From the earliest antiquity a tradition came down throughout middle Asia, of some holy tree—perhaps the tree of life spoken of as growing in Paradise.—Gen. ii. 9. Some such a tree is very often to be seen sculptured on Assyrian monuments; and, by the place which it holds there, must have been held in peculiar, nay religious veneration. Upon those important remains from Nineveh, now in the British Museum, and figured in Mr. Layard's fine work, it appears as the object of homage for the two men symbolized as sacerdotal or as kingly personages, between whom it invariably stands. It is to be found equally figured upon the small bucket meant for religious rites,[1] as embroidered upon the upper sleeve of the monarch's tunic.[2] From Fergusson's "Palaces of Nineveh, and Persepolis restored," we learn that it was frequently to be found sculptured as an architectural ornament. When seen done in needlework upon dresses, the two animals—sometimes winged bulls, sometimes gazelles—which its umbel of seven flowers is separating, are shown with bended knees, as if in worship of it. Always this plant is represented as a shrub, sometimes bearing a series of umbels with seven flowers sprouting, each at the end of a tangled bough; sometimes as a stunted tree with branches growing all the way up right out of a thick trunk with ovated leaves; but the height never looks beyond that of a good sized man. Never for one moment can it be taken as any conventionalism for a tree, since it is as distinct an imitation of a particular plant, as is the figure of the palm which occurs along with it. To us, it has every look of belonging to the family of Asclepiadeæ, or one of its near kindred.
The few Parsees still to be found in East India, are the only followers of Persia's olden religious practices; and in his "Essays on the sacred writings, language, and religion of the Parsees," Haug tells us,[3] that those people yet hold a certain plant—the Homa, or hom?—to be sacred, and from it squeeze a juice to be used by them in their religious services. To our seeming, those buckets in the left hand of many an Assyrian figure were for holding this same liquor.
Can the "hom" of the old Persians be the same as the famous Sidral Almuntaha which bears as many leaves inscribed with names as there are men living on the earth? At each birth a fresh leaf bearing the name of the newly born bursts out, and, when any one has reached the end of his life, the leaf withers and falls off.[4]
