Page:Eliza Scidmore--Jinrikisha days in Japan.djvu/175

 flaming robes were stuck all over with tiny bits of paper, on which the faithful had written their petitions, and the lanterns beside him were heaped with prayer-stones. A Hindoo-looking deity near by sat with up-lifted knee, on which he rested one arm and supported his bent and thoughtful head.

A hundred stone representatives of Buddha sit in mossy meditation under the shadow of the river bank, long branches trailing over them and vines clambering about their ancient brows. Time has rolled some from their lotus pedestals, beheaded others, and covered them all with white lichens and green moss, and Gamman, as this row of Buddhas is named, is the strangest sight among the many strange sights of the river bank. Custom ordains that one should count them, and no two persons are believed to have ever recorded the same number of images between the bridge and Kobo Daishi’s open shrine.

There is an eta village just below Nikko, peopled by these outcasts, who follow their despised calling of handling the carcasses of animals and dressing leather and furs. Their degradation seems to result not more from that Buddhist law which forbids the taking of animal life, than from the legendary belief that they are the descendants of Korean prisoners, long kept as executioners and purveyors for the imperial falcons. Colonies of etas lived for centuries without part or lot in the lives of their high-caste neighbors. After the Restoration, the power of the great nobles was curtailed, and with the gradual freeing of the lower classes from the tyranny of caste the eta became a citizen, protected by law. Prejudice still confines him to his own villages, but when he leaves them salt is no longer sprinkled on the spot where he stands to purify it.

The most harrowing situation of the old romances was the falling in love of a noble with a beautiful eta 159