gives shelter to all sorts of malevolent spirits which beset the inhabitants. A curious instance of this belief comes from Poona. When his parents murdered the Marātha Peshwa, Nārāyanrāv in 1772, his successor, after two intervening members of the house, Bājīrāv, who believed himself to be haunted by Nārāyanrāv’s ghost, planted several hundred thousand mango trees round the city to afford a shelter to the angry spirit.[1] In connexion with the fertility cult, the value of the tree is improved if it be ceremonially wedded to another tree.
Near every village of the Pāvrās, a forest tribe in Khāndesh, is a sacred tree, round which, before harvest, the villagers prostrate themselves before the rising Sun, offer grain, and sacrifice goats and flowers. This tree god, known as Bāvā, or “Father,” Kumbā, has a consort. Rānī, “Queen,” Kājhal, who lives in another sacred tree not far off.[2] Hence, the Mother Goddess, like Sijū, the Kāchāri god, often lives in a tree. The Rājput legend tells that their patron goddess Āsāpūrnā, “Fulfiller of desires,” appeared out of a tree to protect the princess Surabhī, when, a fugitive, she lay almost at the point of death under its shade.[3]
Particularly among races who bury their dead, the Earth Mother is apt to assume a chthonic and malignant character. In India, as in Greece,[4] the snake forms the link between the benign spirits, ancestral or other, and the malevolent earth genii. In Bundelkhand certain snakes known as Bhiarānī, a word interpreted to mean, “Dwellers in the Earth,” are regarded as forms of Devī, the Mother Goddess: coconuts are offered to them by priests drawn from the menial castes, while a Brāhman generally lives close by and receives a share of the offerings.[5] In the
