Page:Eliza Scidmore--Jinrikisha days in Japan.djvu/344

 is displayed. For a consideration, and for the welfare of the temple treasury, the mass may be repeated at any hour. The celebrant, a very old priest, when called from the monastery, came in splendid apparel of brocade and gauze, and entering the little temple, knelt, touched a silver-voiced gong, and prayed before a gilded shrine with closed doors and a wealth of golden lotus ornaments. Then he slowly drew forth from an altar recess a large bundle, covered with rich red and gold brocade and tied with heavy silk cords, laid it reverently on a low table before the altar, and, with a muttered chant of prayer, untied and laid back bag after bag of old brocade, each lined with silk of some contrasting color and tied with thick cords. After the ninth bag was opened, an upright case, covered with more brocade, appeared, lifting which, the priest produced a little rock-crystal reliquary, and set it upon a golden lotus as a pedestal. The reliquary was in the shape of the conventional Buddhist tomb—a cube, a sphere, and a pyramid, placed one above the other—and the bits of flawless crystal were held together by silver wires. In the hollow sphere lay the dingy relic, that rattled like a pebble when it was turned for one to see it. The holy man never once paused iii his muttered chant from the time he lifted the precious bundle from the altar until he had replaced the ten silken wrappings and set the sacred relic back in its niche.

In one of the buildings are queer oven-shaped humps in the floor, covering secret chambers, where for twelve centuries offerings of gold have been dropped for the rebuilding of the temples in case of fire. These hoards cannot be touched except on the occurrence of the calamity feared, and the priests even resisted the wish of the Imperial Art Commission to break open the vaults to examine the coins believed to be there. A Boston art connoisseur, who visited Horiuji a few years ago, and found its priests poor and its art treasures in need of 328