Page:A History of Japanese Literature (Aston).djvu/166

150 from door to door. Sometimes while you wondered how such utterly wretched creatures could walk at all, they fell down before your eyes. By garden walls or on the roadsides countless persons died of famine, and as their bodies were not removed, the world was filled with evil odours. As they changed, there were many sights which the eyes could not endure to see. It was worse on the river banks where there was not even room for horses and vehicles to pass back and forwards. Porters and woodcutters too became so feeble that firewood got scarcer and scarcer, and people who had no means pulled down their houses and sold the materials in the market. It was said that a load for one man was not enough to provide him with sustenance for a single day. It was strange to see among this firewood pieces adorned in places with vermilion, or silver or gold leaf. On inquiry, it appeared that people in their extremity went to old temples, stole the images of Buddha, and broke up the objects used in worship, of which these were the fragments. Such mournful spectacles it was my lot to witness, born into a polluted and wicked world.

"Another very pitiable thing was that when there were a man and woman who were strongly attached to each other, the one whose love was the greatest and whose devotion was the most profound always died first. The reason was that they put themselves last, and, whether man or woman, gave up to the dearly loved one anything which they might chance to have begged. As a matter of course, parents died before their children. Again infants might be seen clinging to the breast of their mother, not knowing that she was already dead. A priest of the Temple of Jisonin, grieved in his secret heart at the numberless persons who were thus