Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 7.djvu/116

RV 94 indicates that the sculptor aimed at beauty of form or accuracy of proportion, and it need scarcely be added that none of them had any direct connection with religious rites, for the deities of the Shinto cult, which alone prevailed in Japan in those times, were never represented in effigy. In comparatively modern eras, when it became the habit to erect over the resting-places of the dead handsome bronze monuments and to surround them with stone fences, the chisels of great glyptic artists were sometimes employed to cut upon the pedestals of these monuments, or on the panels of gates giving access to their enclosures, scenes of religious import, such as the entry of Buddha into Nirvana or episodes from the careers of the Arhats. But these were quite exceptional applications of glyptic art.

The use of stone for sculpturing Buddhist idols commenced in the reign of the Emperor Bidatsu when (585 ) two envoys whom he had sent to Korea brought back a stone effigy of the Buddhist deity, Miroku. From that time, whenever images had to be erected in the open air, stone seems to have suggested itself as a suitable material, and the traveller in Japan often sees, set up by the roadside or enshrined at the elbow of a mountain track, little stone images of Jizo (K'shitigarbha), the protecting deity of wayfarers, the gentle god who encourages unhappy children in purgatory to pile up pebbles until the heap shall be high enough to raise them to the plains of the blessed. Scarcely less frequent are effigies of foxes seated on pedestals before the rustic shrine of Inari, the god of food, where the peasant prays for rich harvests. But none of these objects deserves attention as a specimen of sculpture. They