Pipal and banyan – two sacred fig trees

Banyan has broadly oval leaves and long aerial roots, which hang down from the branches, often taking root and over time creating a ’forest’ of trunks, all of which are in fact a single individual. In the Botanical Garden in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta), eastern India, a 250-year-old banyan is the largest of its kind in the world (see picture above). The central mother-trunk was destroyed by a lightning in 1919 and has since rotted away, but about 1,825 of the aerial roots have grown into trees, which today are c. 25 m high, covering an area of more than 14,000 m2, equivalent to almost 1.5 ha (3.7 acres).

Pipal has broad, heart-shaped leaves, ending in a long, tapering point. This species belongs to a group of fig trees, called strangler figs. Most pipals begin their life as an epiphyte in another tree, the seed often sprouting in a pile of bird dung, delivered by the bird that ate the fig fruit. Over the years, aerial roots of the pipal wrap around the host tree, growing down to the ground, where they take root. Eventually, the host tree is strangled to death, and as its trunk decays, it leaves the pipal tree, standing as a hollow cylinder of aerial roots. Pipal also often grows in cracks on buildings, and, if allowed, its aerial roots will envelop the building and, over time, destroy it.

The small fruits of the two species are an important food item for various birds, including blue-headed barbet (Psilopogon asiaticus), red-billed blue magpie (Urocissa erythrorhyncha), and rosy starling (Sturnus roseus), and also for monkeys, including rhesus monkey (Macaca mulatta) and bonnet macaque (M. radiata).

To Buddhists, pipal is a symbol of nirvana (enlightenment). One day, about 500 B.C., a 35-year-old man was walking along a dusty road near the town of Gaya, northern India. For five years, he had been wandering the roads of northern India, searching for an answer to a question, which had bothered him for years: Why were people suffering?

Foot-sore, he sat down to rest in the shade of a huge pipal tree, determined not to leave, before he had found a satisfying answer to his question. For 49 days and nights he sat here, deep in meditation. Then he got up, convinced that he had found the answer.

From this day, he travelled about, preaching his new philosophy to a growing crowd of followers. His name was Siddharta Gautama, by his followers called The Buddha (‘The Enlightened One’). The pipal tree, beneath which he had obtained nirvana, was called the Bodhi Tree (’Tree of Enlightenment’). Over the following centuries, a village, named Bodhgaya, sprung up around this tree, and many Buddhist temples were built here. Today, thousands of pilgrims travel to Bodhgaya each year to revere a sacred pipal tree here, which is a direct descendant of the ancient Bodhi tree.

The Buddha and Buddhism are descibed in detail on the page Religion: Buddhism.