with thy back hand.[1] Having done thus,—if thine elder brother make high fields,[2] do Thine Augustness make low fields; and if thine elder brother make low fields, do Thine Augustness make high fields. If thou do thus, thine elder brother will certainly be impoverished in the space of three years, owing to my ruling the water. If thine elder brother, incensed at thy doing thus, should attack thee, put forth the tide-flowing jewel[3] to drown him. If he express grief, put forth the tide-ebbing jewel to let him live. Thus shalt thou harrass him.” With these words, [the Sea-Deity] gave [to His Augustness Fire-Subside] the tide-flowing jewel and the tide-ebbing jewel,—two in all,—and forthwith summoned together all the crocodiles,[4] and asked them, saying: “The Sky’s-Sun-Height, august child of the Heaven’s-Sun-Height, is now about to proceed out to the Upper-Land.[5] Who will in how many days respectfully escort him, and bring back a report.”[6] So each according to the length of his body in fathoms spoke, fixing [a certain number of] days,—one of them, a crocodile one fathom [long], saying: “I[7] will escort him, and come back in one day.” So then [the Sea-Deity] said to the crocodile one fathom [long]:
- ↑ I.e., “with thy hand behind thy back.” This is supposed by the commentators to have been a sort of charm by which evil was averted from the person of him who practised it, and they point out that Izanagi (the “Male-Who-Invites”) brandished his sword behind him when he was pursued by the hosts of Hades (see Sect. IX, Note 15).
- ↑ By “high fields” and “low fields” are meant respectively upland rice-fields where the rice is planted in the dry, and “paddy-fields” properly so called, where the rice perpetually stands in the water. Different varieties of rice are used for these different methods of culture.
- ↑ Shiho mitsu tama. The “tide-ebbing jewel” mentioned in the next sentence is in the Japanese shiho hiru tama.
- ↑ See Introduction, p. xxxiii, Note 41.
- ↑ Uha tsu kuni, 上國.
- ↑ I.e. “Which of you will most speedily escort him home to the upper world, and bring back news of his safe arrival there?”
- ↑ Written with the respectful character 僕, “servant.”
it] to poverty. Poor outwardly, and inwardly silly, he will be the most useless creature in the Empire.” It should be noted, however, that Motowori interprets in the sense of “gloomy,” and Moribe in the sense of “drowning,” the phonetically written and obscure word obo, here rendered “great.”
