BUDDHA AND HIS DISCIPLES, TENNENJI
that is one of its meanings—and tennen means “produced by nature.” The name itself suggested peace and quietness and repose, and these I found in that delightful place, always seen in my mind through a rosy haze of azalea blossom.
A granite sign-post where the little temple path turns off from a track through the rice-fields tells all who can read it that the temple is dedicated to the five hundred Rakkan (disciples of Buddha), and their gilded and lacquered effigies sit in long tiers round one large building within the court-yard; beyond this is the Hondo, where the principal altars are, and where the services are performed at daybreak by the old priest who has sole charge of the establishment. My room was a little annex of the Hondo, quite apart from the living-rooms of the family, and open on two sides to the air. The angle of my veranda projected over the fish-pond, and on the right and the left stepping-stones led down from it into the garden, a small patch of level ground, with a pine-clad hill-side rising sharply beyond it. Just at the foot of this hill there was a rocky projection, covered with an undergrowth of azaleas, and spotted with statues of Buddha and his sixteen principal followers. These were rudely carved of the natural stone; with their growth of lichens and mosses they looked as old as the rocks themselves, and were hardly to be distinguished from them at a little distance. Several stony zigzagging footpaths, mere tracks through the bushes and pine-trees, led to the top of the ridge, from which one looked down on fertile valleys enclosed by more pine-clad ridges, and to the westward on the great shining plain of Lake Biwa, its lagoons, islands, and distant mountains. Many times I walked to the top of this hill, sometimes in the clear brilliant moonlight, when the delicate pinks and reds of the azaleas were hardly visible, and only their honeysuckle scent made me conscious of their presence, and when all the world would have been silent but for the incessant chorus of myriads of frogs which came up from the rice-fields below.
