Princess on his back, then carried off the Great Deity’s great life-sword[1] and life-bow-and-arrows,[2] as also his heavenly speaking-lute,[3] and ran out. But the heavenly speaking-lute brushed against a tree, and the earth resounded. So the Great Deity, who was sleeping, started at the sound, and pulled down the house. But while he was disentangling his hair which was tied to the rafters, [the Deity Great-Name-Possessor] fled a long way. So then, pursuing after him to the Even Pass of Hades,[4] and gazing on him from afar, he called out to the Deity Great-Name-Possessor, saying: “With the great life-sword and the life-bow-and-arrows which thou carriest, pursue thy half-brethren[5] till they crouch on the august slopes of the passes,[6] and pursue them till they are swept into the reaches of the rivers, and do thou, wretch![7] become the Deity Master-of-the-Great-Land;[8] and moreover, becoming the Deity Spirit-of-the-Living-Land, and making my daughter the Forward-Princess thy consort,[9] do thou make stout the temple-pillars
- ↑ Iku-tachi (生大刀), supposed by Motowori to be “a sword having the virtue of conferring long life upon its possessor.”
- ↑ Iku-yumi-ya (生弓矢).
- ↑ Ame no nori-goto (天詔琴), so called because, as will be seen in Sect. XCVI, divine messages were conveyed through a person playing on the lute. Hirata, in his “Exposition of the Ancient Histories,” invents the reading ame no nu-goto (天詔琴), “heavenly jewelled lute.”
- ↑ See Sect. IX (Note 16).
- ↑ They were not born of the same mother. The Chinese characters in the text (庶兄弟) imply, properly speaking, that the eighty brethren of the Great-Name-Possessor were the sons of concubines. But Motowori denies that such is the Japanese usage with regard to the characters in question.
- ↑ Or “hills.”
- ↑ The word in the text is ore, an insulting equivalent Second Personal Pronoun. If we were translating into German, we might perhaps approximately represent its force by “er.”
- ↑ Thus, according to this legend, “Master-of-the-Great-Land” (Oho-kuni-nushi) was not the original name of the Deity commonly designated by it, and his sovereignty over the Land of the Living (whence the appropriateness of the second name in this context) was derived by investiture from the god of the Land of the Dead.
- ↑ The characters 嫡妻, which are here used, designate specifically the chief or legitimate wife, as opposed to the lesser wives or concubines.
