Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/336

296 The mythical narrative of the Nihongi or "Chronicles of Japan" ( 720) is not quite so full as that of the Kojiki, and it has the disadvantage of being composed in the Chinese language. But it has one feature of great interest. The author, or some nearly contemporary writer, has added to the original text a number of variants of the current myths, thus enabling us to correct any impression of uniformity or consistency which might be left by the perusal of the Kojiki or Nihongi alone. These addenda show that there was then in existence a large body of frequently irreconcilable mythical material, which these works are attempts to harmonise. A translation of the Nihongi by the present writer forms Supplement I. of the Transactions of the Japan Society (1896).

A third source of information respecting the mythical lore of Japan is the Kiujiki. A work with this name was compiled 620, i.e. one hundred years before the Nihongi, but the book now known by that title has been condemned as a forgery by native critics. Their arguments, however, are not quite convincing. The Kiujiki is in any case a very old book, and there can be no harm in accepting it as of equal authority with the Kojiki and Nihongi. Unlike them, the Kiujiki makes no attempt to be consistent. It is a mere jumble of mythical material, distinct and conflicting versions of the same narrative being often dove-tailed into one another in the most clumsy fashion. It has not been translated.

The Norito, or liturgies of the Shinto religion, contain an element of mythical narrative. They were first reduced to writing early in the tenth century, but some of them must be in substance several hundreds of years older. A few of these prayers have been translated by Sir E. Satow for the Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, another is appended to Dr. Florenz's translation of the Nihongi now in course of publication, and the most famous of all, viz. the Ôharai or "Great Purification" may be found in the