Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 1.djvu/204

 in the efficacy of prayer and incantation grew also. From the welfare of the humblest subject to the safety of the State, everything was supposed to be obtainable by worship, and the priests who chaunted litanies and performed religious rites became objects of profound veneration. Every chamber in the Palace was open to them. So long as Shintô was the sole creed of the nation, men did not trouble themselves much about malevolent spirits. But with the advent of Buddhism, preaching its many hells peopled by cruel demons, people learned to attribute all the ills and mischances of life to the influence of dead enemies endowed with demoniacal attributes, or to supernatural power exercised by the living through the medium of incantations. The maleficent spirits were supposed to be always on the watch for an opportunity to work evil, and it was therefore necessary that constant watch should be kept by the side of a sick person. Some protection was obtained by observing certain ceremonies and repeating certain formulæ, but the intervention of a priest seemed the only complete safeguard, and thus the intoning of litanies and the rolling of rosaries came to be counted much more efficacious in cases of illness than the services of a physician. Scarcely any incident of every-day life failed to be interpreted as a portent, and men had to be constantly on the watch lest by neglecting some precaution they should cause a harmless sign to be perverted