Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 6.djvu/48

 record, but within less than a century and a half from the finding of the balls, a "jewel-grasping festival" came to be celebrated at Hakozaki on the third day of every first month. It took the form of a gigantic scramble. The priests, having carried the ball—now, by some unexplained process, transformed into a single sphere of hard stone—to the shrine of Ebisu, and having washed it and read a ritual, delivered it to the crowd of worshippers for conveyance to the temple of Hachiman. Whatever hands held it at the moment of final transfer to the temple, were the hands of a person destined to high fortune. Not the province of Chikuzen alone, but all the northern districts of Kiushiu and the regions on the opposite coast of the Inland Sea, sent their strong men to take part in the struggle. The distance between the fane of Ebisu and the temple of Hachiman is only a few yards, yet hours were spent in the passage of the "jewel" from one place to the other. Naked, except for a loin-cloth, thousands of men struggled in the narrow enclosure until sheer exhaustion gradually thinned their ranks and left space for the most enduring to win a path, inch by inch, to the temple. Almost the same description applies to a much more celebrated fête held within the precincts of the temple of Kwannon, the goddess of mercy, at Saidai-ji in Bizen province, on the fourteenth day of the first month. There the scramble is for pieces of wood thrown by the priests to a