Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 1.djvu/206

 Tokihira, died, men said that he had been destroyed by the spirit of this same Michizane, whose disgrace and banishment he had contrived, and every misfortune that befell a conspicuous family was ascribed to the angry ghost of some prince, nobleman, or soldier who had been done to death in the numerous political intrigues of the era. The Emperor Sanjo (1012-1015) believed that his calamity of partial blindness was caused by a vengeful spirit which, assuming the form of a winged dog, rode on his neck and flapped its pinions over his eyes. Above the palace of another sovereign a hideous creature, half monkey, half snake, hovered every night, throwing His Majesty into convulsions; and it was counted a deed of magnificent valour that a Minamoto warrior shot an arrow into the cloud enshrouding the monster.

The Buddhist priests would probably have striven earnestly to dispel this noxious atmosphere of superstition had it not contributed so much to the growth of their own importance. At the close of the eighth century and in the beginning of the ninth, the creed found two propagandists of the highest genius, Dengyō and Kōbō—otherwise called Saicho and Kōkai,—the first preachers of sectarian Buddhism in Japan, Dengyō being the founder of the Tendai sect and Kōbō of the Shingon. The doctrines of these two sects presented no violent contrasts. They