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Rh improbably some spirit or other being associated essentially with the broom, would appear to be indicated by certain of the practices to be noted below. In China a purificatory sweeping seemingly is sometimes looked upon as symbolic, rather than as actively cleansing, for in the case of a certain procession whose purpose is the expulsion of a pestilence, "A few men with brooms precede it. They cleanse the road for the gods, but without much display of energy, it being taken for granted that all the people have done this work previously before their own doors; moreover, according to many, the sweeping merely purports removal of the plague, and of the spectres which cause it."

In Japan, men bearing brooms still form part of the van of a funeral procession according to the Shinto practice, just as broom-bearers were included in the funeral cortege of a deceased Emperor during the early centuries of the Christian era, and in that of a prince in the seventh century We may reasonably conjecture that probably the original purpose of the broom-bearers was the clearing of the road of evil supernatural influences, as in the case of the Chinese broom-bearers just referred to. It seems possible, too, that they may have had as a part of their duties a purifying sweeping of the ground selected for the actual interment, or perhaps that to be used for ceremonies near the grave, for we learn that "an old custom, still surviving in remote districts, is for a person not connected with the deceased by blood, and therefore free from death-pollution, to sweep the ground selected for the grave, to spread a rush-mat on it, and on a table placed on the mat to erect a himorogi ('temporary tabernacle') for the earth-god." But the preservative powers still attributed to the broom in China (cf. p. 174, supra) suggest