Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 3.djvu/137

 gles against usurping clans, it is possible to appreciate the important position held by it in every sphere of the people's life. Rich gifts and extensive tracts of land were bestowed upon the temples, now by a superstitious sovereign or crafty statesman; now by some powerful feudal noble who desired to associate heaven with the prosecution of his ambitious designs, and in any national crisis, such as the Tartar and Mongol invasions, the coffers of the State were emptied into the sacred treasure-chests. Prominent among the ancient superstitions of Japan was a belief that all evil influences and their abode in the northeast, the Demons' Gate (Kimon). Due northeast of the Imperial Palace in Kyōtō stood the mountain of Hiyei, and there, to guard the Court against demoniacal approaches, Dengyo, a celebrated Buddhist priest of the ninth century, founded a monastery which by and by grew to be a town of three thousand buildings, inhabited by from thirty to forty thousand monks, the great majority of whom could wield a halberd much better than they could intone a litany. The example set at Hiyei-no-yama—or Hiyei-zan, as the place is now called—was soon followed by other congregations of religionists, and the powerful bands of tonsured soldiers (Sōhei) thus organised became one of the most turbulent and unmanageable elements in the State. Theological questions troubled them little. They interested themselves much more vividly in the fortunes of the