A Child's Forest of Religion

Comparative religion, heretofore reserved for grownups, was last week finally dished up for children too. The Tree of Life (edited by Ruth Smith, Viking, $3.50) gives young folks the frequently hard-to-digest riches of 13 theologies, shows how the religious tree from primitive acorns grew and how its living & dead branches intertwine.

In this 457-page forest of quotations, no child's eye will readily find the Tree. To follow even the simple counterpoint the book makes on the theme of the world's creation would take a well-annotated score. From the Norse "Erst was the age when nothing was; Nor sand nor sea" the creation melody runs through the Egyptian "Heaven had not come into being, the earth had not come into being," comes finally to Genesis: "The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep." Editor Smith apparently believes repetition of such motifs is enough, provides few program notes.

Good fare for children is the simple Blackfoot fable Why People Die Forever ("so that we shall be sorry for each other"), the Confucianist fable With Deer's Milk He Supplied His Parents. By & large Editor Smith leaves out the sort of stories that Sunday-school teachers rely on. Her Old Testament anthology omits the tales of Joshua, Gideon, Samson and Daniel in favor of the minor prophets Amos, Hosea and Micah.

But for children and adults alike, The Tree of Life provides ample and absorbing proof of a fundamental religious fact: every religious group has asked itself much the same questions and come up with much the same answers. Where Jesus raised the widow's son from the dead, Buddha handled a similar case as follows:

Kisagotami brought her dead son to Buddha, who required " 'some mustard seed taken from a house where no son, husband, parent, or slave has died.' The girl said, 'Very good,' and went to ask for some at the different houses, carrying the dead body of her son astride on her hip. The people said, 'Here is some mustard seed, take it.' Then she asked, 'In my friend's house has there died a son, a husband, a parent, or a slave?' They replied, 'Lady, what is this that you say! The living are few, but the dead are many.' . . . At last, not being able to find a single house where no one had died . . . she began to think, 'This is a heavy task that I am engaged in. I am not the only one whose son is dead.' . . . Thinking thus, she summoned up resolution, and left the dead body in a forest; then she went to Buddha and paid him homage. He said to her, 'Have you procured the handful of mustard seed?' 'I have not,' she replied. . . . Buddha said to her, 'You thought you alone had lost a son; the law of death is that among all living creatures there is no permanence.' "

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