rites, is not without the tree, which is adorned as part of the ceremony.

Two points of view remain to be taken before the wild tribes are dismissed.  The first is that Hindu law is primitive.  Maine and Leist both cite laws as if any Hindu law were an oracle of primitive Aryan belief.  This method is ripe in wrong conclusions.  Most of the matter is legal, but enough grazes religion to make the point important.  Even with the sketch we have given it becomes evident that Hindu law cannot be unreservedly taken as an exponent of early Brahmanic law, still less of Aryan law.  For instance, Maine regards matriarchy as a late Brahmanic intrusion on patriarchy, an inner growth.[34] To prove this, he cites two late books, one being Vishnu, the Hindu law-giver of the South.  But it is from the Southern wild tribes that matriarchy has crept into Hinduism, and thence into Brahmanism.  Here prevails the matriarchal marriage*rite, with the first espousal to the snake-guarded tree that represents the mother’s family.  In many cases geographical limitations of this sort preclude the idea that the custom or law of a law-book is Aryan.[35]