"Banyan" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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, ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... 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 is made from it. The islands are of coral formation, but, ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... from his seat under the banyan tree. He passed his hand unsteadily over his brow. Throughout the day the young ascetic had been plunged in profound meditation, and now, returning from heaven to earth, he was dazed like one who awakens in darkness and knows not where he is. All day long before his ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... but of course not in the north, you will find stately palms of all varieties. The banian tree (the English write it banyan) grows here, and I might talk an hour about it. Something like it is the peepul, or pipal, though its branches do not take root in the ground like the other. Its scientific name is the Ficus religiosa; for it is the sacred fig of India, and it is ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... 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, Calcutta The Princes ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... like its flora, display luxuriant variety and confusion. Hinduism is only another banyan-tree whose branches have become trunks, and whose trunks have produced new branches, until the whole has become an intellectual and moral jungle of vast extent. The original stock was a monotheistic nature worship, which the Hindu ancestors held in common with ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... 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. many beyond count; and of Malanta, warehune huto, opossum's ...
— The Number Concept - Its Origin and Development • Levi Leonard Conant
... 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 ere it could ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... foppish indolence, the heralded 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 society ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... 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 ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... net of truth, and took his measures accordingly to preach in the hearing of men the truths by which alone they could climb into Nirwana. When he was expiring, invisible gods, with huge and splendid bodies, came and stood, as thick as they could be packed, for a hundred and twenty miles around the banyan tree under which he awaited Nirwana, to gaze on him who had broken ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... they rested and ate, a party of Hindus down by the stream where there was a shrine to Krishna that nestled under a huge banyan that was like the roof of a cave from which dropped to earth to take roots hundreds of slender shoots, like stalactites, and whose roots, creeping from the earth like giant worms, crawled on to lave in the stream. When they had finished eating, Jemla ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... appointed of yore, Two the nights of his sleeping alone in the place of gore: The drunken 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 the red-eyed priest came gasping home in the dusk. He reeled across ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... shadow 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 a moment in the twilight ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... 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, ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... pilgrims towards the Celestial City. Fiction in the clean hands of that king of romancers, Sir Walter Scott, threw new light on the history and scenes of the past. Such characters as "Jennie Deans" and her godly father might have been taken from John Banyan's portrait gallery; Lady Di Vernon is the ideal of young womanhood. Fiction has often been a wholesome relief to a good man's overworked and weary brain. Many of the recent popular novels are wholesome in their tone and the historical type often instructive. The chief objection to the best of ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... trade-wind by which 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, ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... handful of onions shorn, with some pounded pepper. I was not very much tempted with the appearance of this dish, of which, nevertheless, my messmates ate heartily, advising me to follow their example, as it was banyan day and we could have no meat till next noon. But I had already laid in sufficient for the occasion, and therefore desired to be excused: expressing a curiosity to know the meaning of banyan day. They told me, that, on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, the ship's company had no ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... colour to the light, giving perfume to the 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, so that it also might rejoice in its own loveliness ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... grows, when 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 ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... say, "Oh, well, these horrible things you are telling us about belong to the Old World!" I would to God they did belong to the Old World alone, but the horrible truth is, that this vicious system is like a banyan-tree that has run its roots under the sea, and is coming up, and blossoming, and flourishing in all our great American cities. Listen to this description of the slaves of the sweat-shop in New York, given by the New York Herald: "In the lower portion of the ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... are situated in the best portion of Cairo. This beautiful park contains quite a variety of trees, including the banyan, and is a resort of many of the people. Band concerts are held, and a small entrance fee ...
— A Trip Abroad • Don Carlos Janes
... of the Atman and the universe follow. For instance, if the life (sap) leaves a tree, it withers and dies. So "this body withers and dies when the life has left it: the life dies not." In the fruit of the Banyan (fig-tree) are minute seeds innumerable. But the imperceptible subtle essence in each seed is the whole Banyan. Each example adduced concludes with the same formula, Thou art that subtle essence, and as in the Brihad-Aranyaka salt is used as a metaphor. "'Place this salt in water and then ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... encamped in the wood for the night, and while Samudrasura was awake a powerful host of bandits attacked it. While the bandits were massacring the members of the caravan, Samudrasura left his wares and fled, and climbed up a banyan-tree without being discovered. The host of bandits departed, after they had carried off all the wealth, and the merchant spent that night there, perplexed with fear and distracted with grief. In the morning he cast his eves towards the top of the tree, and saw, as fate would have it, what looked ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... how much ground it covers; perhaps nearly an acre, for these trees throw down aerial suckers which form into fresh trunks, and so spread indefinitely. Lady Lansdowne thought she would have a bamboo house built in this great banyan tree for her little daughter, the same little girl for whom I had built the snow-hut at Ottawa, for she happens to be my god-daughter. It was to be a sort of "Swiss Family Robinson" tree-house, infinitely ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... were of solid brickwork; the entry was in the centre of the terraced roof, which could only be mounted by a ladder. To climb this was not possible, so they stood to consider. The alarmed spectators speedily climbed a banyan-tree, hiding themselves among its leafy branches, thus being out of view while they could watch the doings of the elephants. These animals surveyed the building all round; its thick walls were formidable, but ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... at Alipore (Belvedere). We used to hear them daily, and once or twice I 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 ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... was magnificent, while 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 end of the island to the other. The good behaviour of the inhabitants ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... finest in the world. It has been said that every known tree and 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 ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger
... our hosts who had travelled with us. They accompanied us through a tangle of palms, bananas, mangoes, canes, past bamboo huts raised on platforms of hard, dry mud, to the central place where a great banyan stood in front of the temple. We took off our shoes and entered the enclosure, followed by half the village, silent, dignified, and deferential. Over ruined shrines of red brick, elaborately carved, clambered and twined the sacred peepul ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... statues; and unexpected niches of rooms crimson with drapery, "fit to soothe the imagination with privacy"; and oh! perhaps somewhere a bit of a conservatory and a fountain,—did not Mrs. Stowe tell us of these too? Here one could dwell snugly as in the petals of a rose, or expansively as in a banyan-tree, undisturbed alike from gentlemen in black or women in white, liable only to the elements and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... an infallible Antidote 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 ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... 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 ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... came to, to ask, was an old Banyan Tree, by the wayside. (A banyan tree is a kind of ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... the two 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 the foot of the ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... a "complex overgrowth 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. We must ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... irons, and so brought to 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
... and he kindly 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, ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... a 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' and hearn beautiful music. ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... hut must stand as the friendly home that gathers up all the best traditions of Indian life. It takes the place of the banyan tree in the heat of the day, the village well, and the meeting place for the men in the cool of the evening. Even beyond all hopes it has proved a potent factor for unity, harmony, and peace in a time of unrest. It draws the British ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... the scene, he saw the terribly divisive system sending down its root like the banyan tree on all sides and absorbing the life and thought of the people. It repelled him, and, with all his mighty intellectual and moral energy, he attacked it. He proclaimed all men brothers and worthy of human sympathy, love, and respect. He opened the door of his faith to ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... irreconcilable with, veneration for the Hindoo scriptures as authoritative and infallible guides. It is impossible, within the narrow limits of a note, to discuss the problems suggested by the author's remarks. Enough, perhaps, has been said to show that the many-rooted banyan tree of Hinduism is in little danger of overthrow from the attacks either of history or of science, not to speak ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... and what not; or of floors crowded with ivory tusks; or of dark corners with a pile of unginned and loose cotton; or of stores of crockery, nails, cheap Brummagem ware, tools, &c., in what I call the Banyan quarter;—of streets smelling very strong—in fact, exceedingly, malodorous, with steaming yellow and black bodies, and woolly heads, sitting at the doors of miserable huts, chatting, laughing, bargaining, scolding, ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... the Church of England The Court and the Church Letter to a Dissenter; Conduct of the Dissenters Some of the Dissenters side with the Court; Care; Alsop Rosewell; Lobb Venn The Majority of the Puritans are against the Court; Baxter; Howe, Banyan Kiffin The Prince and Princess of Orange hostile to the Declaration of Indulgence Their Views respecting the English Roman Catholics vindicated Enmity of James to Burnet Mission of Dykvelt to England; Negotiations of Dykvelt with English Statesmen ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... King Suddhodana, His royal park, walled by eternal hills, Where trees and shrubs and flowers all native grew; For in its bounds all the four seasons met, From ever-laughing, ever-blooming spring To savage winter with eternal snows. Here stately palms, the banyan's many trunks, Darkening whole acres with its grateful shade, And bamboo groves, with graceful waving plumes, The champak, with its fragrant golden flowers, Asokas, one bright blaze of brilliant bloom, The mohra, ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... Marvellous Mount Olga. Glen Watson. Natives of the Musgrave range. A robbery. Cattle camps. The missing link. South for the Everard range. Everard natives. Show us a watering-place. Alec and Tommy find water. More natives. Compelled to give up their plunder. Natives assist at dinner. Like banyan-trees. A bad camping-place. Natives accompany us. Find the native well. The Everard revisited. Gruel thick and slab. Well in the Ferdinand. Rock-hole water. Natives numerous and objectionable. Mischief brewing. A hunt for spears. Attack ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... pleasances Came through the lattice bars With scents and murmurous harmonies; Like splintered scimitars The moonbeams through the banyan trees ...
— Iolaeus - The man that was a ghost • James A. Mackereth
... enter the city of his countrymen but preached in a banyan grove without the walls. And when he preached he converted many of his former friends and relatives. His wife whom he had deserted and who had grieved for him ever since, gained happiness once more, for she too, became converted to the Buddhist faith, and entered the Buddhist sisterhood, becoming ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... 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
... rather 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 would periodically ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... was very hungry so he sat down under a baby banyan tree on the side of the trail and ate four tangerines. He wanted to eat eight or ten, but he had only thirteen left and it might be a long time before he could get more. He packed away all the peels and was about to get up when he heard the ...
— My Father's Dragon • Ruth Stiles Gannett
... 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 of red-stemmed Banka palms cluster ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... 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, ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... village 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
... 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 ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... 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 boughs ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... of the stems of a banyan, and a Tommy lay on his back with his head in her lap. She was playing with his hair. You could just see ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... 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
... crowds of pious Hindus go through their ablutions in accordance with a long and complicated ritual, whilst high-caste ladies perform them in mid-stream out of covered boats and behind curtains deftly drawn to protect their purdah. Past an ancient banyan tree, from whose branches streamers of coloured stuffs depend with other votive offerings from grateful mothers who have not prayed for male offspring in vain, past the minor shrines of many favourite deities, a road lined with closely packed beggars and ascetics, thrusting ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... 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 ...
— The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana - Translated From The Sanscrit In Seven Parts With Preface, - Introduction and Concluding Remarks • Vatsyayana
... destruction of the surrounding vegetation. Not far off were some beautiful clear springs, which possessed none of these qualities. We drank the water from the latter, which tasted thoroughly pure, and was beautifully clear. Above them rose several lofty banyan-trees, their numberless stems forming cool arbours which tempted us greatly to rest there, and I could not help wishing that you had accompanied us thus far. I think, had Mr Sedgwick discovered it before, he would have built his house in the neighbourhood. ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... 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 orchids, leguminous ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... seated at the foot of an enormous banyan, on the steep bank of an impetuous stream, which ran between a double hedge ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... do you think, was that which old Christian had in that famous fight of his with Apollyon, long ago? He cut the fiend to the marrow with it, you remember, at last; though the battle went hardly with him, too, for a time. Some of his blood, Banyan says, is on the stones of the valley to this day. That is a vague record of the combat between the man and the dragon in that strange little valley, with its perpetual evening twilight and calm, its ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... "Captain de 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 ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... tree has to 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 a unique illustration ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... finite tree like an elm or an oak; no, it was a banyan tree; covered an acre, and from its boughs little suckers dropped to earth, and turned to little trees, and had suckers in their turn, and ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... against the wall. 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 the ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... waters of the Ganges. Rajahs were there with their trains, and princes riding upon elephants, and 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 ...
— Some Chinese Ghosts • Lafcadio Hearn
... 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 ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 480, Saturday, March 12, 1831 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... 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 of love and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... to bathe in the Ganges. The ghat was deserted; I stood still for awhile, 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, ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... heard of the great banyan of India; that wonderful tree, whose branches, after spreading out from the main trunk, send down roots to the earth, and form fresh stems, until a space of ground is covered with a single tree, under whose shade a whole regiment of cavalry may bivouac, or a great public ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... headquarters of at least a dozen pirates, the worst of which was called Black Beard, a bloodthirsty villain who sunk two vessels right where we are anchored this blessed minute. The feller's real name was John Teach, an' that big banyan tree over there is where he used to hold what ...
— The Search for the Silver City - A Tale of Adventure in Yucatan • James Otis
... 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 sword; but, as the owls had foretold, a drop of the cobra's blood ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... 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 ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... they 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 told her to ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... those mighty forests, which clothe the earth between the tropics of both the Old and New World, assembling by hundreds in those lands where the Palm, the Banyan, the Baobab, the Bombax, and thousands of magnificent trees adorn the soil; where the most delicious fruits are to be procured, by merely stretching out the hand to separate them from their parent stem; no wonder that both apes and monkeys there congregate, and strike the European, on his first arrival ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... abaca rustle in the breeze; the graceful stalks of bamboo crackle like tin 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 ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... 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 to four meat days." ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... 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
... more leaves. 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 as in all other cases, but by all ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... globe, although other species of Ficus yield this gum, as well as several plants of other genera. It is a plant of rapid growth, and from the larger branches roots descend to the earth as in the case of the banyan tree. ...
— Catalogue of Economic Plants in the Collection of the U. S. Department of Agriculture • William Saunders
... 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 ...
— The Black-Bearded Barbarian (George Leslie Mackay) • Mary Esther Miller MacGregor, AKA Marion Keith
... got were some long things, like thin ropes, which hung from the roof to the floor of the cave we were in. This cave wasn't dark, because nearly all of one side of it was open. These ropes were roots or young trunks from banyan-trees, growing on the ground above, and which came through the cracks in the rocks, and stretched themselves down so as to root in the floor of the cave, and make a lot of underground trunks for the tree ...
— A Jolly Fellowship • Frank R. Stockton
... 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 ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... reach their present growth, for their ages vary from 10 to 150 years. There are other plants not so elaborately trained, but the effect of the whole is rather too formal to be pretty. I managed to bring home some euphorbias, cut into the form of junks, and some banyan trees, one 100 and one 50 years old. I believe they are the first that have ever reached England alive and have flourished. Not far from Fa-ti are the duck-hatching establishments, and still further up the river are the duck-sampans, where the crowds of ducks ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... 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 ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... 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
... the Banyan's shadow, Well-springs, and a brick-built wall, Are all alike cool in the summer, ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... time, we proceeded to the entrance of the first street, and 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 ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis
... black lions, saber-tooth, 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 them ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... evidently Ceylon, long famed for elephants, and the tree is the well known "Banyan" (Ficus Indica). According to Linschoten and Wolf, the elephants of all lands do reverence and honour ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... race, that He should love them with the love He has toward the Only-begotten—we could not have believed this unless we had been assured by the lips of infallible Truth. But the supreme revelation which towers above the rest, like some great banyan tree amid the slender growth of the Indian forest, is that the Creator should indwell and find a mansion in the heart of ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... 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 ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... Tropical Saloon, 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
... 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 ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton |
