Page:Eliza Scidmore--Jinrikisha days in Japan.djvu/326

 certain number of years, and they may leave the priesthood if they wish. All the brotherhood wear the loose, flowing purple trousers, white gauze coats, and black, helmet-shaped caps prescribed by the Shinto rules; and besides making the morning and evening offerings to the gods, and conducting special ceremonies on the two purification days of the year, they play the ancient flute and drum, and chant a hymn while the sacred dance is given. For a poetic, philosophical, meditative, or lazy man nothing could be more congenial than this life. Hurry, novelty, and the rush of events come not near Nara, which is in the land “wherein it seemed always afternoon.”

The pilgrims, who trudge from the most distant provinces with bell and beads and staff, make up the greater number of visitors, and their white garments, straw sandals, cloaks, and hats, are of a fashion centuries old. Bands of these votaries go through the temple courts, in charge of voluble guides, who intone a description of the places in the way of their craft the world over. One or two old men seem always to be sauntering up the long avenue, stopping frequently to rest, praying at every shrine, and muttering to themselves praises of the sacred place. Their wrinkled faces glow with pleasure, and they delight in watching the deer, to whom the tinkle of a pilgrim’s bell or iron-ringed staff is always a promise of cakes.

To the antiquarian, Nara is full of interest. The temples, founded in the seventh and eighth centuries, were the first Buddhist sanctuaries in Japan; Buddhism, coming from India by way of China and Korea, having found its first home here when Nara was the imperial capital. Four empresses and three emperors held the sceptre between 708 and 782, and all the region is historic ground. The great city, that covered the plain for centuries after that imperial day, has shrunken to a small provincial town, still eloquent of the past. The Shinto 310