Page:Kojiki by Chamberlain.djvu/191

] of High Heaven, the soot on the heavenly new lattice of the gable of His Augustness the Wondrous-Divine-Producer-the-August-Ancestor hang down eight hand-breadths; and as for what is below the earth, I will bake down to the nethermost rock-bottom, and,—the fishing sailors, who spread their thousand-fathom ropes of paper-mulberry and angle, having with many shouts drawn in and landed the large-mouthed small-finned perch,—I will offer up the heavenly true fish-food so that the split bamboos bend.” The translator has followed Moribe in the interpretation of the first part and Hirata in the interpretation of the latter part of this extremely difficult passage, which is a crux to all the commentators, but whose general sense at least is this: “I will continue drilling fire for the God’s kitchen, until the soot hangs down from the roof of the temple of the Ancestral Deity in Heaven above, and until the earth below is baked down to its nethermost rocks; and with the fire thus drilled will I cook for him the fish brought in by the fishermen, and present them to him in baskets woven of split bamboos which will bend beneath their weight.”—Another plausible interpretation of the original expression rendered by these last two words is that they are simply the Pillow-Word for towowo-towowo ni, “bending.” The rope with which the fishermen are supposed to have angled is described in detail by Hirata (“Exposition of the Ancient Histories,” Vol. XXIV. p. 21) as a long rope from which other strings, each with a hook attached, depended, and is said by him to be still in use in the provinces of Shimofusa (Shimōsa) and Hitachi. The “lattice of the gable” must be understood to mean bamboo lattice covering a hole beneath the gable, which served as a chimney. Motowori’s remarks on this passage will be found in Vol. XIV. pp. 39–42 of his Commentary, and Moribe’s on the words to-daru ama no nihi-su (rendered “on the heavenly new lattice of the gable”) in his “Examination of Difficult Words,” Vol. II. pp. 26–29; the latter especially are well worth perusal by the student. Mr. Satow, in one of the notes to his translation of the Rituals, (See Vol. IX, Pt. II, p. 209 of these “Transactions”), gives a somewhat divergent rendering of this passage, following, as he does, the interpretation given by Motowori. It is as follows: “The fire which I have drilled will I burn until the soot of the rich and sufficing heavenly new nest of the Kami-musubi in heaven hangs down many hand-breadths long, and the earth below will I bake down to its bottom-most rocks, and stretching a thousand fathoms of paper-mulberry rope, will draw together and bring ashore the fisherman’s large-mouthed small-finned suzuki, [and] will offer up the heavenly fish-food on bending split bamboos.” So the Brave-Awful-Possessing-Male-Deity re-ascended [to Heaven], and reported how he had subdued and pacified the Central Land of Reed-Plains.