tree worship in asia

The Buddhist Tree of Wisdom has four boughs from which flow the rivers of life, and the sacred tree of Buddhism is the Bodhi or Pipal tree because it was under such a tree that Siddhartha Gautama (b. 566 BC) meditated and gained enlightenment.

The enormous respect and veneration for trees in India has produced a great variety of tree myths and traditions.In India, the ghosts of brahmans are believed to live in Fig trees awaiting liberation or reincarnation, and the voluptuous Vrikshaka represents a tree nymph. Asoka, the Buddhist emperor of India (268-232 BC) erected 36 stone pillars -- one of which in Besnagar in Central India represents the Cosmic Tree.

In Japan, the Cryptomeria tree is venerated at Shinto shrines, and a sacred tree is the Sakaki from which a branch becomes a sacred central post in building shrines.

To the Chinese, the Peach tree is sacred, every part of it holding great symbolism. Peach wood possesses the power to ward off evil spirits, and the peach fruit is believed to endow immortality -- if only in a long, tranquil and prosperous life.

The Chinese also identify sacred trees as symbols of renewal. Their Tree of Life, the Kien-Luen, grows on the slopes of Kuen-Luen.

In China, tree patterns decorated the garments of pubescent girls, and most popular was one of phoenixes and pheasants sitting on or flying around an Otung tree which links more with Central Asian rather than Chinese beliefs.

Because of its location between Europe and Asia, and its fame for producing beautiful rugs, Turkey has retained traces of ancient beliefs in carpet patterns which tie its culture with those of Central Asiatic tribes. Mostly decorated with tree patterns,Turkish prayer rugs (namzliks) reveal a pre-Islamic origin, showing the tree as the center of life.

In Turkey today, particularly in the eastern parts, childless women make a pilgrimage to a solitary tree to tie cradles and dolls to its branches. Childless Kazakh women make a similar pilgrimage, offering a sheep; and Yakut women spend a night under a Larch tree in order to conceive. Uzbek women believe a fruit tree acts as the symbol of fertility and in Erzurum, and in other parts of Turkey, the apple tree is revered.

Siberian Turks believed the tie between a man and a tree is like an umbilical cord. When an old tree dies, an old man dies and when a young tree dies, a young man dies -- and the human spirit returns to the tree. The Kazaks and the Turkmen believe in a tree in heaven, every leaf of which belongs to someone on Earth. When babies die, Siberian Turks once wrapped them in birch bark and hung them on trees believing that babies belong to nature.

Turkic people believe that trees are the ancestors of human beings In the mythology of the Oghuz people, two trees, a golden one and a silver -- metaphors for the Sun and the Moon -- are mentioned as ancestors. Trees were also used by Siberian and Central Asian shamans in consecration rites. The Yakuts believed their shamans were trees, referring to limbs as branches.

The Tuva and Altai tribes believed trees were conscious of pain and like humans they slept at night and died as we do; and the Huns of the Northern Caucasus sacrificed horses to the Sacred oak.

All of these tree myths are represented by patterns on carpets, stones and jewellery. There are representations of trees with fruits shaped as human, and the spread of this motif is connected with the expansion of Turkmen tribes in Central Asia in the 10th century.

the religions of india, china and japan

The years between 600BC to 551BC represented a golden period for the birth of great thinkers in the eastern as well as the western lands.

In 600BC, the founder of Taoism, Lao-tzu was born in China.

In 580 BC, Pythagoras, a great mathematician as well as the founder of the dualism of the body and soul, was born in Greece.

In 563BC, Siddhartha Guatama Buddha, the founder of Buddhism (and, by influence, Japanese Shinto), was born in India.

In 551BC, Confucius, the founder of Confucianism, was born in China.

Unlike the bloodthirsty polytheistic and monotheistic religions - demanding a blood sacrifice of one sort or another in order to placate a god and gain whatever it was that worshippers wanted - the major religions that developed in India and China after the 6th Century BC were a lot more civilized and centered more on ethics, social behavior and personal enlightenment than organized worship of a god.

In India, Hinduism - encapsulating karma and the rigid caste system, without which man has no place - derived from the fears and ignorance of the early Indic civilization before 3000 BC and continues to the present day. Ancient Hinduism was, of course, an influencing force in the rise of the new thinkers of the 6th century BC, particularly Buddha, an Indian prince, whose four Noble Truths and the eight-fold path makes no provision for a god.

In China, Confucianism - advocating reverence of ancestors - differed from Buddhism and Taoism in that there were no temples or priests. Taoism, as represented by the magnificent White Cloud Temple in Peking, differs from Buddhism and Confucianism in that it has many gods - all for mundane purposes, such as the kitchen god that still exists in superstitious Chinese households - but it, too, is concerned wholly with man's benevolence.

In Japan, Shinto was developed as a particular form of Japanese Buddhism - worshipping Nature in the form of mountain and forest gods - and, like all of the far-eastern religions, it is particularly strong on truthfulness. In 1871, Shinto was proclaimed the Japanese national religion.