Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 1.djvu/82

 that the universe was plunged in darkness, the eight hundred myriads of lesser deities assembled to propitiate her. Thereafter the act of worship took this shape: five hundred saplings of sakaki (Clyera japonica) with their roots were arranged round a mirror (made of copper) which typified the goddess of light. In the upper branches of the trees were hung balls representing the sacred jewel, and in the lower branches, blue and white pendants. A prayer was then recited by the chief hierarch, in lieu of the Emperor, and the service concluded with a dance and the lighting of fires, in imitation of the devices employed by the deities to lure the sun goddess from her retirement. The prayers offered on these occasions were probably rendered into exact formulæ at an early date, but they were not reduced to writing until the tenth century. Twenty-seven of them have been preserved, and seventy-five are said to have been in use. Their language is often majestic, poetical, and sonorous, but not one of them contains a word suggesting that the primæval Japanese troubled themselves much about a future state after death or about posthumous punishment for sins committed during life. Their idea of crime was that it polluted the person committing it, but that its commission was inevitable. Hence purification services were performed twice in every year, the gods of the swift streams, the tumbling cataracts, and the