In the thirtieth year of Meiji, on the first day of the fifth month, by the house of Inouyé, this sotoba has been set up.
The foregoing will doubtless suffice as specimens of the ordinary forms of inscription. The Buddha praised or invoked is always the Buddha especially revered by the sect from whose sutra or sastra the quotation is chosen;—sometimes also the divine power of a Bodhisattva is extolled, as in the following Zen inscription:—
“The Sutra of Kwannon says:—‘In all the provinces of all the countries in the Ten Directions, there is not even one temple where Kwannon is not self-revealed.’”
Sometimes the scripture text more definitely assumes the character of a praise-offering, as the following juxtaposition suggests:—
“The Buddha of Immeasurable Light illuminates all worlds in the Ten Directions of Space.”
This for the sake of the swift salvation into Buddhahood of our lay-brother named the Great-Secure-Retired-Scholar.
Sometimes we also find a verse of praise or an invocation addressed to the apotheosized spirit of the founder of the sect,—a common example being furnished by the sotoba of the Shingon rite:—
“Hail to the Great Teacher Haijō-Kongō!”[26]
Rarely the little prayer for the salvation of the dead assumes, as in the following beautiful example, the language of unconscious poetry:—