two kinds of cloth, one being hempen cloth and the other cloth manufactured from the bark of the paper mulberry,—offerings very precious in their eyes, but which have in modern times been allowed to degenerate into useless strips of paper. They likewise offered shields, spears, and other things. Food was offered both to the gods and to the dead; indeed, the palace or tomb of the dead monarch and the temple of the god cannot always be distinguished from each other, and, as has already been mentioned, the Japanese use the same word miya for “palace” and for “temple.” Etymologically signifying “august house,” it is naturally susceptible of what are to us two distinct meanings.
With but one exception,[1] the “Records” do not give us the words of any prayers (or, as the Japanese term norito has elsewhere been translated, “rituals”). Conversations with the gods are indeed detailed, but no devotional utterances. Fortunately however a number of very ancient prayers have been preserved in other books, and translations of some of them by Mr. Satow will be found scattered through the volumes of the Transactions of this Society. They consist mostly of declarations of praise and statements of offerings made, either in return for favours received or conditionally on favours being granted. They are all in prose, and hymns do not seem to have been in use. Indeed of the hundred and eleven Songs preserved in the “Records,” not one has any religious reference.
The sacred rite of which most frequent mention is made is purification by water. Trial by hot water is also alluded to in both histories, but not till a time confessedly posterior to the commencement of intercourse with the mainland. We likewise hear of compacts occasionally entered into with a god, and somewhat resembling our European wager, oath, or curse. Priests are spoken of in a few passages, but without any details. We do not hear of their functions being in any way mediatorial, and the impression conveyed is that they did not exist in very early times as a separate class. When they did come into existence, the profession soon became hereditary, according to the general tendency in Japan towards the hereditability of offices and occupations.
Miscellaneous superstitions crop up in many places. Some of these
- ↑ To be found at the end of Sect. XXXII.
