Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/341

Rh he disregarded her prayer. Breaking off the end-tooth of the comb which he had in his hair, he made of it a torch, and looked in where his wife was lying. Her body was already putrid and swarmed with maggots, and the "Eight Thunders" had been generated in various parts of it. Izanami was enraged at her husband for exposing her nakedness, and sent the "Eight Thunders" and the "Ugly Females" of Yomi to attack him. Izanagi took to flight and used various expedients to delay his pursuers. He first flung down his head dress. It became changed to grapes, which the "Ugly Females" stopped to gather and eat. Then he threw down his comb. It turned into bamboo- shoots, which the "Ugly Females" pulled up and ate before continuing their pursuit. Izanami herself overtook him at the "Even Pass of Yomi," where the formula of divorce was pronounced by Izanagi, and their final parting took place.

The usual etymology of Yomi connects it with Yo or Yoru, night. But this word has a suspicious resemblance to Yama, the name of the Indian God of the lower world. Mr. Andrew Lang has noted the fact that there are points of resemblance between the Japanese story and the Indian myth. In both we are told of the fatal consequences of tasting the food of the lower regions so well known to mythologists. It will be remembered that Proserpine's return to the upper world became impossible when once

On returning from Yomi, Izanagi's first care was to bathe in the sea, in order to purify himself from the pollutions which he had contracted by his visit to the Land of the Dead. A number of deities were generated by this process, among whom were the Gods of Good- and Ill-luck, and certain ocean deities held to be the ancestors of some