"Banyan" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... were then seen to be stirring,—rising, curling, sailing, rolling, as if the breezes were imprisoned among them, and struggling to come forth. The breezes came, and, as it seemed, from those peaks. The woods bent before them at one sweep. The banyan-tree, a grove in itself, trembled through all its leafy columns, and shook off its dews in a wide circle, like the return shower of a playing fountain. Myriads of palms which covered the uplands, till now still as a sleeping host beneath ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... shrub is grown there; and when one considers that every foot of its soil has been carried to its place, the wonder is how it has all been done. The blossoms seem to say, "The whole world is here and in bloom." The banyan tree grows here luxuriantly and is a great curiosity. The main trunk of the tree grows to the height of about thirty or forty feet. The first branches, and indeed many of the upper branches, strike down into the ground. These give the trees the appearance ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger
... it may be premised, the dietary of Christ's Hospital was of the lowest: breakfast consisting of a "quarter of penny loaf, moistened with attenuated small beer in wooden piggins, smacking of the pitched leathern jack it was poured from," and the weekly rule giving "three banyan-days ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... view showed greater charms in the Beautiful Isle. On the south, at their right, lay the great Quan Yin mountain, towering seventeen hundred feet above them, clothed in tall grass and groves of bamboo, banyan, and fir trees of every conceivable shade of green. Nestling at its feet were little villages almost buried in trees. Slowly the ship drifted along, passing, here a queer fishing village close to the sandy shore, yonder a light-house, ...
— The Black-Bearded Barbarian (George Leslie Mackay) • Mary Esther Miller MacGregor, AKA Marion Keith
... we went out to the soldiers' barracks, and saw a banyan-tree that 'Captain Li' says is the only one in the United States, but we didn't see any monkeys or elephants. Mark says he don't think this is very tropical, because we haven't seen any bread-fruit-trees nor a single ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe
... slung across his shoulder, and carried a mile down the trail. Here, hiding new trail, Binu Charley had carried him for a quarter of a mile into the heart of the deepest jungle, and hidden him in a big banyan tree. Returning to try to save the rifles and personal outfit, Binu Charley had seen a party of bushmen trotting down the trail, and had hidden in the bush. Here, and from the direction of the main ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... clear the path; for, tall vines, like ship's cordage, hung from the limbs of the trees and knitted their branches together in the most inextricable fashion, the lianas rooting themselves down into the earth and then springing up again for fresh entanglements, in the same way as the banyan-tree of India ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... beauty of the place and the seclusion it offered. There, on bright moonlit nights, with the sea and the city below me, the "Tower of Silence" in the Parsees' burial plot ablaze with reflected glory, the majestic banyan over me rustling gently in the soft sea breeze, while Lona nestled close beside me,—the exquisite perfume of the luxuriant garden less welcome than the delicious fragrance of her breath,—hours fraught with years of bliss would pass as if but pulse-beats. In the world of love ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... to run along to the enormous length of three or four hundred feet, with short alternate branches at every foot of its length. Thus, in the stormy ocean, grows a plant, higher and of greater length than any vegetable production of the surface of the earth, not excepting the banyan tree, which, as its branches touch the ground, takes fresh root, and may be said to form a separate tree. These marine plants resist the most powerful attacks of the mightiest elements combined; the winds and the waves in vain combine ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Monophyllous pitchers obey the same law, viz.: that the upper side of the leaf has become the inner side of the pitcher. Only one exception to this rule is known to me. It is afforded by the pitchers of the banyan or holy fig-tree, Ficus religiosus, but it does not seem to belong to the same class as other pitchers, since as far as it has been possible to ascertain the facts, these pitchers are not formed by a few leaves ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... glades. The plantations were generally neatly fenced and often extensive; as much as twenty or thirty acres in one plot. Every now and then they passed on the roadside a noble tree, with wide-spread, drooping branches, a species of banyan tree, under which was often seen a bullock-waggon ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... to the distant Botanical Gardens proved of much interest, and the largest banyan tree in the world was there displayed, having four hundred and sixty-four aerial branches and covering over an acre in extent; there were also ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... slumber of frenzy twice he drank to the lees, On the sacred stones of the High-place under the sacred trees; With a lamp at his ashen head he lay in the place of the feast, And the sacred leaves of the banyan rustled around the priest. Last, when the stated even fell upon terrace and tree, And the shade of the lofty island lay leagues away to sea, And all the valleys of verdure were heavy with manna and musk, The wreck of ...
— Ballads • Robert Louis Stevenson
... an exudation upon the branches of certain Asiatic trees, such as the banyan (Ficus religiosa). It is due to punctures in the bark of the trees in question, which punctures are made by the female of the insect coccus ficus or ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... act in accordance with his assumption, and after taking an inventory of whatever had been overlooked in the foray, which was little else than the premises, he seated himself upon a mat beneath a banyan tree in the garden, which concluded the rear of his dwelling, and was presently ells-deep in a profound reflection, which was not only ominous in its outward ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... Smiley's Geography, a book no larger than the shipmaster's hand, was found and opened to Hindoostan, or India within the Ganges. There was a dark surprising picture of Hindoos doing Penance under the Banyan tree, and a confusing view of ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... invited me to stay with him until I could fix on a place to suit me. A Dutch Assistant Resident as well as a Regent or native Javanese prince lived here. The town was neat, and had a nice open grassy space like a village green, on which stood a magnificent fig-tree (allied to the Banyan of India, but more lofty), under whose shade a kind of market is continually held, and where the inhabitants meet together to lounge and chat. The day after my arrival, Mr. Ball drove me over to the village of Modjo-agong, where he was ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... bears annually a large seed-pod, packed with cotton of a soft, silky texture, and hence its name. It is, however, suitable neither for timber nor fuel, and the small product of cotton is seldom if ever gathered. The islanders are proud of a single specimen of the banyan tree of considerable size, which they show to all visitors; but it cannot be indigenous—it must have been brought in its youth from Asia. There is, however, in these West Indian isles, the black mangrove, with very similar habit to the banyan. The limbs spread to such an extent from the trunk ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... venerated in Java, and by the Buddhists of Thibet is known as the bridge of safety, over which mortals pass from the shores of this world to those of the unseen one beyond. Occasionally confounded with this peepul is the banyan (Ficus indica), which is another sacred tree of the Indians. Under its shade Vishnu is said to have been born; and by the Chinese, Buddha is represented as sitting beneath its leaves to receive the homage of the god Brahma. Another sacred tree ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... in the bosom of a bounteous vale, The ancient city, to the enamour'd sight, Gleams like a vision of the fairy night, Or Be-ulah, in Banyan's holy tale. The silvery clouds that o'er the valley sail Dim not the sinking sun, whose lustre fires The old cathedral and its gorgeous spires, The ruin'd abbey, garlanded and pale The vesper choristers in each lone wood Chant to the peeping moon ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 480, Saturday, March 12, 1831 • Various
... to procure food. He offered it to Kundan the merchant, who made him sit down and asked him where he had left the rani and why he did not bring her with him. Amba told him that he had left her with their two boys under the banyan-tree. Then Kundan, leaving Amba in the shop, went and got a litter, and proceeding to the banyan-tree showed the rani the bodice, and said, "Thy husband wishes thee to come to him." Nothing doubting, the rani entered the litter, and the merchant sent ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... called Sirpali, we left our horses and proceeded on foot up a lovely wooded valley filled with the bastard teak, the strong-smelling moha-tree (from which the bears of these parts receive their chief sustenance), the giant mango, pipal and banyan. ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... the afternoon, and rested under a banyan-tree, which stood opposite the gateway of the fort. He apologized for not entering the fort, on the ground, that it might lead to some collision between their followers, or that his friend might not wish any of the King's ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... remarkable resemblance to the Tettira Jataka (ed. Fausboell, No. 37, transl. Rhys Davids, i. p. 310 seq.) in which the partridge, monkey, and elephant dispute as to their relative age, and the partridge turns out to have voided the seed of the Banyan-tree under which they were sheltered, whereas the elephant only knew it when a mere bush, and the monkey had nibbled the topmost shoots. This apologue got to England at the end of the twelfth century as the sixty-ninth fable, "Wolf, Fox, and Dove," ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... bordered with beautiful banyan trees. We sat down under their shade, and waited for what would come. Some little children followed us, but before we could get a single idea clearly into their heads a man came and chased them away. "It is getting dark," he said. "They are only little green things; they must ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... the character of the snake that had bitten me, but it was large and long, and many cobras are dark and lengthy creatures. My father shot one with No. 8, in the roots of a banyan tree this very year, and it ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... tasteless, and the pease-soup of Saturday, coarse and choking, were enriched for him with a slice of 'extraordinary bread and butter,' from the hot-loaf of the Temple. The Wednesday's mess of millet, somewhat less repugnant—(we had three banyan to four meat-days in the week)—was endeared to his palate with a lump of double-refined, and a smack of ginger, (to make it go down the more glibly) or the fragrant cinnamon. In lieu of our 'half-pickled' Sundays, or 'quite fresh' boiled ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... temperature of 110 degrees. There were quiet, heavy tropical showers, and a general misty dampness, and the Navigator Islands, with their rainbow-tinted coral forests, their fringe of coco palms, and groves of banyan and breadfruit trees, these sunniest isles of the bright South Seas, resolved themselves into dark lumps looming through a drizzling mist. But the showers and the dampness were confined to that region, and for the last fortnight an ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... reposing, talking, looking at the merry steps of the dancing-girls, or listening to the stories of some Dhol Baut (or Indian improvisatore) were thousands of dusky soldiery. The camels and horses were picketed under the banyan-trees, on which the ripe mango fruit was growing, and offered them an excellent food. Towards the spot which the golden fish and royal purdahs, floating in the wind, designated as the tent of Holkar, led an immense avenue—of elephants! the finest street, indeed, I ever saw. Each of the ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... New England, still Thy wandering sons shall stretch their arms, And thy rude chart of rock and hill Seem dearer than the land of palms! Thy massy oak and mountain pine More welcome than the banyan's shade, And every free, blue stream of thine Seem richer than the golden bed Of Oriental waves, which glow And sparkle with ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
... This Baboo is a banyan of solid substance, and the Mullicks all are citizens of credit and renown; while Ramee Durwan gets five rupees a month, and makes his bed at the gate. Last year, they say, when little Dwarkanath Mullick, the Baboo's adopted son, nine years old, was married to the tender child ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... give Jerry a series of instructions, such as, going on a scout by himself, to go to the nest, then circle about it widely, to continue to the other clearing where were the fruit trees, to cross the jungle to the main path, to proceed down the main path toward the village till he came to the great banyan tree, and then to return along the small path to Nalasu and Nalasu's house. All of which Jerry would carry out to the letter, and, arrived back, would make report. As, thus: at the nest nothing unusual save that a buzzard was ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... Chela and the Old Lama A Ekka, or Road Cart A Team of "Critters" Group of Famous Brahmin Pundits Tomb of Akbar, the Great Mogul Audience Chamber of the Mogul Palace, Agra A Hindu Ascetic A Hindu Barber Bodies ready for Burning, Benares Great Banyan Tree, Botanical Garden, ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... are a flamingo, a banyan-tree, or a mandarin. But there stands the tea-cup, and our ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... and demons over the dismayed pilgrim's head. A fourth, two pilgrims ascending a steep hill, one of them falling head-long down. From a glance of a few moments at this curious book, there shortly afterwards appeared in a newspaper in the North, an account of Banyan's having borrowed some of his plot from this work. This was answered by Mr. Montgomery, and others. Upon Mr. Southey not being able to find the book, when he had undertaken to write the 'Life and Times of Bunyan,' he addressed a letter to his publisher, Mr. Major, in which he says, 'Can ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... solidified them by his powers of illusion. Those car-warriors headed by Kripa, filled with grief, took leave of the king, O monarch, and went away to a place far removed from that spot. Having proceeded far, they beheld a banyan, O sire, under whose shade they stopped, greatly tired, and exceedingly anxious about the king and indulging in such thoughts as these, "The mighty son of Dhritarashtra, having solidified the waters of the lake, lay stretched at the bottom. The Pandavas have reached that spot, from desire of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... teeth and mouth with orris, then to bathe, half asleep still; and yet again to lie a-thinking in my arm-chair, robed in a banyan, cheeks all suds and nose sniffing the scented water in the chin-basin which I held none too steady; and I said, peevishly, "What a fool a man is to play the fool! Do you ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... steam up ready to put to sea to catch the Banyan African steamer four o'clock to-morrow morning. Expense not ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... a considerable extent of country; and as the act of encamping occupied some time, a halt was called an hour or more before sunset. The rajah's tent was pitched in the neighbourhood of an immense banyan-tree; those of his chief officers and attendants being placed, without much order, around it. Among these, one was appropriated for the use of Reginald and his friend. As they lay stretched at their length in the ...
— The Young Rajah • W.H.G. Kingston
... quickly ran up the beach and crouched behind the bushes which grew at high-water mark. They all had guns, and Sipi and Solepa and I saw them waiting to shoot. We were hiding amid the roots of a great banyan tree, and could see well. As the boats drew near Solepa watched them eagerly, and then began to weep and laugh at the same time when she saw her husband Preston was steering the one which led. She was a good woman. She loved her husband. I was pleased with her, and ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... alliance. Suggests the building of a new town. To belong to all the tribes. To take all the chiefs to the new town. The boys want their herd of yaks. Sutoto and party go for them. Blakely's fighting force. The Banyan tree. Its peculiar growth. Sap in trees. Capillary attraction. Hunting a town site. Uraso selects a place. A water-fall. An ideal spot. Reported arrival of the herd. Fencing off a field. How the fence was built. The warriors at work. Building a new water wheel. Erecting ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Conquest of the Savages • Roger Thompson Finlay
... to a very large population, and is held so sacred that the king and priests of Burmah and Siam still send valuable presents to it annually. A sacred bo-tree was pointed out to us in the grounds near the temple, believed to be the oldest historical tree in the world. It is nearly allied to the banyan species, and its record has been carefully kept since three hundred years previous to the Christian era. The temple, though wearing a most deserted and neglected aspect, is still in charge of a few yellow-robed priests, who keep up an appearance daily of regular services, such as ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... brigantine, we found a passage—narrow but safe—leading into the lagoon, which was a mile or mile and a half in width, and but for the one opening in the reef, completely land locked by four small islands, all low and densely wooded with banyan and other trees, and connected with each other at low tide. Here and there, at intervals, were groves of coco-palms, and a few vi trees—the wild mango of the Western Pacific, growing close down to the beach, which on the inner side of the lagoon was of bright yellow ...
— Yorke The Adventurer - 1901 • Louis Becke
... dressed in red and white silk; then the Judsons' animal, three or four more behind with grandees, and 300 or 400 attendants followed. At a beautiful garden, full of fruit trees, a feast was spread under a noble banyan, the vice- reine causing the cloth next to her to be allotted to her guests, whom she tended affectionately, gathering and paring fruit, cutting flowers and weaving them for them, and, unlike the Hindoos, freely eating what they handed her. This hospitable and amiable lady had just begun to ask ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... through sombre groves, where the dark tamale-tree entwined its branches with the pale green foliage of the nim, and the pippal's domes of quivering leaves contrasted with the columnar aisles of the banyan fig. They admired the old monarchs of the forest, bearded to the waist with hangings of moss, the flowing creepers delicately climbing from the lower branches to the topmost shoots, and the cordage ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... tubes. Around the bend the water ripples at the ford. At evening you will see the tired men from the mountains, bending under heavy loads of hemp, wade through the shallows to the cavern shelter of the banyan-tree. Through the dense mango-grove comes the faint sound of bells. The puk-puk bird hoots from the jungle, and the black crows settle ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... trying to find the warmest and softest nook. Now an uneasy head is thrust out, and now a whole tiny body, but it soon reenters in another quarter, and at length the stir and chirr grow still. You see only a collection of little legs, as if the hen were a banyan-tree, and presently even they disappear, she settles down comfortably, and all are wrapped in a slumberous silence. And as I sit by the hour, watching their winning ways, and see all the steps of this sleepy subsidence, I can but remember that outburst ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... in which the tiny station was set was bowered in vegetation. The gardens glowed with the varied hues of flowers, and were bounded by hedges of wild roses. The road and paths were bordered by the tall, graceful plumes of the bamboo and shaded by giant mango and banyan trees, their ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... Brahmins robed in their vestments, and swarms of voluptuous dancing-girls, moving to chant of kabit and damari. But whither, whither? Out of the city into the sun they passed, between avenues of banyan, down colonnades of palm. ...
— Some Chinese Ghosts • Lafcadio Hearn
... Aqueduct. But there is no end to this sort of vainglorious recording. As Willis says in his Home Journal at the time, "Mr. Tupper is among us, feeling his way through the wilderness of his laurels, and realising his share of Emerson's 'banyan' similitude,—the roots that have passed under the sea and come up on this side of the Atlantic rather smothering him with their thriftiness in republican soil." I suppose by ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... everywhere abundant and well tended; there are fields of winter wheat, and pink-flowered beans, and beautiful patches of golden rape-seed. Dotted over the landscape are pretty Szechuen farmhouses in groves of trees. Splendid banyan trees give grateful shelter to the traveller. Of this country it could be written as a Chinese traveller wrote of England, "their fertile hills, adorned with the richest luxuriance, resemble in the outline of their summits the arched eyebrows of a ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... air: what is this but the most imposing piece in nature's repertory? Heine wished to lie like Merlin under the oaks of Broceliande. I should not be satisfied with one tree; but if the wood grew together like a banyan grove, I would be buried under the tap-root of the whole; my parts should circulate from oak to oak; and my consciousness should be diffused abroad in all the forest, and give a common heart to that assembly of green spires, ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... through the fine trees by which it is surrounded, are very beautiful. Though several hundred feet above any point we had hitherto reached, the situation is so sheltered that the tamarind, peepul, and banyan trees are superb. A fine specimen of the latter stands at the entrance to the village, not a broadheaded tree, as is usual in the prime of its existence, but a mass of trunks irregularly throwing out immense branches in a most picturesque manner; the original trunk is apparently ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... pleasances Came through the lattice bars With scents and murmurous harmonies; Like splintered scimitars The moonbeams through the banyan trees Gleamed under ...
— Iolaeus - The man that was a ghost • James A. Mackereth
... story of four creatures, none of whom loved each other, who lived in the same banyan tree in a forest in India. Banyan trees are very beautiful and very useful, and get their name from the fact that "banians," as merchants are called in India, often gather together in their shade to sell their goods. ...
— Hindu Tales from the Sanskrit • S. M. Mitra and Nancy Bell
... Others that stand are tubes on end, with rounded knot-holes, loved by the birds, that let air and moisture into the very heart of the wood. They are hardly safe in a strong wind. Others again, very large and much shorter, have sent up four trunks from one root, a little like a banyan, quadruple trees built for centuries, throwing abroad a vast roof of foliage, whose green in the midst of summer is made brown by sacks and sacks of beech nuts. These are the trees to camp by, and that are chosen by painters. The bark of the beech ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... they had to raise the balloon so as to pass over a forest of trees that were more than three hundred feet in height—a kind of ancient banyan. ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... a power of selection—might we not say discrimination? That little seed can never by any power of persuasion or environment be made to produce grass or any other kind of a tree, as manzanita, mango, banyan, catalpa, etc., but ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren
... scant greenery of Heywood's garden—a ropy little banyan, a low rank of glossy whampee leaves, and the dusty sage-green tops of stunted olives—glared the river. Wide, savage sunlight lay so hot upon it, that to aching eyes the water shone solid, like a broad road of ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... like to storm the Castle Perilous, and awaken the Sleeping Beauty?" archly said Hawke, as they rolled along under a huge alley of banyan trees. ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... froth, and vanishes with his edifice, traceless, silently, or amid hootings illimitable; while again that other still man, by the word of his mouth, by the very look of his face, was scattering influences, as seeds are scattered, "to be found flourishing as a banyan grove after a thousand years." I beg your pardon for all this preaching, if it be superfluous impute it to no ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... were seated at the foot of an enormous banyan, on the steep bank of an impetuous stream, which ran between a ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... predisposed to a calm mournful consideration of the great sulphur question. He never gets into a lurid passion, never horrifies, but calmly saddens you, in his discourses. He is fond of quoting good old Richard Baxter and John Banyan, and he might have worse authorities. But he is very serious, and his words sometimes chill like a condensation of Young's "Night Thoughts." If he had more dash and blithesomeness in him, if he could fling a little more of this world's logic into his sermons, if he ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... and the beach of Ringmanu, he had worked back toward it when in reality he was penetrating deeper and deeper into the mysterious heart of the unexplored island. That night, crawling in among the twisted roots of a banyan tree, he had slept from exhaustion while the mosquitoes had had ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... cheery little bird that chirps at sunset; Kabo was an ugly black fowl that croaks in the darkness. One day Pivi and Kabo thought that they would make slings, and practise slinging, as the people of the island still do. So they went to a banyan tree, and stripped the bark to make strings for their slings, and next they repaired to the river bank to find stones. Kabo stood on the bank of the river, and Pivi went into the water. The game was for Kabo to sling at Pivi, and for Pivi to dodge the stones, if he could. For some time ...
— The Brown Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... transfigured. A vase of japonicas, even in mid-winter, adorns his writing desk. The hot-house is as important to him as the air. There are soft engravings on the wall. This study-chair was made out of the twisted roots of a banyan. A dog, sleek-skinned, lies on the mat, and gets up as you come in. There stand in vermilion all the poets from Homer to Tennyson. Here and there are chamois heads and pressed seaweed. He writes on gilt-edged paper ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... people, but into which as many as 2300 have found admittance on special occasions; a Masonic temple; an extensive building for the housing of resident students; and very beautiful grounds with a palm-grove and an ancient banyan tree, in whose shade many of the most important theosophical lectures and conferences are held, and around which more than 3000 people of all nationalities have often been gathered to hear the discourses of the President and her colleagues. A striking feature of the grounds is ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... prairie; heath, heather; fern, bracken; furze, gorse, whin; grass, turf; pasture, pasturage; turbary^; sedge, rush, weed; fungus, mushroom, toadstool; lichen, moss, conferva^, mold; growth; alfalfa, alfilaria^, banyan; blow, blowth^; floret^, petiole; pin grass, timothy, yam, yew, zinnia. foliage, branch, bough, ramage^, stem, tigella^; spray &c 51; leaf. flower, blossom, bine^; flowering plant; timber tree, fruit tree; pulse, legume. Adj. vegetable, vegetal, vegetive^, vegitous^; herbaceous, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... very respectable Kangaroo Died week before last in Timbuctoo; A remarkable accident happened to him: He was hung head down from a banyan-limb. The Royal Lion made proclamation For a day of fasting and lamentation, Which led to a curious demonstration: The Elephant acted as if he were drunk— He stood on his head, he trod on his trunk; An over-sensitive she-Gorilla Declared that the shock would ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 5, March, 1878 • Various
... would be disagreeably gruesome. The gaudy Jain temple interests for a few minutes, and the exterior of Fort William impresses the casual spectator. The zooelogical garden is conventional, and the feature of the botanical garden is probably the largest banyan tree in the world. Calcutta hotels, deplorably poor, have been fitly described as of two kinds—bad and adjectively bad. All that interests the visitor within the modern capital of ancient India is the movement of official ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... expanse of sky which is seen from this high elevation is literally one blaze of stars. Though they are by no means to be seen in perfection, there are here many things that I love,—bananas, poinsettias, papayas, tree-ferns, dendrobiums, dracenas, the scarlet passion-flower, the spurious banyan, date, sago, and traveler's palms, and numberless other trees and shrubs, children of the burning sun of the tropics, carefully watered and ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... cast by the spread of a great banyan tree from whose thick branches a score of accessory trunks were sent down to seek root in the soil. Rooting, they grew into smooth, heavy supports for the wide-spread limbs which towered above the surrounding forest. Terry paused ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... South Indian tale Luxman accompanies Rama, who is carrying home his bride. Luxman overhears two owls talking about the perils that await his master and mistress. First he saves them from being crushed by the falling limb of a banyan-tree, and then he drags them away from an arch which immediately after gives way. By and by, as they rest under a tree, the king falls asleep. A cobra creeps up to the queen, and Luxman kills it with his ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... the fisheries get a good luff soon; but it seems that nothing but your horse-flesh, and horned cattle, and jackasses, are privileged to do the pulling and hauling in your shore- hookers; and I was forced to pay a week's wages for a berth, besides keeping a banyan on a mouthful of bread and cheese, from the time we hove up in Boston, till we came to ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... largest garrison towns belonging to the Sultan on the main shores. They each have a Wali or governor, custom officers, and a Beluch guard; and have certain attractions to the antiquarian in the shape of Portuguese ruins. We left our traps here to be housed by a Banyan called Lakshmidos, the collector of customs,[34] and started on the 17th January to visit Mr Rebmann, beyond the hills overlooking this place. It was a good day's work, and was commenced by rowing about ten miles up the Rabbai branch of the creek we were in, until we arrived at ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... during the course of ages, learned to attach extraordinary significance to trees, which, growing, decaying, and dying like man, yet outliving him by centuries, seemed, like animals, to be both far below and yet far above him in many of the conditions of life. In those glowing climes the Banyan was regarded as the tree of trees, and the mighty centre of vegetating life. Hence it was worshipped with such deep reverence that even in modern botany we find it named the ficus religiosa; and it was called by the earlier Christians the Devil's Tree, in accordance ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... purify your body in the simple way. As the seed is within the banyan tree, and within the seed are the flowers, the fruits, and the shade: So the germ is within the body, and within that germ is the body again. The fire, the air, the water, the earth, and the aether; ...
— Songs of Kabir • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... the Banyan's shadow, Well-springs, and a brick-built wall, Are all alike cool in the summer, ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... the window of this room was a tank with a flight of masonry steps leading down into the water; on its west bank, along the garden wall, an immense banyan tree; to the south a fringe of cocoanut palms. Ringed round as I was near this window I would spend the whole day peering through the drawn Venetian shutters, gazing and gazing on this scene as on a picture ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... the parrots were too exhausted on their arrival to go as far as the city where the Rajah, Panch-Phul Ranee's father, lived, but they flew down to rest on a beautiful banyan tree, which grew not far from the sea, close to a small village. The Rajah determined to go into the village and get food and shelter there. He told the parrots to stay in the banyan tree till his return; then, leaving ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... enjoying the sunny peace. After a dip in the sparkling waters, I started for home. The only sound in the silence was that of my Ganges-drenched cloth, swish-swashing with every step. As I passed beyond the site of the large banyan tree near the river bank, a strong impulse urged me to look back. There, under the shade of the banyan, and surrounded by a few disciples, sat ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... beside me. He spoke English with a pleasant accent and we read Bowring's effusion together, as it is engraved on the marble slab nearby. Scarcely had we finished, and the father was telling me of Goa in India, when my uncle Robert came from beneath the great banyan tree and stood before us. The father jumped to his feet, and throwing back his brown robe, rushed forward toward my uncle with a stilletto held ready for an upward stroke. Quickly my uncle drew a revolver and fired—and the father fell dead at ...
— In Macao • Charles A. Gunnison
... were doubly festooned along the sea wall, drooping creeper-like from palm to palmetto, from flowering hibiscus to sprawling banyan, from dainty china-berry to grotesque screw-pine tree, shedding strange witch-lights over masses of blossoms, tropical and semi-tropical. Through which the fine-spun spray of fountains drifted, and the great mousy dusk-moths darted through ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... Banyan, at your service," continued the officer, as he seated himself by the side of the young lieutenant, who was completely bewildered by the elegant and courtly speech ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... in one of his father's chariots, had reached the junction of the Jumna and Ganges, where he spent the first night of his exile beneath a banyan on the banks of the sacred stream. There he built a raft, by means of which he crossed to the other side, and from there sadly watched his faithful subjects wending homeward. Then he plunged into the forest, arranging that Sita should always tread ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... crumbs greedily, but the monkey was not as grateful for her share as she ought to have been. She took it, smelt it, wiped it vigorously on the ground, smelt it again, and chattered angrily at the boys; then she went nimbly hand over hand to the very top of the banyan-tree she lived in; and then she deliberately broke it into little pieces and ...
— The Story of Sonny Sahib • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... we found a most welcome and delightful change of temperature among those gigantic leaves of banyan-trees, and the broad expanse of water-plants, floating on lakes, and spacious aviaries, where birds of brilliant plumage sported and sang amid such foliage as they knew at home. Howbeit, the atmosphere was a little faint and sickish, perhaps owing ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... to the "tree of life," and are thus connected with the nigh innumerable myths which relate to some mystic tree as the source of life. The ash Ygdrasyl of the Edda, the oak of Dordona and of the Druid, the modern Christmas tree, the sacred banyan, the holy groves, illustrate but faintly the prevalence of tree worship. Even so late as the time of Canute, it had to be forbidden ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... of wants and fruitions" has covered our world as with a banyan-tree, we must have something else to keep alive our umbrageous growth of art, refinement, inventions, luxuries, and delicate sensibilities. ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... plant was found in possession of the avoided spot. India-like, its right of possession was unconsciously deferred to. And then the year following, may be, one or other of the sacred fig trees appeared behind the plant, and in a few years starved it out. Ten years will make a banyan sapling, or a pipal, into a sturdy trunk, and lo, by that time, in some visitation of drought or cholera or smallpox, or because some housewife was childless, coloured threads are being tied upon the tree or some rude symbolic painting put upon it. Then an ascetic comes along and seats himself ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... of train-yards and manufacturing areas. In the commercial heart of this world Frank Algernon Cowperwood had truly become a figure of giant significance. How wonderful it is that men grow until, like colossi, they bestride the world, or, like banyan-trees, they drop roots from every branch and are themselves a forest—a forest of intricate commercial life, of which a thousand material aspects are the evidence. His street-railway properties were like a net—the parasite Gold Thread—linked ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... among the Anabaptists, and it is possible to use that name of scorn with such a latitude and looseness that it includes not only Denck but all the sixteenth-century exponents of a free, inward religion. Anabaptism has often been treated as a sort of broad banyan-tree which flourished exuberantly and shot out far-reaching branches of very varied characters, but which held in one organic unity all the branches that found soil and took root. A name of such looseness ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... grew bigger when we saw his manly figure, With the banyan buckled round it, standing up so straight and tall; Like a gentleman of leisure who is strolling out for pleasure, Through the storm of shells and cannon-shot ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... play their pipes beneath the banyan trees, and cattle graze on the slope by the river, while my days will pass ...
— Fruit-Gathering • Rabindranath Tagore
... and Neus, Mythische und Magische Lieder, p. 8, &c. Could this oak have any connection, direct or indirect, with the ash Yggthrasil? or could the story have originated in some report or tradition of the banyan?] ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... we once admit the germ—not, like love, parasitically—but strong, stanch, stern, alone throwing down fresh roots, even hour by hour, like the banyan, monarch of the Eastern forest. I am afraid I have a turn for this passion naturally, but for love as well, ten times more intense—so that one pretty well ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... constant supply of water is required, there is a very extensive system of irrigation. To prepare it for cultivation, the land is first overflowed, and the labourer hoes, and ploughs, and harrows, while he stands knee deep in mud and water. It is first grown in plots and then transplanted. The banyan-tree is very abundant, and so is the bamboo, which supplies them with food, lodging, and clothing, besides, from its stately growth, forming a delightful shade to their villages. The sugar-cane is grown, and much sugar ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... frangipanni scents the air with the symbolic blossoms, shining like stars from grey-green boughs of sharp-cut leaves. A copse of splendid tree-ferns flanks the forest-like plantation known as "The Thousand Palms," and beneath dusky avenues of waringen (a variety of the banyan species, which strikes staff-like boughs into the earth and springs up again in caverns of foliage), herds of deer are wandering, snatching at drooping vines, or sheltering from the fierce sun in depths of impenetrable shade. Tufts ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... get a small loaf of sour bread and a bucket of water for breakfast, if you go to the pump for it. Be careful to moderate your appetite when you breakfast according to the State's rules; for you must save enough to last you during the day, and if you can keep "banyan day," as the Bluenose calls it, you're just the man for this institution, and no mistake. Come, I see you're hungry; drink another bowl of coffee, and eat plenty of bread; then you'll be all right for ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... benevolence," replied Kai Lung. "This rendering shall be to the one that has gone before as a spreading banyan-tree ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... fortunate valley. The song of the waters and the familiar disarray of boulders gave us a strong sense of home, which the exotic foliage, the daft-like growth of the pandanus, the buttressed trunk of the banyan, the black pigs galloping in the bush, and the architecture of the native houses dissipated ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... yet at times visible, where open glades stretched through the woods, broken only by buttressed trunks, and by the stems of colossal vines, hanging from the boughs like cables, or the arms of an oriental banyan; while their luxuriant tops rolled in union with the leafy roofs that supported them. The vague and shadowy prospects opened by these occasional glades stirred the imagination, and produced a feeling of solitude in the mind, greater perhaps ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... BANYAN, the Indian fig; a tree whose branches, bending to the ground, take root and form new stocks, till they cover a large area ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... On the completion of a vow a festival takes place. Some trees such as the Peepul and Banyan trees, are invested with sacred threads like the Brahman's, and on the occasion of this ceremony a festival is given. In the same way when gardens are made, and tanks or temples built, then also festivals ...
— The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana - Translated From The Sanscrit In Seven Parts With Preface, - Introduction and Concluding Remarks • Vatsyayana
... any man could, like Lord Bacon, take all knowledge for his province—we can hardly take a bird's-eye view of all knowledge to-day. No amount of reading will ever produce another Scaliger, learned in every subject. To be well informed, even in these days of the banyan-like growth of the tree of knowledge, is to be a miracle of erudition. Most of mankind must be content with the modest aim which Dr. Holmes set for the poet, to know enough not to make too many blunders. In carrying out this ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... in sight. To most they would appear dull, monotonous, uninteresting. There is no horizon to which the eye can wander and find satisfaction in remote distance. There is no hill to which to raise our eyes and our souls with them. The outlook is confined within the narrowest limits. Palm trees, banyan trees, houses, walled gardens, everywhere restrict it. The fields are small, the trees and houses numerous. Nothing distant is to be seen. To the European the prospect is depressing. But to the Bengali it is his very life. These densely inhabited plains are his home. They have, therefore, all ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... practised for some thirty years; Their talk, beginning with a single stem, Spread like a banyan, sending down live piers, Colonies of digression, and, in them, Germs of yet new dispersion; once by the ears, They could convey damnation in a hem, And blow the pinch of premise-priming off Long syllogistic batteries, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... poison in full dose. But, O Janardana, Bhima digested that poison with the food, without sustaining any injury, for, O best of men and mighty-armed one, Bhima's days had not been ended! O Krishna, it is Duryodhana who at the house standing by the banyan called Pramana bound Bhima sleeping unsuspectingly, and casting him into the Ganges returned to the city. But the powerful Bhimasena the son of Kunti, possessed of mighty arms, on waking from sleep, tore his bonds and rose from the water. It is Duryodhana, who caused ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... BANIAN OR BANYAN DAYS. Those in which no flesh-meat is issued to the messes. It is obvious that they are a remnant of the maigre days of the Roman Catholics, who deem it a mortal sin to eat flesh on certain days. Stock-fish used to be served out, till it was found to promote scurvy. The term is derived from a religious ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... tree-bordered road sloped gently from the Residency gate-posts to the walled City of Victory, backed by craggy, red-grey spurs of the Aravalli range, hidden almost in feathery heads of banyan, acacia, and neem—a dusty, well-ordered oasis, holding its own against the stealthy oncoming of ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... Heideck and Mr. Kennedy sat smoking on the terrace in front of the dining-room. A warm sea-breeze rustled through the banyan trees, with their thick, shining arch of foliage. Heideck again thanked the old gentleman for his kindly efforts on ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... to hear all the claims the Lingas and Sakarrans had against each other. Six years before, the Rajah had persuaded them to make peace, but they had broken it the same day, and laid the blame upon one another. At last matters were arranged, and a platform being made under a wide-spreading banyan-tree, the chiefs sat round; and Captain Brooke made them a speech, describing the evils of piracy and war, and the determination of the Rajah that his subjects should live at peace with ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... submission. And Maxwell, who had no more notion of navigation than a carpenter should, was to take the John to God knows where,—the Guinea coast, most probably. He would have no more navy regulations on a merchant brigantine, he promised them, nor banyan days, for the matter ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... contained. To Bonbright's eyes it seemed a tangle. A labyrinth of shafting, countershafting, hung from the high ceiling, from whose whirring pulleys belts descended to rows upon rows of machines below. It looked like some strange sort of lunar forest, or some species of monstrous, magic banyan tree. Here were machines of a hundred uses and shapes, singly, in batteries—a scrambled mass it seemed. There were small machines—and in the distance huge presses, massive, their very outlines speaking of gigantic power. Bonbright had seen sheets of metal fed into them, to be spewed out ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... and woolly rhinoceros. As they were not fighting, but exploring, the price of safety was a vigilance so unremitting that it soon began to get on their nerves, and they were glad to take a whole day's rest in the spacious security of a banyan top, where nothing could come at them but leopards or pythons. Neither leopards nor pythons gave ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... certainly remarkable. Some form like that employed by the Nusqually[162] of Puget Sound for 1000, i.e. paduts-subquaetche, ten hundred, is more in accordance with primitive method. But we are equally likely to find such descriptive phrases for this numeral as the dor paka, banyan roots, of the Torres Islands; rau na hai, leaves of a tree, of Vaturana; or udolu, all, of the Fiji Islands. And two curious phrases for 1000 are those of the Banks' Islands, tar mataqelaqela, eye blind thousand, i.e. ...
— The Number Concept - Its Origin and Development • Levi Leonard Conant
... Not the Banyan-tree (Ficus Indica), nor the Pippala (Ficus religiosa), but the Glomerous Fig-tree (Ficus glomerata), which yields a resinous milky juice from its bark, and is large enough ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... than any other tree, the larch sometimes does. A few score yards from this tree grew, when we inhabited Alfoxden, one of the most remarkable beech-trees ever seen. The ground sloped both towards and from it. It was of immense size, and threw out arms that struck into the soil like those of the banyan-tree, and rose again from it. Two of the branches thus inserted themselves twice, which gave to each the appearance of a serpent moving along by gathering itself up in folds. One of the large boughs of this tree had been torn off by the wind before we left Alfoxden, but ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... yet, my lord, my love, lie down by Zenia's side, And think not for thy white men friends, to leave thy Indian bride, For she will steer thy light canoe across Ozuma's lake, To where the fragrant citron groves perfume the banyan brake; And wouldst thou chase the nimble deer, or dark-eyed antelope, She'll lend thee to their woody haunts, behind the mountain's slope, And when thy hunter task is done, and spent thy spirit's force, She'll weave for thee a plantain bower, beside a streamlet's course, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 367 - 25 Apr 1829 • Various
... driven the cattle to graze on the lawn, yonder banyan tree spread a hospitable shade for your tired limbs against the ...
— The Fugitive • Rabindranath Tagore
... saw them in the dusk, but failed in all my attempts to trap them. That part of the building has since been altered, so I have no doubt the confiding pair have betaken themselves to other quarters. In a large banyan-tree in my brother's garden at Alipore there is a family at the present time, the junior members of which have lately fallen victims to a greyhound, who is often on the look-out for them. As yet the old ones have had the wisdom to keep out ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... Banks Islanders were again found pleasant, honest, and courteous, thinking, as it appeared afterwards, that the white men were the departed spirits of deceased friends. A walk inland at Vanua Lava disclosed pretty villages nestling under banyan trees, one of them provided with a guest-chamber for visitors from other islands. Two boys, Sarawia and another, came away to be scholars at Lifu, as well as his masters in the language, of which he as yet scarcely knew anything, but which he afterwards ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... everywhere the country was covered with beautiful trees, among them the pandanus palm, the tree-fern, the banyan, the bread-fruit tree, wild nutmeg, and superb bamboos. The natives also were very well-behaved and quiet, and were always inclined to treat us hospitably. Indeed, we might have travelled without the slightest risk from one ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... gamela, like the banyan, easily takes root in other trees, and its branches meet together in the same manner. It is the tree of which the canoes of Brazil are made, and serves besides for troughs of ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... origin. The entire horizon was hidden behind a curtain of wonderful forests. Enormous trees, sometimes as high as 200 feet, were linked to each other by garlands of tropical creepers, genuine natural hammocks that swayed in a mild breeze. There were mimosas, banyan trees, beefwood, teakwood, hibiscus, screw pines, palm trees, all mingling in wild profusion; and beneath the shade of their green canopies, at the feet of their gigantic trunks, there grew ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... The noble banyan dying lives, In youth 'twould shield a single man, In age its spreading shelter gives ...
— War Rhymes • Abner Cosens
... are offered in San Cristoval to a certain malignant ghost called Tapia, who is believed to seize a man's soul and tie it up to a banyan tree. When that has happened, a man who knows how to manage Tapia intercedes with him. He takes a pig or fish to the sacred place and offers it to the grim ghost, saying, "This is for you to eat in place of that man; eat this, don't kill him." With that he can loose ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... then formed in order of procession, the escort leading. Presently a party of the king's linguists, with four large state umbrellas, ensigns of chieftainship, came up to request us to halt for a few minutes under the shade of a large banyan tree in the street, to give the king a little more time to prepare to receive us. After a brief delay of about twenty minutes, during which a large party of the king's soldiers fired a salute about a hundred yards distant from us, we moved on to the market-place, where ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis
... they arrived, we also know the part of Africa where they left the shore and braved the dangers of the ocean. A hoard of Roman gold coins of these reigns has been dug up in our own days near Calicut, under the roots of a banyan-tree. It had been there buried by an Alexandrian merchant on his arrival from this voyage, and left safe under the cover of the sacred tree to await his return from a second journey. But he died before his return, and his secret died with him. The products of the Indian ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... long, beautiful street called The Strand, shaded by banyan and palm trees; on one side on't is the park so lovely that it is called the Garden of Eden, full of beautiful trees, shrubs and flowers, pagodas, little temples and shrines. Josiah and I and Tommy went there in the evenin' ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... downfall of the petty vanities, sprung, Heaven knows with what reason, from the loins of Norman robbers, of Huguenot refugees, of Puritans beggared and ignorant, and centered in some wide-spreading genealogical tree, that a whole family unite to cultivate into a banyan that may embrace the whole little world of their satellites with inflexible ligatures. Thus 'the doctrine of the snake' is to go out, and good men see that the sinews of ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... into other communities or perhaps other lands, into all sorts of industries, professions, and arts. Her growth is absolutely natural. It is, too, one of the most economical growths the world knows. Nothing is lost in it. She spreads literally like the banyan tree. ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... be seen to be understood. It is really an exclusive product of Florida and is found in the Key West country, where sea island cotton will grow all the year around, indifferent to changes of season. The banyan is almost a colony of trees in itself, having, apparently, a dozen trunks in one. All the upper boughs are more or less united, and the old proverb of "In union there is strength," seems to have in it ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... Thames, is a really noble horse-chestnut, whose boughs, untouched by cattle, come sweeping down to the ground, and then, continuing, seem to lie on and extend themselves along it, yards beyond their contact. Underneath, it reminds one of sketches of encampments in Hindostan beneath banyan trees, where white tent cloths are stretched from branch to branch. Tent cloths might be stretched here in similar manner, and would enclose a goodly space. Or in the boughs above, a savage's tree-hut might be built, and yet ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... Volcanic Singer was seated one day in the shade of a banyan tree, fresh cigars and abandoned stumps surrounding him like the little hills that climb the mountain, he nodded and fell asleep, still puffing lustily at a panatella, sweet and black. Now the poet's beard was long and his sleep deep, and as ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Jr. (The Rubiyt of Omar Khayym Jr.) • Wallace Irwin
... against murmuring, as many a Big-Belly Place-Man can instance," he says in one of his petitions. Poor fellow! his opportunities of putting it to the test were few enough. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, the so-called Banyan days of the service, when his hateful ration of meat was withheld and in its stead he regaled himself on plum-duff—the "plums," according to an old regulation, "not worse than Malaga"—he had a taste of it. Hence the banyan day, though ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... on a little knoll half a mile away, with a young banyan tree behind—a look-out, as it were, above some new-ploughed levels; and his eyelids, bathed in soft air, grew heavy as he neared it. The ground was good clean dust—no new herbage that, living, is half-way to ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... "Brother Banyan," said the Brahmin, eagerly, "does it seem to you right or just that this Tiger should eat me, when I set ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... they came to, to ask, was an old Banyan Tree, by the wayside. (A banyan tree is a kind ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... Bheirs, papia, tobacco, banyan, of these last, poor specimens may be seen here. The place is miserably poor, and as it is reckoned one of some importance, its condition shows the barrenness of the country. The Rajah's house is a large one, apparently consisting of a quadrangle with an elevated ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... the mountains, but in the middle of the plains. The sight of some palms was, on the contrary, agreeable, the first I had seen since I left Benares; however, they bore no fruit. I was still more surprised to see, in a place so destitute of trees and shrubs, tamarind, and banyan or mango trees planted singly, which, cultivated with great care, flourish with incomparable splendour and luxuriance. Their value is doubled when it is known that under each there is either a well ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... the south-west, and banyan and cocoa-palm, artu and breadfruit tree, swayed and rocked ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... quaint, old-fashioned lanterns, called for me. The coachman and footman were liveried Javanese. It was a beautiful, cool, starlit evening in the middle of June when we drove up the imposing avenue of banyan-trees which leads to the main entrance. The interior of the palace is cool and dignified in appearance, and the Javanese waiters in long, gold-embroidered liveries, whose nude feet passed silently over the marble floor, were in complete accord with ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... was on the north side of the Park, which was surrounded by other fine dwellings and several public buildings. The broad verandahs almost overhung the enclosure, with its great banyan tree, the royal palms about the fountain, the close avenues, the flaming hedges of croton and hybiscus, and the traveller's palm and tree ferns brought from the mountains. When a ball was given at one of the houses about this Park on a moonlight ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... once, for as we passed from out of the shadow of the tent and into the beautiful morning sunshine I could see trees, and trees only, shutting me in on every side, the tents being pitched partly under a small banyan, or baobab tree, and standing in an irregular opening of about a couple of acres in extent, while the dense verdure rose like ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... speak a little to them in their own language, we began to visit regularly at their villages and to talk to them about Jesus and His love. We tried also to get them to come to our Church under the shade of the banyan tree. Nasi and some of the worst characters would sit scowling not far off, or follow us with loaded muskets. Using every precaution, we still held on doing our work; sometimes giving fish-hooks or beads ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... highest boughs to the ground; the bamboo, shooting to the height of sixty feet and upward, with branches gracefully drooping; the generous, kind banana; fairy forests of ferns of a thousand forms; tall grasses, with their pale and plumy blossoms; the many-trunked and many-rooted banyan; the boh, sacred to Buddha,—all combine to form a garden that Adam might have dressed and kept, and only ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... then taken up by the dervishes and fakirs of the country in a religious point of view; they split into two parties, tried the question by a dispute under a banyan tree, which lasted eighteen months, and still not half of the holy men had given their sentiments upon the question; tired of talking, they proceeded to blows, and then to anathematisation and excommunication of each other; lastly, they had recourse ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... The banyan tree of the East affords us an apt illustration in this connexion. Its stem shoots up, its branches dip, touch the earth, and take root, repeating the process of extension until a great area is covered, and crowds may shelter beneath ...
— Standards of Life and Service • T. H. Howard
... mantle of red feathers glowing in the sunset on his dusky shoulders, and smiled once more that hateful gracious smile of his. He was standing near the open door of his wattled hut, overshadowed by the huge spreading arms of a gigantic banyan-tree. Through the open door of the hut it was possible to catch just a passing glimpse of an awful sight within. On the beams of the house, and on the boughs of the trees behind it, human skeletons, half covered with dry flesh, hung in ghastly array, their skulls turned downward. They were ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... necessary by peculiarities of localities and the amount of hard work required from the animal. If the elephant is simply turned out to grass for a season, it will thrive upon such natural herbage as bamboos, the foliage of the banyan, peepul, and other varieties of the Ficus family; but if it is expected to travel and perform good work, it is usual in the Commissariat department to allow each elephant seven and a half seers of ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker |
