Avatar creator James Cameron (JC) showed us how mountains seemingly stayed afloat in air, in his world. We went gaga and spent our fortunes watching it multiple times.
For a billion people steeped in mythology of various kind, we were still vowed by what we saw.
Apparently JC took the gist of Ramayana and embedded it liberally into Avatar.
The tree of souls, Eywa (apparently the only element left out by mappers of Ramayana!) in his movie, was simply spectacular.
Had he spent some time with Mahabaratha and Gita, he would have made it into even more fantastic by giving Eywa an 180 degree spin!
Have you ever heard about an upside down tree which has its roots in the sky and leaves in the soil? You must be thinking 'Nuts' unless and until you see a depiction of the same in Avatar 2 / 3/ 4 (I am sure DC will!).
For the believers, the Creator of the earth, in one of his Avatars, narrates such a tree to his disciple who refuses to kill his own kith and kin in the name of war (Chapter 15 by the way). We are not going to discuss the moralities here, we go for the tree!
The tree in focus is a Banyan tree.
The Avatar says mankind must be like an upside down Banyan tree with roots drawing energy from heavenly powers...branches and leaves (thoughts, emotions, actions etc...) that grow out of the roots may wither if the root is ignored / something like that...
Focus! Focus on the tree!
What makes Banyan the special one?
Banyan is an epiphyte, i.e. mostly it grows on a host tree and not directly from the soil. Unlike parasites that suck life out of their host, epiphytes only needs physical support and make do with their own food for survival, till they gain strength. They then strangulate the hosts and subsume them as they grow further!!! Aren't parasites better!
So a banyan seed stuck in the crown of a host tree (bird droppings) sucks oxygen from air, moisture from rain and starts growing by growing its roots...down. Once the roots touch soil, they switch mode and behave like any other tree, helping the tree grow up. Since we all know 'Old habits die hard', Banyan keeps growing roots from above regularly (aerial prop roots).
(
Interesting facts about seeds in general and some questions about Banyan for which I haven't found answers yet:
Every seed has a two directional growth, root always grows
down and stem always grows up, however you plant a seed, i.e.
up/down/flat on the side/vertical on the side does not really
matter!
How this intelligence is codified inside even the tiniest seed like
a carrot and how it senses gravity to decide to "down" the root &
"up" the stem - I haven't found a satisfactory answer yet though
there are explanations aplenty in the web. I am not alone, even
scientific communities have moved beyond geotropism and are
conducting experiments in space stations to figure this out! ).
An interesting observation: Our ancestors were well aware of the
codified growth pattern in the seed but instead of breaking their
heads on 'How it knows?', they moved in a different direction,
recorded the effects of Moon Phases on gravity, how it affected
plant growth during these phases and devised elaborate patterns
called plant positive / plant neutral / plant negative days to 'go
with gravity' to sow the seeds to maximise plant growth...
If a Banyan seed grows from a canopy and roots down, which one
can be called as its Main trunk? Does the root around the host
tree trunk grow always faster than the aerial prop roots from the
stem nodes?
At what pace the root grows vis a vis the stem and leaves of the
plant?
No clear answers...
Banyan is one of the rarest trees that has fruits year around
thereby supporting a host of life forms but not allowing another
tree to grow under!
Can a Banyan tree grow on another Banyan tree (through the
same epiphyte route)?
No clear answer either!
)
This is the only tree that has branches that become roots eventually and there are recorded findings of many single trees that grow big enough to be tagged as forests. Unfortunately, no other tree can grow under the shades of a Banyan tree :-(
Now a small dose of symbolism:
Compare this (Banyan) with Peepal Tree, the one that nurtures Neem in its vicinity (I wrote a post about the marriage of a Peepal-Neem pair recently) and you may see the symbolic connection with the Epics I mentioned in this post (Ramayana that extols the virtues of husband-wife pair with ruthless demolition of the evil ten-header and Mahabaratha that dissects the ways and means of the society at large and the ruthless process by which empires are built camouflaged by good vs evil (by killing their own kith and kin to create a monolithic empire)...and why these trees are revered.
In both cases Ends determined Means even though highest powers were involved :-)
You may draw your own conclusion about Means and Ends but this one is beyond dispute; the Avatar loves this tree so much, he proclaims (Chapter 10, Verse 26) that of all the trees in earth, he is the Banyan Tree!
Hey JC, Eywa was close...only it has to go "Roots Up"!
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