Continue playing thy great august lute.” Then he slowly drew his august lute to him, and languidly played on it. So almost immediately the sound of the august lute became inaudible. On their forthwith lifting a light and looking, [the Heavenly Sovereign] was dead.
[Sect. XCVII.—Emperor Chiū-ai (Part III.—Preparations for the Conquest of Korea).]
Then, astonished and alarmed, they set him in a mortuary palace,[1] and again taking the country’s great offerings,[2] seeking out all sorts of crimes, such as flaying alive and flaying backwards,[3] breaking down the divisions of rice-fields, filling up ditches, evacuating excrements and urine, marriages between superiors and inferiors,[4] marriages with horses, marriages with cattle, marriages with fowls, and marriages with dogs, and having made a great purification of the land,[5] the Noble Take-uchi again stood in the pure court and requested the Deities’ commands. Thereupon the manner of their instruction and counsel was exactly the same as on the former day: “Altogether this land is a land to be ruled over by the august child in Thine Augustness’s august womb.”[6] Then the Noble Take-uchi said, “[I am filled with] awe, my Great Deities! The august child in this Deity’s womb,[7] what [sort of]
- ↑ A temporary resting-place for the corpse before interment. (See Sect. XXXI, Note 20.
- ↑ Or if, with Motowori, we take country in the Plural, “the great offerings of the countries,” i.e., of the various countries or provinces of Japan or of Kiushiu. These “offerings” (nusa) are the same as those mentioned in Sect. XVI (Notes 24 and 25) under the names nigi-te and mitegura. They consisted of cloth, for which in later times paper has been substituted.
- ↑ There are different views as to the exact bearing of this curious expression. Conf. Sect. XV, Note 10.
- ↑ I.e., incest between parents and children.
- ↑ I.e., a general purification.
- ↑ The Deities now speak to, as well us through, the Empress. Before the quotation marks announcing their words we must understand some such clause as “and they added this divine charge.” It would also be possible to translate the whole passage thus: “Thereupon the manner of their instruction and counsel was ‘[Things] being exactly as on the former day, altogether this land,’ ” etc., etc.
- ↑ I.e., in the Empress’s womb. Motowori supposes that she is thus spoken of as a Deity on account of her being at that moment divinely possessed.
