In all civilizations, plants and trees have been viewed as sacred. Generally, the tree is either a god’s habitat or the god itself and is worshipped. Such was the case, for example, in early Indian Buddhism. Trees may also be associated with the divine order because of some incident and subsequently venerated, as was the bodhi tree, under which the Buddha received his Enlightenment. Fences or even open-air temples, the form adopted for the early Bodh Gaya Buddhist temples, are built around such trees. Innumerable cases of sacred or divine trees and their painted or sculpted representations are found throughout written religious tradition and in the ethnological data. The branches of trees such as the palm, olive, and laurel are often associated with the gods; such branches may crown the god or be included among divine attributes. Many are used in worship, as are the branches of the bilva (wood-apple tree) among the adepts of Shiva, and the tulasi (basil), symbol of Lakshmi (Hindu goddess of prosperity and Vishnu’s wife) and sacred plant of the Vaishnavites.

As symbols of life and immortality, plants such as the vine of the Greco-Roman and the Christian world and the haoma (a trance-inducing or intoxicating plant) of pre-Islamic Iran are planted near tombs or represented on funerary stelae, tombstones, and sarcophagi. Two similar and related rites involving plants, the haoma, noted in the Avesta (ancient Zoroastrian scriptures), and the soma, noted in the Vedas (orthodox scriptures of Hinduism), pertain to the ritual production of exalted beverages presumed to confer immortality. The ritualistic objects for this ceremony included a stone-slab altar, a basin for water, a small pot and a larger one for pouring the water, a mortar and pestle for grinding the plants, a cup into which the juice drips and a filter or strainer for decanting it, and cups for consuming the beverage obtained. In many sacrifices, branches or leaves of sacred plants, such as the kusha plant (a sacred grass used as fodder) of the Vedic sacrifice and the Brahmanic puja (ritual), are used in rituals such as the Zoroastrian sprinkling (bareshnum), or great purification, rite, in which the notion of fertility and prosperity is combined with their sacred characters (see purification rite).

Other representational objects

The staves of martial banners or standards are often surmounted by the figure of a god, which is frequently in its animal form. Such effigies, used by the Indo-Iranians, the Romans, the Germanic tribes, the Celts, and other ancient peoples, were probably meant to ensure the presence of the god among the armies. From the 4th century on, Byzantine armies placed on their standards the labarum (a cross bearing the Greek letters XP, signifying Christ [Chi and rho are the first two letters of the name ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ, Christos]). Shields, such as the Greek gorgonōtos (“Gorgon-headed”), were also often decorated with sacred figures, emblems, and symbolic themes, particularly in post-Gupta (4th-century-ce) India, as seen in the 6th-century findings from the frescoes of Ajanta. In the Mycenaean civilization (15th–12th centuries bce) of ancient Greece, shields were worshipped in front of the temple, and at Knossos (on Crete) votive offerings were made of clay and ivory in the form of shields. The famous ancilia (“figure of eight” shields) of Rome were kept by the Fratres Arvales (a college of priests) and used by the Salii (Leapers), or warrior-priests, for their semiannual dances (in March and October) honouring the god Mars.

Relics

Relics of saints, founders of religions, and other religious personages, which are often objects of worship or veneration, generally consist of all or part of the skeleton (such as the skull, hand, finger, foot, or tooth), a piece or lock of hair, a fingernail, or garments or fragments of clothing. Such veneration is nearly universal, as is the production of reliquaries, or shrines that contain relics. The size, form, and materials of reliquaries vary greatly and often depend on the nature of the relic being exhibited. They may be fixed but are generally portable so that they can be carried in processions or on pilgrimages. Wood, bone, ivory, quartz, glass, semiprecious stones, and metals such as gold, silver, bronze, and copper are frequently used materials, and chasing (embossing), enamelwork, and precious stones often ornament reliquaries. They vary considerably in form; like the Tibetan reliquaries, or ga’u, they may be constructed on a small scale to look like churches, chapels, towers, stupas, or sarcophagi, but sometimes they assume the form of the relic, such as in the form of anthropomorphic statues, busts, hands, feet, and other forms. Occasionally, as in Tantrism and Tibetan Buddhism, the bones of holy persons are used to make ritual musical instruments—flutes, horns (rkang-gling), and drums (ḍamaru)—or objects such as the ritual scoop made of a skull cup (thodkhrag) and a long iron handle encrusted with silver.

In many Asian regions, however, human relics are replaced by copies of sacred texts introduced into statues of bronze, as in Yunnan and Tibet, China, or of stucco, as in Afghanistan (Hadda, an archeological site near Jalalabad excavated since 1928) about the 4th–6th century.