Degradation of the Foreign Deities.

For example, the Indian saint Dharma is reputed to have come to the Dragon-fly Country long before the advent of Buddhism, but the people were not ready for him or his teachings, and therefore he returned to India. So at least declares the book entitled San Kai Ri [²⁷] (Mountain, Sea and Earth), which is a re-reading and explanation of Japanese mythology and tradition as recorded in the Kojiki, by a Kiōtō priest of the Shin Shu Sect. Of this Dharma, it is said, that he outdid the Roman Regulus who suffered involuntary loss of his eyelids at the hands of the Carthaginians. Dharma cut off his own eyelids, because he could not keep awake.[²⁸] Throwing the offending flesh upon the ground, he saw the tea-plant arise to help holy men to keep vigil. Daruma, as the Japanese spell his name, has a temple in central Japan. It is related that when Shōtoku, the first patron of Buddhism, was one day walking abroad he found a poor man dying of hunger, who refused to answer any questions or give his name. Shōtoku ordered food to be given him, and wrapped his own mantle round him. Next day the beggar died, and the prince charitably had him buried on the spot. Shortly afterward it was observed that the mantle was lying neatly folded up, on the tomb, which on examination proved to be empty. The supposed dying beggar was no other than the Indian Saint Dharma, and a pagoda was built over the grave, in which images of the priest and saint were enshrined.[²⁹] Yet, alas, to-day Daruma the Hindoo and foreigner, despite his avatar, his humility, his vigils and his self-mutilation, has been degraded to be the shop-sign of the tobacconists. Besides being ruthlessly caricatured, he is usually pictured with a scowl, his lidless eyes as wide open as those upon a Chinese junk-prow or an Egyptian coffin-lid. Often even, he has a pipe in his mouth—a comical anachronism, suggestive to the smoker of the dark ages that knew no tobacco, before nicotine made the whole world of savage and of civilized kin. Legless dolls and snow-men are named after this foreigner, whose name is associated almost entirely with what is ludicrous.

On Kōbō's expounding his scheme to the Mikado, the emperor was so pleased with his servant's ingenuity, that he gave it the name of Riyōbu [³⁰] Shintō; that is, the two-fold divine doctrine, double way of the gods, or amalgamated theology. Henceforth the Japanese could enter Nirvana or Paradise through a two-leaved gate. As for the people, they also were pleased, as they usually are when change or reform does not mean abolition of the old festivals, or of the washings, sousings, and fun at the tombs of their ancestors in the graveyards, or the merry-makings, or the pilgrimages,[³¹] which are usually only other names for social recreation, and often for sensual debauch. The Yoga had become a kubiki, for Shintō and Buddhism were now harnessed together, not indeed as true yoke-fellows, but yet joined as inseparably as two oxen making the same furrow.

Many a miya now became a tera. At first in many edifices, the rites of Shintō and Buddhism were alternately performed. The Buddhist symbols might be in the front, and the Shintōist in the rear of the sacred hall, or vice versa, with a bamboo curtain between; but gradually the two blended. Instead of austere simplicity, the Shintō interior contained a museum of idols.

Image carvers had now plenty to do in making, out of camphor or hinoki wood, effigies of such of the eight million or so of kamis as were given places in the new and enlarged pantheon. The multiplication was always on the side of Buddhism. Soon, also, the architecture was altered from the type of the primitive hut, to that of the low Chinese temple with great sweeping roof, re-curved eaves, many-columned auditorium and imposing gateway, with lacquer, paint, gilding and ceilings, on which, in blazing gold and color, were depicted the emblems of the Buddhist paradise. Many of these still remain even after the national purgation of 1870, just as the Christian inscriptions survive in the marble palimpsests of Mahometan mosques, converted from basilicas, at Damascus or Constantinople. The torii was no longer raised in plain hinoki wood, but was now constructed of hewn stone, rounded or polished. Sometimes it was even of bronze with gilded crests and Sanskrit monograms, surmounted, it may be, with tablets of painted or stained wood, on which were Chinese letters glittering with gold. This departure from the primitive idea of using only the natural trunks of trees, "somewhat on the principle of Exodus, 20:25,"[³²] was a radical one in the ninth century. The elongated barrels with iron hoops, or the riveted boiler-plate and stove-pipe pattern, in this era of Meiji is a still more radical and even scandalous innovation.