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Worship and
Purification WE have
seen that, in Old Japan, the world of the living was everywhere ruled by the world
of the dead, that the individual, at every moment of his existence, was under
ghostly supervision. In his home he was watched by the spirits of his fathers; without
it, he was ruled by the god of his district. All about him, and above him, and
beneath him were invisible powers of life and death. In his conception of
nature all things were ordered by the dead, light and darkness, weather and
season, winds and tides, mist and rain, growth and decay, sickness and health.
The viewless atmosphere was a phantom-sea, an ocean of ghost; the soil that he
tilled was pervaded by spirit-essence; the trees were haunted and holy; even
the rocks and the stones were infused with conscious life.... How might he
discharge his duty to the infinite concourse of the invisible? Few
scholars could remember the names of all the greater gods, not to speak of the
lesser; and no mortal could have found time to address those greater gods by
their respective names in his daily prayer. The later Shintō teachers proposed
to simplify the duties of the faith by prescribing one brief daily prayer to
the gods in general, and special prayers to a few gods in particular; and in
thus doing they were most likely confirming a custom already established by necessity.
Hirata wrote: " As the number of the gods who possess different functions
is very great, it will be convenient to worship by name the most important
only, and to include the rest in a general petition." He prescribed ten
prayers for persons having time to repeat them, but lightened the duty for busy
folk, observing: "Persons whose daily affairs are so multitudinous that
they have not time to go through all the prayers, may content themselves with
adoring (1) the residence of the Emperor, (2) the domestic god-shelf, kamidana, (3) the spirits of their
ancestors, (4) their local patron-god, Ujigami,
(5) the deity of their particular calling." He advised that the following
prayer should be daily repeated before the "god-shelf": Reverently
adoring the great god of the two palaces of Isι in the first place, the eight
hundred myriads of celestial gods, the eight hundred myriads of terrestrial gods,
the fifteen hundred myriads of gods to whom are consecrated the great and
small temples in all provinces, all islands, and all places of the Great Land
of Eight Islands, the fifteen hundred myriads of gods whom they cause to serve
them, and the gods of branch-palaces and branch-temples, and Sohodo-no-Kami1
whom I have invited to the shrine set up on this divine shelf, and to whom I
offer praises day by day, I pray with awe that they will deign to correct the
unwilling faults which, heard and seen by them, I have committed; and that,
blessing and favouring me according to the powers which they severally wield, they
will cause me to follow the divine example, and to perform good works in the
Way." 2 This text
is interesting as an example of what Shintō's greatest expounder thought a
Shintō prayer should be; and, excepting the reference to So-ho-do-no-Kami, the
substance of it is that of the morning prayer still repeated in Japanese
households. But the modern prayer is very much shorter.... In Izumo, the oldest
Shintō province, the customary morning worship offers perhaps the best example
of the ancient rules of devotion. Immediately upon rising, the worshipper
performs his ablutions; and after having washed his face and rinsed his mouth, he
turns to the sun, claps his hands, and with bowed head reverently utters the
simple greeting: "Hail to thee this day, August One!" In thus adoring
the sun he is also fulfilling his duty as a subject, paying obeisance to the
Imperial Ancestor.... The act is performed out of doors, not kneeling, but
standing; and the spectacle of this simple worship is impressive. I can now see
in memory, just as plainly as I saw with my eyes many years ago, off the wild
Oki coast, the naked figure of a young fisherman erect at the prow of his
boat, clapping his hands in salutation to the rising sun, whose ruddy glow
transformed him into a statue of bronze. Also I retain a vivid memory of
pilgrim-figures poised upon the topmost crags of the summit of Fuji, clapping
their hands in prayer, with faces to the East.... Perhaps ten thousand twenty
thousand years ago all humanity so worshipped the Lord of Day.... After
having saluted the sun, the worshipper returns to his house, to pray before the
Kamidana and before the tablets of
the ancestors. Kneeling, he invokes the great gods of Isι or of Izumo, the gods
of the chief temples of his province, the god of his parish-temple also (Ujigami) and finally all the myriads of
the deities of Shintō. These prayers are not said aloud. The ancestors are
thanked for the foundation of the home; the higher deities are invoked for aid
and protection.... As for the custom of bowing in the direction of the
Emperor's palace, I am not able to say to what extent it survives in the
remoter districts; but I have often seen the reverence performed. Once, too, I
saw reverence done immediately in front of the gates of the palace in Tōkyō by
country-folk on a visit to the capital. They knew me, because I had often sojourned
in their village; and on reaching Tōkyō they sought me out, and found me. I
took them to the palace; and before the main entrance they removed their hats,
and bowed, and clapped their hands, just as they would have done when
saluting the gods or the rising sun, and this with a simple and dignified
reverence that touched me not a little. The
duties of morning worship, which include the placing of offerings before the
tablets, are not the only duties of the domestic cult. In a Shinto household,
where the ancestors and the higher gods are separately worshipped, the
ancestral shrine may be said to correspond with the Roman lararium; while the "god-shelf," with its taima or o-nusa (symbols of those higher gods especially revered by the family),
may be compared with the place accorded by Latin custom to the worship of the
Penates. Both Shintō cults have their particular feast-days; and, in the case
of the ancestor-cult, the feast-days are occasions of religious assembly, when
the relatives of the family should gather to celebrate the domestic rite....
The Shinōtist must also take part in the celebration of the festivals of the Ujigami,
and must at least aid in the celebration of the nine great national holidays
related to the national cult; these nine, out of a total eleven, being
occasions of imperial ancestor-worship. The
nature of the public rites varied according to the rank of the gods. Offerings
and prayers were made to all; but the greater deities were worshipped with
exceeding ceremony. To-day the offerings usually consist of food and rice-wine,
together with symbolic articles representing the costlier gifts of woven stuffs
presented by ancient custom. The ceremonies include processions, music,
singing, and dancing. At the very small shrines there are few ceremonies, only
offerings of food are presented. But at the great temples there are hierarchies
of priests and priestesses (miko) usually
daughters of priests; and the ceremonies are elaborate and solemn. It is
particularly at the temples of Isι (where, down to the fourteenth century the
high-priestess was a daughter of emperors), or at the great temple of Izumo,
that the archaic character of the ceremonial can be studied to most advantage. There,
in spite of the passage of that huge wave of Buddhism, which for a period
almost submerged the more ancient faith, all things remain as they were a score
of centuries ago; Time, in those haunted precincts, would seem to have slept,
as in the enchanted palaces of fairy-tale. The mere shapes of the buildings,
weird and tall, startle by their unfamiliarity. Within, all is severely plain and
pure: there are no images, no ornaments, no symbols visible except those
strange paper-cuttings (gohei),
suspended to upright rods, which are symbols of offerings and also tokens of
the viewless. By the number of them in the sanctuary, you know the number of
the deities to whom the place is consecrate. There is nothing imposing but the space,
the silence, and the suggestion of the past. The innermost shrine is veiled: it
contains, perhaps, a mirror of bronze, an ancient sword, or other object enclosed
in multiple wrappings: that is all. For this faith, older than icons, needs no
images: its gods are ghosts; and the void stillness of its shrines compels more
awe than tangible representation could inspire. Very strange, to Western eyes at
least, are the rites, the forms of the worship, the shapes of sacred objects.
Not by any modern method must the sacred fire be lighted, the fire that cooks
the food of the gods: it can be kindled only in the most ancient of ways, with
a wooden fire-drill. The chief priests are robed in the sacred colour, white,
and wear headdresses of a shape no longer seen elsewhere: high caps of the
kind formerly worn by lords and princes. Their assistants wear various colours,
according to grade; and the faces of none are completely shaven; some wear
full beards, others the mustache only. The actions and attitudes of these
hierophants are dignified, yet archaic, in a degree difficult to describe. Each
movement is regulated by tradition; and to perform well the functions of a Kannushi, a long disciplinary
preparation is necessary. The office is hereditary; the training begins in
boyhood; and the impassive deportment eventually acquired is really a wonderful
thing. Officiating, the Kannushi seems rather a statue than a man, an image
moved by invisible strings; and, like the gods, he never winks. Not at least
observably.... Once, during a great Shintō procession, several Japanese friends,
and I myself, undertook to watch a young priest on horseback, in order to see
how long he could keep from winking; and none of us were able to detect the
slightest movement of eyes or eyelids, notwithstanding that the priest's horse
became restive during the time that we were watching. The
principal incidents of the festival ceremonies within the great temples are the
presentation of the offerings, the repetition of the ritual, and the dancing of
the priestesses. Each of these performances retains a special character rigidly
fixed by tradition. The food-offerings are served upon archaic vessels of
unglazed pottery (red earthenware mostly): boiled rice pressed into cones of
the form of a sugar-loaf, various preparations of fish and of edible sea-weed,
fruits and fowls, rice-wine presented in jars of immemorial shape. These offerings
are carried into the temple upon white wooden trays of curious form, and laid
upon white wooden tables of equally curious form; the faces of the bearers
being covered, below the eyes, with sheets of white paper, in order that their
breath may not contaminate the food of the gods; and the trays, for like
reason, must be borne at arms length.... In ancient times the offerings would
seem to have included things much more costly than food, if we may credit the
testimony of what are probably the oldest documents extant in the Japanese
tongue, the Shintō rituals, or norito.3
The following excerpt from Satow's translation of the ritual prayer to the Wind-gods
of Tatsuta is interesting, not only as a fine example of the language of the norito, but also as indicating the
character of the great ceremonies in early ages, and the nature of the
offerings: "As
the great offerings set up for the Youth-god, I set up various sorts of
offerings: for Clothes, bright cloth, glittering cloth, soft cloth, and coarse
cloth, and the five kinds of things, a mantlet, a spear, a horse furnished
with a saddle; for the Maiden-god I set up various sorts of offerings providing
Clothes, a golden thread-box, a golden tatari,
a golden skein-holder, bright cloth, glittering cloth, soft cloth, and coarse
cloth, and the five kinds of things, a horse furnished with a saddle; as to
Liquor, I raise high the beer-jars, fill and range-in-a-row the bellies of the
beer-jars; soft grain and coarse grain; as to things which dwell in the
hills, things soft of hair and things coarse of hair; as to things which grow
in the great field-plain, sweet herbs and bitter herbs; as to things which
dwell in the blue sea-plain, things broad of fin and things narrow of fin down
to the weeds of the offing and weeds of the shore. And if the sovran gods will
take these great offerings which I set up, piling them up like a range of
hills, peacefully in their hearts, as peaceful offerings and satisfactory offerings;
and if the sovran gods, deigning not to visit the things produced by the great
People of the region under heaven with bad winds and rough waters, will ripen
and bless them, I will at the autumn service set up the first fruits, raising
high the beer-jars, filling and ranging-in-rows the bellies of the beer-jars,
and drawing them hither in juice and in ear, in many hundred rice-plants and a
thousand rice-plants. And for this purpose the princes and councillors and all
the functionaries, the servants of the six farms of the country of Yamato even
to the males and females of them have all come and assembled in the fourth
month of this year, and, plunging down the root of the neck cormorant-wise in
the presence of the sovran gods, fulfil their praise as the Sun of to-day rises
in glory.... The
offerings are no longer piled up "like a range of hills," nor do they
include "all things dwelling in the mountains and in the sea"; but
the imposing ritual remains, and the ceremony is always impressive. Not the
least interesting part of it is the sacred dance. While the gods are supposed
to be partaking of the food and wine set out before their shrines, the
girl-priestesses, robed in crimson and white, move gracefully to the sound of
drums and flutes, waving fans, or shaking bunches of tiny bells as they
circle about the sanctuary. According to our Western notions, the performance
of the miko could scarcely be called
dancing; but it is a graceful spectacle, and very curious, for every step and
attitude is regulated by traditions of unknown antiquity. As for the plaintive
music, no Western ear can discern in it anything resembling a real melody; but
the gods should find delight in it, because it is certainly performed for them
to-day exactly as it used to be performed twenty centuries ago. I speak
of the ceremonies especially as I have witnessed them in Izumo: they vary
somewhat according to cult and province. At the shrines of Isι, Kasuga,
Kompira, and several others which I visited, the ordinary priestesses are
children; and when they have reached the nubile age, they retire from the
service. At Kitzuki the priestesses are grown-up women: their office is
hereditary; and they are permitted to retain it even after marriage. Formerly
the Miko was more than a mere officiant: the songs which she is still obliged
to learn indicate that she was originally offered to the gods as a bride. Even
yet her touch is holy; the grain sown by her hand is blessed. At some time in
the past she seems to have been also a pythoness: the spirits of the gods
possessed her and spoke through her lips. All the poetry of this most ancient
of religions centres in the figure of its little Vestal, child-bride of ghosts,
as she flutters, like some wonderful white-and-crimson butterfly, before the
shrine of the Invisible. Even in these years of change, when she must go to the
public school, she continues to represent all that is delightful in Japanese
girlhood; for her special home-training keeps her reverent, innocent, dainty in
all her little ways, and worthy to remain the pet of the gods. The
history of the higher forms of ancestor-worship in other countries would lead
us to suppose that the public ceremonies of the Shintō-cult must include some
rite of purification. As a matter of fact, the most important of all Shintō
ceremonies is the ceremony of purification, o-harai,
as it is called, which term signifies the casting-out or expulsion of evils....
In ancient Athens a corresponding ceremony took place every year; in Rome,
every four years. The o-harai is
performed twice every year, in the sixth month and the twelfth month by the
ancient calendar. It used to be not less obligatory than the Roman lustration; and
the idea behind the obligation was the same as that which inspired the Roman
laws on the subject.... So long as men believe that the welfare of the living depends
upon the will of the dead, that all happenings in the world are ordered by
spirits of different characters, evil as well as good, that every bad action
lends additional power to the viewless forces of destruction, and therefore
endangers the public prosperity, so long will the necessity of a public
purification remain an article of common faith. The presence in any community
of even one person who has offended the gods, consciously or unwillingly, is a
public misfortune, a public peril. Yet it is not possible for all men to live
so well as never to vex the gods by thought, word, or deed, through passion
or ignorance or carelessness. "Every one," declares Hirata, "is
certain to commit accidental offences, however careful he may be.... Evil acts
and words are of two kinds: those of which we are conscious, and those of which
we are not conscious.... It is better to assume that we have committed such
unconscious offences." Now it should be remembered that for the man of Old
Japan, as for the Greek or the Roman citizen of early times, religion
consisted chiefly in the exact observance of multitudinous custom; and that it
was therefore difficult to know whether, in performing the duties of the
several cults, one had not inadvertently displeased the Unseen. As a means of
maintaining and assuring the religious purity of the people, periodical
lustration was consequently deemed indispensable. From the
earliest period Shintō exacted scrupulous cleanliness indeed, we might say that
it regarded physical impurity as identical with moral impurity, and intolerable
to the gods. It has always been, and still remains, a religion of ablutions. The
Japanese love of cleanliness indicated by the universal practice of daily
bathing, and by the irreproachable condition of their homes has been
maintained, and was probably initiated, by their religion. Spotless cleanliness
being required by the rites of ancestor-worship, in the temple, in the person
of the officiant, and in the home, this rule of purity was naturally extended
by degrees to all the conditions of existence. And besides the great periodical
ceremonies of purification, a multitude of minor lustrations were exacted by
the cult. This was the case also, it will be remembered, in the early Greek and
Roman civilizations: the citizen had to submit to purification upon almost
every important occasion of existence. There were lustrations indispensable at
birth, marriage, and death; lustrations on the eve of battle; lustrations, at
regular periods, of the dwelling, estate, district, or city. And, as in Japan,
no one could approach a temple without a preliminary washing of hands. But
ancient Shintō exacted more than the Greek or the Roman cult: it required the
erection of special houses for birth, "parturition-houses"; special
houses for the consummation of marriage, "nuptial huts"; and special
buildings for the dead, "mourning-houses." Formerly women were
obliged during the period of menstruation, as well as during the time of
confinement, to live apart. These harsher archaic customs have almost
disappeared, except in one or two remote districts, and in the case of certain
priestly families; but the general rules as to purification, and as to the
times and circumstances forbidding approach to holy places, are still
everywhere obeyed. Purity of heart is not less insisted upon than physical
purity; and the great rite of lustration, performed every six months, is of
course a moral purification. It is performed not only at the great temples, and
at all the Ujigami, but likewise in every home.4 The
modern domestic form of the harai is
very simple. Each Shintō parish-temple furnishes to all its Ujiko, or
parishioners, small paper-cuttings called hitogata
("mankind-shapes"), representing figures of men, women, and children
as in silhouette, only that the paper is white, and folded curiously. Each
household receives a number of hitogata
corresponding to the number of its members, "men-shapes" for the men
and boys, "women-shapes for the women and girls. Each person in the house
touches his head, face, limbs, and body with one of these hitogata; repeating the while a Shintō invocation, and praying that
any misfortune or sickness incurred by reason of offences involuntarily
committed against the gods (for in Shintō belief sickness and misfortune are
divine punishments) may be mercifully taken away. Upon each hitogata is then written the age and sex
(not the name) of the person for whom it was furnished; and when this has been
done, all are returned to the parish-temple, and there burnt, with rites of
purification. Thus the community is "lustrated" every six months. In the
old Greek and Latin cities lustration was accompanied with registration. The
attendance of every citizen at the ceremony was held to be so necessary that
one who wilfully failed to attend might be whipped and sold as a slave.
Non-attendance involved loss of civic rights. It would seem that in Old Japan
also every member of a community was obliged to be present at the rite; but I
have not been able to learn whether any registration was made upon such
occasions. Probably it would have been superfluous: the Japanese individual was
not officially recognized; the family-group alone was responsible, and the
attendance of the several members would have been assured by the responsibility
of the group. The use of the hitogata,
on which the name is not written, but only the sex and age of the worshipper,
is probably modern, and of Chinese origin. Official registration existed, even
in early times; but it appears to have had no particular relation to the o-harai; and the registers were kept, it
seems, not by the Shinto, but by the Buddhist parish-priests.... In concluding
these remarks about the o-harai, I
need scarcely add that special rites were performed in cases of accidental religious
defilement, and that any person judged to have sinned against the rules of the
public cult had to submit to ceremonial purification. Closely
related by origin to the rites of purification are sundry ascetic practices of
Shintō. It is not an essentially ascetic religion: it offers flesh and wine to
its gods; and it prescribes only such forms of self-denial as ancient custom
and decency require. Nevertheless, some of its votaries perform extraordinary austerities
on special occasions, austerities which always include much cold-water
bathing. It is not uncommon for the very fervent worshipper to invoke the gods
as he stands naked under the ice-cold rush of a cataract in midwinter.... But the
most curious phase of this Shintō asceticism is represented by a custom still
prevalent in remote districts. According to this custom a community yearly
appoints one of its citizens to devote himself wholly to the gods on behalf of
the rest. During the term of his consecration, this communal representative
must separate from his family, must not approach women, must avoid all places
of amusement, must eat only food cooked with sacred fire, must abstain from
wine, must bathe in fresh cold water several times a day, must repeat particular
prayers at certain hours, and must keep vigil upon certain nights. When he has
performed these duties of abstinence and purification for the specified time,
he becomes religiously free; and another man is then elected to take his place.
The prosperity of the settlement is supposed to depend upon the exact
observance by its representative of the duties prescribed: should any public
misfortune occur, he would be suspected of having broken his vows. Anciently,
in the case of a common misfortune, the representative was put to death. In the
little town of Mionosιki, where I first learned of this custom, the communal
representative is called ichi-nen-gannushi
("one-year god-master"); and his full term of vicarious atonement is
twelve months. I was told that elders are usually appointed for this duty,
young men very seldom. In ancient times such a communal representative was
called by a name signifying "abstainer. References to the custom have
been found in Chinese notices of Japan dating from a time before the beginning
of Japanese authentic history. Every
persistent form of ancestor-worship has its system or systems of divination; and
Shintō exemplifies the general law. Whether divination ever obtained in ancient
Japan the official importance which it assumed among the Greeks and the Romans is
at present doubtful. But long before the introduction of Chinese astrology,
magic, and fortune-telling, the Japanese practised various kinds of divination,
as is proved by their ancient poetry, their records, and their rituals. We find
mention also of official diviners, attached to the great cults. There was
divination by bones, by birds, by rice, by barley-gruel, by footprints, by rods
planted in the ground, and by listening in public ways to the speech of people
passing by. Nearly all probably all of these old methods of divination are
still in popular use. But the earliest form of official divination was
performed by scorching the shoulder-blade of a deer, or other animal, and
observing the cracks produced by the heat.5 Tortoise-shells were
afterwards used for the same purpose. Diviners were especially attached, it
appears, to the imperial palace; and Motowori, writing in the latter half of
the eighteenth century, speaks of divination as still being, in that epoch, a part
of the imperial function. "To the end of time," he said, "the
Mikado is the child of the Sun-goddess. His mind is in perfect harmony of
thought and feeling with hers. He does not seek out new inventions; but he
rules in accordance with precedents which date from the Age of the Gods; and if
he is ever in doubt, he has recourse to divination, which reveals to him the mind
of the great goddess." Within
historic times at least, divination would not seem to have been much used in
warfare, certainly not to the extent that it was used by the Greek and Roman
armies. The greatest Japanese captains, such as Hidιyoshi and Nobunaga were
decidedly irreverent as to omens. Probably the Japanese, at an early period of
their long military history, learned by experience that the general who
conducts his campaign according to omens must always be at a hopeless
disadvantage in dealing with a skilful enemy who cares nothing about omens. Among the
ancient popular forms of divination which still survive, the most commonly
practised in households is divination by dry rice. For the public, Chinese
divination is still in great favour; but it is interesting to observe that the
Japanese fortune-teller invariably invokes the Shintō gods before consulting
his Chinese books, and maintains a Shintō shrine in his reception-room. We have
seen that the developments of ancestor-worship in Japan present remarkable
analogies with the developments of ancestor-worship in ancient Europe,
especially in regard to the public cult, with its obligatory rites of
purification. But Shintō
seems nevertheless to represent conditions of ancestor-worship less developed
than those which we are accustomed to associate with early Greek and Roman
life; and the coercion which it exercised appears to have been proportionally more
rigid. The existence of the individual worshipper was ordered not merely in
relation to the family and the community, but even in relation to inanimate
things. Whatever his occupation might be, some god presided over it; whatever
tools he might use, they had to be used in such manner as tradition prescribed
for all admitted to the craft-cult. It was necessary that the carpenter should
so perform his work as to honour the deity of carpenters, that the smith should
fulfil his daily task so as to honour the god of the bellows, that the farmer
should never fail in respect to the earth-god, and the food-god, and the scare-crow
god, and the spirits of the trees about his habitation. Even the domestic
utensils were sacred: the servant could not dare to forget the presence of the
deities of the cooking-range, the hearth, the cauldron, the brazier, or the
supreme necessity of keeping the fire pure. The professions, not less than the
trades, were under divine patronage: the physician, the teacher, the artist
each had his religious duties to observe, his special traditions to obey. The
scholar, for example, could not dare to treat his writing-implements with
disrespect, or put written paper to vulgar uses: such conduct would offend the
god of calligraphy. Nor were women ruled less religiously than men in their
various occupations: the spinners and weaving-maidens were bound to revere the
Weaving-goddess and the Goddess of Silkworms; the sewing-girl was taught to
respect her needles; and in all homes there was observed a certain holiday upon
which offerings were made to the Spirits of Needles. In Samurai families the
warrior was commanded to consider his armour and his weapons as holy things: to
keep them in beautiful order was an obligation of which the neglect might bring
misfortune in the time of combat; and on certain days offerings were set before
the bows and spears, arrows and swords, and other war-implements, in the alcove
of the family guest-room. Gardens, too, were holy; and there were rules to be
observed in their management, lest offence should be given to the gods of trees
and flowers. Carefulness, cleanliness, dustlessness, were everywhere enforced
as religious obligations. ...It has
often been remarked in these latter days that the Japanese do not keep their
public offices, their railway stations, their new factory-buildings, thus
scrupulously clean. But edifices built in foreign style, with foreign material,
under foreign supervision, and contrary to every local tradition, must seem to
old-fashioned thinking God-forsaken places; and servants amid such unhallowed
surroundings do not feel the invisible about them, the weight of pious custom,
the silent claim of beautiful and simple things to human respect. 1 Sohodo-no-Kami is the god of scarecrows, protector of the fields. 2 Translated by Satow. 3 Several have been translated by Satow, whose opinion of their antiquity
is here cited; and translations have also been made into German. 4 On the kamidana, "or
god-shelf, there is usually placed a kind of oblong paper-box containing
fragments of the wands used by the priests of Isι at the great national
purification-ceremony, or o-harai.
This box is commonly called by the name of the ceremony, o-harai, or "august purification, and is inscribed with the names
of the great gods of Isι. The presence of this object is supposed to protect the
home; but it should be replaced by a new o-harai
at the expiration of six months; for the virtue of the charm is supposed to
last only during the interval between two official purifications. This
distribution to thousands of homes of fragments of the wands, used to
"drive away evils at the time of the Isι lustration, represents of course
the supposed extension of the high-priest's protection to those homes until the
time of the next o-harai. 5 Concerning this form of divination, Satow remarks that it was practised
by the Mongols in the time of Genghis Khan, and is still practised by the
Khirghiz Tartars, facts of strong interest in view of the probable origin of
the early Japanese tribes. For
instances of ancient official divination see Astons translation of the Nihongi, Vol. I, pp. 157, 189, 127, 229,
237. |