Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/358

318 are meant. The word was applied directly to the seas or mountains themselves, as being very awful things."

The myths of Japan contain abundant traces of the state and authority which surrounded the Mikados being ascribed by analogy to the Sun-Goddess and other celestial beings. But just as the ancient Mikados were by no means absolute monarchs, none of the Shinto Gods is what we understand by a Supreme Being. They are neither omnipotent, omniscient, nor immortal. The first deity in point of time cannot be regarded as supreme. The various authorities put forward several candidates for this position, all of whom are shadowy personages who are seldom or never mentioned afterwards. They are in no sense the chief gods of Shinto. Nor can we allow the title of Supreme Being to the Creator-deity, Izanagi, who was born and died, not to mention the eclipses of his marital authority, or of his having to take hastily to flight from the Ugly Females of Yomi. The Sun-Goddess, although the most eminent of the Shinto Gods, is grossly insulted by Susa no wo, and instead of inflicting on him the punishment which he deserves, hides in a cave from which she is partly enticed, partly dragged by the other deities. This is not the behaviour of a Supreme Being. When Susa no wo is punished, it is by a Council of the Gods, the large share taken by which in the Government of Heaven, shows that the celestial constitution, like its earthly counterpart, was an essentially limited monarchy.

The word "infinite," familiar to Buddhism, I do not find in the Shinto record. Toko, which we translate by "eternal," has a positive and not a negative signification, and means "permanent" rather than "without end." It occurs in the name of the deity Kuni-toko-tachi (earth-eternal-stand), and we also meet with it in the word toko-yo, the eternal world. We are told in the Nihongi that in 644 a man in the east country, then the most barbarous part of Japan, urged his fellow-villagers to worship "the God of the