"Peregrine. Drake was a didapper to Mandevill:
Candish and Hawkins, Frobisher, all our Voyagers
Went short of Mandevil. But had he reached
To this place - here - yes, here - this wilderness,
And seen the Trees of the Sun and Moon, that speak
And told King Alexander of his death;
He then
Had left a passage ope to Travellers
That now is kept and guarded by Wild Beasts."
(Broome's Antipodes, in Lamb's Specimens.)
The same trees are alluded to in an ancient Low German poem in honour of
St. Anno of Cologne. Speaking of the Four Beasts of Daniel's Vision: -
"The third beast was a Libbard;
Four Eagle's Wings he had;
This signified the Grecian Alexander,
Who with four Hosts went forth to conquer lands
Even to the World's End,
Known by its Golden Pillars.
In India he the Wilderness broke through
With Trees twain he there did speak," etc.
(In Schilteri Thesaurus Antiq. Teuton. tom. i.[1])
These oracular Trees of the Sun and Moon, somewhere on the confines of
India, appear in all the fabulous histories of Alexander, from the
Pseudo-Callisthenes downwards. Thus Alexander is made to tell the story in
a letter to Aristotle: "Then came some of the towns-people and said, 'We
have to show thee something passing strange, O King, and worth thy
visiting; for we can show thee trees that talk with human speech.' So they
led me to a certain park, in the midst of which were the Sun and Moon, and
round about them a guard of priests of the Sun and Moon. And there stood
the two trees of which they had spoken, like unto cypress trees; and round
about them were trees like the myrobolans of Egypt, and with similar fruit.
And I addressed the two trees that were in the midst of the park, the one
which was male in the Masculine gender, and the one that was female in the
Feminine gender. And the name of the Male Tree was the Sun, and of the
female Tree the Moon, names which were in that language Muthu and
Emausae.[2] And the stems were clothed with the skins of animals; the
male tree with the skins of he-beasts, and the female tree with the skins
of she-beasts.... And at the setting of the Sun, a voice, speaking in the
Indian tongue, came forth from the (Sun) Tree; and I ordered the Indians
who were with me to interpret it. But they were afraid and would not," etc.
(Pseudo-Callisth. ed. Mueller, III. 17.)
The story as related by Firdusi keeps very near to the Greek as just
quoted, but does not use the term "Tree of the Sun." The chapter of the
Shah Nameh containing it is entitled Didan Sikandar dirakht-i-goyara,
"Alexander's interview with the Speaking Tree." (Livre des Rois, V.
229.) In the Chanson d'Alixandre of Lambert le Court and Alex. de
Bernay, these trees are introduced as follows: -
"'Signor,' fait Alixandre, 'je vus voel demander,
Se des merveilles d'Inde me saves rien conter.'
Cil li ont respondu: 'Se tu vius escouter
Ja te dirons merveilles, s'es poras esprover.
La sus en ces desers pues ii Arbres trover
Qui c pies ont de haut, et de grossor sunt per.
Li Solaus et La Lune les ont fait si serer
Que sevent tous langages et entendre et parler.'"
(Ed. 1861 (Dinan), p. 357.)
Maundevile informs us precisely where these trees are: "A 15 journeys in
lengthe, goynge be the Deserts of the tother side of the Ryvere Beumare,"
if one could only tell where that is![3] A mediaeval chronicler also tells
us that Ogerus the Dane (temp. Caroli Magni) conquered all the parts
beyond sea from Hierusalem to the Trees of the Sun. In the old Italian
romance also of Guerino detto il Meschino, still a chapbook in S. Italy,
the Hero (ch. lxiii.) visits the Trees of the Sun and Moon. But this is
mere imitation of the Alexandrian story, and has nothing of interest.
(Maundevile, pp. 297-298; Fasciculus Temporum in Germ. Script.
Pistorii Nidani, II.)
It will be observed that the letter ascribed to Alexander describes the
two oracular trees as resembling two cypress-trees. As such the Trees of
the Sun and Moon are represented on several extant ancient medals, e.g. on
two struck at Perga in Pamphylia in the time of Aurelian. And Eastern
story tells us of two vast cypress-trees, sacred among the Magians, which
grew in Khorasan, one at Kashmar near Turshiz, and the other at Farmad
near Tuz, and which were said to have risen from shoots that Zoroaster
brought from Paradise. The former of these was sacrilegiously cut down by
the order of the Khalif Motawakkil, in the 9th century. The trunk was
despatched to Baghdad on rollers at a vast expense, whilst the branches
alone formed a load for 1300 camels. The night that the convoy reached
within one stage of the palace, the Khalif was cut in pieces by his own
guards. This tree was said to be 1450 years old, and to measure 33-3/4
cubits in girth. The locality of this "Arbor Sol" we see was in
Khorasan, and possibly its fame may have been transferred to a
representative of another species. The plane, as well as the cypress, was
one of the distinctive trees of the Magian Paradise.
In the Peutingerian Tables we find in the N.E. of Asia the rubric "Hic
Alexander Responsum accepit," which looks very like an allusion to the
tale of the Oracular Trees. If so, it is remarkable as a suggestion of the
antiquity of the Alexandrian Legends, though the rubric may of course be
an interpolation. The Trees of the Sun and Moon appear as located in India
Ultima to the east of Persia, in a map which is found in MSS. (12th
century) of the Floridus of Lambertus; and they are indicated more or
less precisely in several maps of the succeeding centuries.
