[30] See Satow’s papers on “Pure Shintō” and “Japanese Rituals,” in the Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan.—Edr.
[31] The word Kami is also doubly used as a title of honor conferred with the sanction of the Dairi, somewhat equivalent, says Kämpfer, in one case, to the European title of chevalier, and in the other, to that of count. Golownin insists that it implies something spiritual.
[32] The Sun-Goddess, also called Ama-terasu-no-Mikoto.—Edr.
[33] The following system of Japanese cosmogony is given by Klaproth, as contained in an imperfect volume of Chinese and Japanese chronology, printed in Japan, in Chinese characters, without date, but which for more than a hundred years past has been in the Royal Library of Paris: “At first the heaven and the earth were not separated, the perfect principle and the imperfect principle were not disjoined; chaos, under the form of an egg, contained the breath [of life], self-produced, including the germs of all things. Then what was pure and perfect ascended upwards, and formed the heavens (or sky), while what was dense and impure coagulated, was precipitated, and produced the earth. The pure and excellent principles formed whatever is light, whilst whatever was dense and impure descended by its own gravity; consequently the sky was formed prior to the earth. After their completion, a divine being (Kami) was born in the midst of them. Hence, it has been said, that at the reduction of chaos, an island of soft earth emerged, as a fish swims upon the water. At this period a thing resembling a shoot of the plant ashi [Eryanthus Japonicus] was produced between the heavens and the earth. This shoot was metamorphosed and became the god [first of the seven superior gods] who bears the honorific title of Kuni-toko-dachi-no-mikoto, that is to say, the venerable one who constantly supports the empire.”
[34] In reading the accounts of the bonzes, and of the delusions which they practised on the people, contained in the letters of the Catholic missionaries, and the denunciations levelled against them in consequence, in those letters, one might almost suppose himself to be reading a Protestant sermon against Popery, or an indignant leader against the papists in an evangelical newspaper. The missionaries found, however, at least they say so, among other theological absurdities maintained by the bonzes, a number of the “damnable Lutheran tenets.”
[35] Buddha, or the sage (which the Chinese, by the metamorphosis made by their pronunciation of most foreign proper names, have changed first into Fuh-hi, and then into Fuh, or Ho), is not the personal name of the great saint, the first preacher of the religion of the Buddhists, but a title of honor given to him after he had attained to eminent sanctity. According to the concurrent traditions of the Buddhists in various parts of Asia, he was the son of a king of central India, Suddho-dana, meaning in Sanscrit pure-eating king, or eater of pure food, which the Chinese have translated into their language by Zung-fung-wang. His original name was Lêh-ta; after he became a priest he was called Sakia-mouni, that is, devotee of the race of Sakia, whence the appellation Shaka, by which he is commonly known in Japan, and also the name Shaku, applied to the patriarch or head of the Buddhist church. Another Sanscrit patronymic of Buddha is Gautama, which in different Buddhist nations has, in conjunction with other epithets applied to him, been variously changed and corrupted. Thus among the Siamese he is called Summana-kodom.
The Buddhist mythology includes several Buddhas who preceded Sakia-mouni, and the first of whom, Adi-Buddha, or the first Buddha, was, when nothing else was, being in fact the primal deity and origin of all things. It seems to be this first Buddha who is worshipped in Japan under the name of Amida, and whose priests form the most numerous and influential of the Buddhist orders. Siebold seems inclined to regard them as pure monotheists.
The birth of Shaka is fixed by the Japanese annalists, or at least by the book of chronology quoted in a previous note, in the twenty-sixth year of the emperor Chaou-wang, of the Chinese Chew Dynasty, 1027 B. C. 1006 B. C., he fled from his father’s house to become a priest; 998 B. C., he reached the highest step of philosophical knowledge; 949 B. C., being seventy-nine years of age, he entered into Nirvana, that is, died. He was succeeded by a regular succession of Buddhist patriarchs, of whom twenty-eight were natives of Hindustan. The twenty-eighth emigrated to China, A. D. 490, where he had five Chinese successors. Under the second of these, A. D. 552, Buddhism was introduced into Japan. A. D. 713, the sixth and the last Chinese patriarch died, since which the Chinese Buddhists, and those who have received the religion from them, seem not to have acknowledged any general, but only a local, head in each country.
[36] In connection with this chapter, read “The Religions of Japan” (Griffis).—Edr.
[37] For an account of the Japanese language, literature, etc., see “A Handbook of Modern Japan” (Clement).—Edr.