Ashvattha

Also Known As: Sanskrit aśvattha, the sacred fig Ficus religiosa, in Hindi pipal or peepal; traditionally explained either as aśva-stha, “where the horse stands”, or by the commentators as “that which will not remain until tomorrow”
Region/Culture: South Asia
Mythos: Hindu Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Mythological Places
Mythical Attributes: It is at once a real temple tree and the cosmic tree of the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita, rooted above in Brahman with its branches hanging down into the world.
Role in Mythos: In the Vedic texts it is the seat of the gods in the third heaven and the wood from which ritual fire is drilled, and in the Gita it becomes the image of worldly existence itself, which the wise must cut down.
Relation to Humans: Worshippers circle the living tree, tie threads to its trunk, hang lamps in its branches and in some villages marry it to a neem. The same tree, read as the world, binds people to action and desire until they sever it with detachment.

A breath of wind that does nothing to the mango trees sets the whole crown of a pipal moving. Its leaves hang on long, thin stalks and turn at the slightest touch of air, so the tree is rarely still and never quite silent, a dry continual rustle above the shrine at its foot. In the morning someone comes to walk around it, winding cotton thread around the trunk, white or red or yellow, and leaving a small clay lamp hanging from a low branch. The tree does not need to do anything. It is already where the gods sit.

That is the oldest claim made for the Ashvattha, and it is made boldly. A hymn of the Atharvaveda (5.4.3) calls the Ashvattha “the Gods’ own seat in the third, immeasurable heaven”, the place where the token of immortality lay and where the gods won the healing plant kushtha. The word itself is older still. It turns up in two hymns of the Rigveda (1.135.8 and 10.97.5), which are its earliest known appearances, and leaves of the pipal are already a motif on seals and pottery of the Indus Valley, long before any Sanskrit was written down about them.

The Chandogya Upanishad (8.5.3) plants the tree in the world of Brahman itself. In the third heaven from here, it says, lie two lakes called Ara and Nya, a third lake named Airammadiya, the city of Brahman called Aparajita, the Unconquered, and the Ashvattha, “showering down Soma”. This is a place in the full sense: a landscape with water and a city, and at its centre a fig tree raining the drink of the gods.

On earth the tree had a much more practical career. It made fire. In Vedic ritual the sacred fire was kindled by friction, two wooden sticks called aranis rubbed and drilled against each other, and the preferred wood was Ashvattha. The Baudhayana Shrautasutra says both aranis should come from Ashvattha wood, whether or not it grew on a shami tree. That last condition matters, because the pipal is a fig that can sprout in the branches of another tree and grow down around it. An Ashvattha growing out of a shami was the ideal source of fire sticks, and the Atharvaveda (6.11.1) describes the pairing in frankly erotic terms: “the Ashvattha has mounted the shami”. The Shatapatha Brahmana (11.5.1.13) makes the equation directly. What is the fire is the Ashvattha. What is the cooking vessel is the shami.

Myth followed the fire. The Mahabharata (13.84) tells how Agni, the fire god, fled from the gods and hid, first in the Ashvattha and finally in the womb of the shami, until elephants revealed his hiding place and drew down his anger. The Taittiriya Brahmana keeps a version in which Agni hides in the tree in the form of a horse, which neatly explains the name: aśva-stha, the place where the horse stands. The Sanskritist M. B. Emeneau, writing on the strangling figs in Sanskrit literature in 1949, thought that story was invented after the fact to fit the word. Arvind Sharma, in a 1976 study of the etymology, agreed and offered a more earthbound reading: the tree was literally where horses were tethered, its broad shade a natural place to rest a chariot team. Neither explanation has driven out the other.

Then the tree turned upside down. In the Katha Upanishad (6.1), the god of death Yama, teaching the boy Naciketas, describes “that ancient tree, whose roots grow upward and whose branches grow downward”. It is called the Bright, it is called Brahman, it alone is called the Immortal. “All worlds are contained in it, and no one goes beyond.” The tree is no longer something in the cosmos. It is the cosmos, hanging from its source.

The Bhagavad Gita takes the same image and gives it a harder edge. At the opening of its fifteenth chapter Krishna says: “They say the inexhaustible Ashvattha has its roots above, its branches below; the Vedic hymns are its leaves. He who knows it knows the Vedas.” Its branches spread both up and down, fattened by the three qualities of nature, sprouting the objects of the senses, and its lower roots reach into the human world and bind people to action. Nobody here can see its true form, its end, its beginning or what holds it up. And then the instruction: “having with the firm weapon of unconcern cut this Ashvattha, whose roots are firmly fixed”, one should go looking for the place from which nobody returns. Five chapters earlier the same speaker had listed his own manifestations and said that among trees he is the Ashvattha. The tree that is God is also the tree to be felled. The Gita sees no contradiction in that, and it is the point.

The commentators pressed the name into the same service. Shankara and the tradition after him read aśvattha as a-śva-stha, “that which does not remain until tomorrow”, a world-tree that looks permanent and will not last the night. The Padma Purana pulls the tree back toward worship, declaring that the Ashvattha is the very form of Vishnu, while the banyan is Rudra’s form and the palasha is Brahma’s. The pipal under which the Buddha sat at Bodh Gaya belongs to the same species, which is one reason the tree is honoured across religious lines in South Asia.

What the living tree offers is closeness to the divine without a temple. Devotees walk around it; the colonial folklorist William Crooke recorded in 1926 that women circled a pipal 108 times in the hope of bearing a son. In village ceremonies documented by the historian of religions Igor Spano, an Ashvattha has been formally married to a neem tree, the pipal as groom and the neem as bride, while in other weddings the pipal plays the bride to a banyan groom. A tree that can be either partner in a marriage is a flexible kind of sacred.

Its limits are written into its own texts. As a heavenly seat it is out of reach of the living. As the world-tree of the Gita it is a snare as much as a refuge, its roots running down into desire, and the only way out is the axe of detachment. Even its name, on one reading, is a warning that nothing on its branches will be there tomorrow.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Ashvattha tree?

The Ashvattha is the sacred fig tree, Ficus religiosa, known in Hindi as the pipal or peepal. In Hindu tradition it is both a real tree that is worshipped and a cosmic tree described in the Katha Upanishad and the Bhagavad Gita with its roots above and its branches below.

What does the upside-down Ashvattha mean in the Bhagavad Gita?

In Bhagavad Gita chapter 15, Krishna describes the Ashvattha with roots above and branches below, with the Vedic hymns as its leaves. The tree stands for worldly existence, which grows from the supreme and binds people to action. Krishna tells the listener to cut it down with the weapon of detachment and seek the place from which no one returns.

Why is the Ashvattha associated with fire?

In Vedic ritual the sacred fire was kindled with two fire sticks called aranis, made from Ashvattha wood, ideally from a pipal growing on a shami tree. The Shatapatha Brahmana identifies the Ashvattha with fire itself, and the Mahabharata tells how the fire god Agni hid inside the Ashvattha and the shami.

What does the name Ashvattha mean?

The name is usually explained as asva-stha, the place where the horse stands, linked to a story of Agni hiding in the tree as a horse or to horses being tethered beneath it. Shankara and later commentators read it instead as that which does not remain until tomorrow, a reminder that the world is impermanent.

Which god is the Ashvattha associated with?

The Ashvattha is most closely associated with Vishnu and his avatar Krishna. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna says that among trees he is the Ashvattha, and the Padma Purana states that the Ashvattha is the form of Vishnu. The Atharvaveda calls the tree the seat of the gods in the third heaven.