The Trees of the Sun and Moon in the Alexander Romance (III 17): Genuine Indian Detail?

Abstract

The visit of Alexander the Great to the Oracular Trees in the Alexander Romance is easily regarded as pure fantasy; and the names given to the trees are plainly corrupt in the earliest MS (A). This paper argues that the episode could reflect a visit by the originator of the account, who will have been a member of Alexander’s entourage, to a real sacred grove in India. The writer argues that the description of the grove and the trees bears many resemblances to what is known and can be observed of present-day tree worship in northern India. The possibility that the male and female trees may be a pipal and a neem is employed to suggest that the names, now corrupt, were originally something like Vasu(deva) and Ma, gods commonly associated with these two trees. Furthermore, at the present day Indians frequently assert that trees communicate with them or ‘speak’ to them; such an idea would have been startling to a Greek, who could well have used it to construct a story that the trees speak ‘oracles’, even though oracular practices are not otherwise found in Indian religion, past or present.