[Sect. XX.—The August Ancestors of the Deity-Master-of-the-Great Land.]
Quare, quum incepit in thalamo [opus procreationis] cum Mirâ-Herâ-Inadâ, procreavit Deum nomine Eight-Island Ruler.[1] And again, having wedded the Divine-Princess-of-Great-Majesty,[2] daughter of the Deity Great-Mountain-Possessor, he begot children: the Great-Harvest Deity[3] and the August-Spirit-of-Food.[4] The elder brother the Deity Eight-Island-Ruler wedded Princess-Falling-Like-the-Flowers-of-the-Trees,[5] daughter of the Deity Great-Mountain-Possessor, and begot a child: the Deity Fuha-no-moji-Ku-nu-su-nu.[6] This Deity wedded Princess Hikaha,[7]
- ↑ Ya-shima-zhi-nu-mi. Ya-shima means “eight islands.” The syllables zhi-nu-mi are obscure, but the translator has little doubt that “ruler” fairly represents their import. Motowori takes zhi to be an apocopated and nigori’ed form of shiru, “to rule,” nu to be an apocopated form of nushi, “master,” and mi to be an apocopated form of the “Honorific termination mimi.” Tanigaha Shisei considers zhinu to stand for shidzumuru, “to govern,” which comes to the same thing so far as the sense is concerned.
- ↑ Kamu-oho-ichi-hime. The rendering of Oho-ichi as “Great Majesty” rests on a plausible conjecture of Hirata’s, who proposes to identify ichi with idzu (稜威). Motowori thinks that Oho-ichi should be taken as the name of a place; but this seems less good.
- ↑ Oho-toshi-no-kami, written 大年神, the obvious rendering of which would be “great year.” But the Japanese term toshi is believed to have originally signified, not “year” in the abstract, but that which was produced each year, viz., the harvest (conf. toru, “to take”).
- ↑ Uka-no-mi-tama.
- ↑ Ko-no-hana-chiru-hime, so called, says Motowori, because she probably died young, as a blossom that falls from the tree. We might however perhaps take the Verb chiru in a Causative sense, and consider the name to signify “the Princess-Who-Causes-the-Flowers-of-the-Trees-to-Fall.” A sister of this goddess appears in the pretty legend narrated in Sect. XXXVII under the parallel name of the Princess-Blossoming-Brilliantly-Like-the-Flowers-of-the-Trees. See Note 3 to that Sect.
- ↑ Fuha-no-moji-ku-nu-su-nu-no-kami. The import of this name is quite uncertain. Fuha however seems to be the name of a place.
- ↑ Hi-kaha-hime. Hi-kaha (lit. “sun-river”) is supposed to stand for the name of a place in Musashi, which is however written “ice-river” (氷河, and not 日河), the old Japanese words for “ice” and “sun” being homonymous.
the “Tokiha-gusa” ingeniously proposes to consider ya-tsu mimi as a corruption of yatsuko mi mi (奴御身) “servant august body,” but this cannot be seriously entertained (Conf. Sect. XIII. Note 18.)
