Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 5.djvu/151

 golden rule" was not written between the lines of any prayer or any legend.

The part assigned to woman, however, and the value attached to female virtue distinguish Shintō from other Oriental cults or creeds, especially from the patriarchal system of the Chinese, with which it is often confounded. In China a girl child being disqualified to conduct ancestral worship, her birth is counted a misfortune and the preservation of her life a burden. In Shintō the principal objects of national adoration, the deities worshipped at the grand shrines of Ise, are the Sun Goddess and the Goddess of Food. Among the attributes assigned to the former, in addition to her prime functions, are those of selecting the guests or frequenters of the Emperor's abode; of correcting and softening discontent and unruliness; of keeping the male and female attendants in order; of preventing princes, councillors, and functionaries from indulging their independent inclinations. At the foundation and construction of sacred buildings, young virgins cleared and levelled the ground, dug holes for the corner posts, took the axe and made the first cut in the trees to be felled for timber. A priestess was the central figure in the great Ceremony of Purification at the Kasuga temple; a young girl cleaned the shrine; women and girls on horseback moved in the procession; after the sacrificial vessels and chests of offerings followed carriages containing some of the Em-