Shinto. Aston William George

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СКАЧАТЬ for its aesthetic merits. Of them, as of the literal-minded believer, "Si exempla requiris, circumspice."

      The history of the religious myth may be summarized as follows: A, a man of genius, creates it, clearly distinguishing in his own mind between the kernel of religious truth and its imaginative embodiment. His disciples B and C understand him thoroughly. In this stage a myth is called a parable or allegory. Many myths proceed no further. D, F, H, * * * T and V, unable to discriminate the true element from the false, accept the whole confusedly as actual fact. E, G, * * S and U are dense to its religious significance, and think it idle nonsense, or at best, simply a good story. W and X have a glimmering notion that the imaginative part cannot be literally true, but do not dare to question it, lest they should sacrifice at the same time the valuable religious kernel. Z is a philosophic inquirer who, not without difficulty, regains the standpoint of B and C. But by this time the myth has been superseded as a vehicle of religious truth by fuller and more exact forms of expression.

      The chief ideas underlying Japanese myth are, firstly, the conception-piecemeal it is true, and inadequate-of the so-called inanimate universe as being really instinct with sentient life, and exercising a loving providential care over mankind;50 and secondly, the doctrine that honour and obedience are due to the sovereign whose beneficent rule secures to the people blessings comparable to that of the sun's light and warmth. For such, I take it, is the real meaning of the story by which the Mikados are feigned to be descendants of the Sun-Goddess. It is the Japanese version of the doctrine of the divine right of kings. Without these and similar vital elements Japanese myth would be nothing more than what some writers have supposed it, a farrago of absurdities, and its examination would belong not to the physiology, but to the pathology of the human mind.

      It can hardly be maintained, however, that the poets and seers of ancient Japan achieved much success in clothing their spiritual conceptions in mythical form. There is little force or beauty in their stories, and there is a plentiful admixture of matter which, to us at least, is frivolous, revolting, or devoid of religious significance.

      There is no summer and winter myth in the old Japanese books, no deluge myth, and no eclipse myth. There is, strange to say, no earthquake myth, and but one solitary mention of a God of Earthquakes. There are no astral myths, no "Returning Saviour" myth, and no "Journey of the Dead" beyond the bare mention of an "Even Pass of Yomi," or Hades. The creation of mankind is not accounted for.

      Myth and Ritual. – When a myth and a ceremony relate to the same subject-matter, which comes first in order of time? Is the ceremony a dramatic commemoration of the events related in the myth, or, vice versâ, is the myth an attempt to explain the origin of the ceremony? Some go so far as to say that ritual is the source of all religious myth. The late Mr. D. G. Brinton, on the other hand, held that "every rite is originally based on a myth." Robertson Smith's view was that "in almost every case the myth was derived from the ritual, and not the ritual from the myth." No general rule can be laid down in these cases. Every such question must be decided according to the available evidence. A myth is a narrative, and a ceremony a kind of dramatic peformance. It will not be disputed that dramas have been founded on narratives, and that narratives are sometimes taken from dramas, as in the case of Lamb's 'Tales from Shakespeare.' Novels are every day dramatized, and the reverse process, though not common with ourselves, is familiar in Japan. Several of the Shinto deities are worshipped for no other reason than because they are mentioned in the myths of the Kojiki and Nihongi. It was probably the mythical account of the friendship of Ajisuki and Ame-waka-hiko which led to shrines being erected to these deities side by side at Idzumo. A literal interpretation of the obviously allegorical story of Iha-naga-hime and Kono-saku-hime led, in later times, to an actual cult of these personages. On the other hand, the ceremony of religious ablution is certainly older than the myth which represents Izanagi as washing in the sea in order to remove the pollutions of the land of Yomi. The worship of the Sun is assuredly not the outcome, but the source, of the Japanese solar myths, though it may owe to them some of its more modern features.

      Many myths have no ceremonial associated with them, and there is much ceremony for which the myth-makers have not attempted to account.

      CHAPTER VI.

      THE MYTHICAL NARRATIVE

      No really adequate idea of the old Japanese myths can be gained without a direct study of the Kojiki, Nihongi, and Kiujiki, with all their repetitions, inconsistencies, and obscurities. In the following outline, taken mainly from the two first-named works, a selection has been made of such incidents as have an interest and significance for European students of mythology.

      Both the Nihongi and the Kiujiki begin with a passage which is justly repudiated by the modern school of Shinto theologians as in reality belonging to the materialistic philosophy of China.51 It runs as follows: -

       "Of old, Heaven and Earth were not yet separated, and the In and Yo 52 not yet divided. They formed a chaotic mass like an egg, which was of obscurely defined limits, and contained germs. The purer and clearer part was thinly diffused and formed Heaven, while the heavier and grosser element settled down and became Earth. The finer element easily became a united body, but the consolidation of the heavy and gross element was accomplished with difficulty. Heaven was therefore formed first, and Earth established subsequently. Thereafter divine beings were produced between them."

      Pfleiderer says:53 "There is not unfrequently found in the mythology of the nature-religions a combination of Theogony and a Divine formation of matter in such a way that the Gods-whether one or all of them-are the first products of chaos, but then they form the rest of the world out of it. In the Indian mythology Prajapati proceeded out of the golden world-egg and then became the creative former of the world. Likewise in the Chaldæan mythology the great Gods arose at first out of chaos, and they then created the other Gods and the living beings of heaven and earth."

      But are not such speculations later accretions on the original myth? In Japan, at any rate, formation out of chaos is undoubtedly an afterthought.

       First Gods. – We have next what is called "the seven generations of Gods," ending with the creator-deities, Izanagi and Izanami. Of the first six of these generations the most confused and contradictory accounts are given in the various authorities. There is no agreement as to the name of the first God on the list. The Nihongi tells us that the first deity produced between Heaven and Earth while still in a state of chaos sprang up like a reed-shoot, which then changed into a God,54 and was called Kuni-toko-tachi no Mikoto,55 or "Earth-eternal-stand augustness." The Kojiki calls the first God Ame no mi-naka nushi no Kami, that is to say, "Heaven-august-centre-master-deity," identified by some with the Polar Star, a hypothesis for which there is no other ground than the name itself. The same authority gives Kuni-toko-tachi a place lower down in the genealogical table. The Kiujiki has a first God called Ame yudzuru hi ame no sagiri kuni yudzuru tsuki kuni no sagiri, and describes him (or her, for there is no indication of sex) as the "Heavenly Parent." It is impossible to translate this rigmarole; but as it contains the words "earth," "sun," "moon," and "mist," a nature-deity is evidently intended. Both the Kojiki and Kiujiki first Gods disappear at once from the mythical record. There is little trace of their worship in later times, and they must be pronounced mere abortive attempts at deity-making. Two other first deities are mentioned in the various myths quoted in the Nihongi, namely, Umashi-ashi-kabi-hiko-ji (sweet-reed-shoot-prince-father) and Ama-toko-tachi (Heaven-eternal-stand). The latter forms, along with Kuni-toko-tachi, one of those pairs of deities, not necessarily male and female, which are common in Japanese mythology. An enumeration of the Gods of the five generations which follow would be tedious and unprofitable. Some of them had probably no existence СКАЧАТЬ