Page:Nihongi by Aston volume 2.djvu/197

190 castle. He erected an armoury, and provided store of arrows. In his goings out and comings in he was always surrounded by an attendant company of fifty soldiers. These sturdy fellows were called the Eastern Company. The people of the various Uji came to his gate, and waited upon him. He called himself their father, and them his boys. The Aya no Atahe attended wholly upon the two houses.

4th year, Spring, 1st month. On mountain-peaks, by river-sides, or among shrines and temples, there was a something visible afar, and there was heard a humming of monkeys, as it were ten or sometimes twenty together. But when one approached to see what it might be, nothing was visible. There was still heard the sound of crying and screaming, but no one was able to distinguish any bodily form.

An old book says:—"In this year the capital was removed to Naniha, and this was an indication that the Itabuki palace would become a waste."

The men of that day said:—"These are the messengers of the Great Deity of Ise."

Summer, 4th month, 1st day. The Koryö student-priests said that their fellow-student Kura-tsukuri no Tokushi had made friends with a tiger, and had learnt from him his arts, such as to make a barren mountain change into a green mountain, or to cause yellow earth to become clear water, and all manner of wonderful arts too many to enumerate. Moreover, the tiger bestowed on him his needle, saying:—"Be watchful! be watchful, and let no one know! Treated with this, there is no disease which may not be cured." Truly, as the tiger had said, there was no disease which was not cured when treated by it. Tokushi always kept the needle concealed in a pillar. Afterwards the tiger broke the pillar and ran away, taking the needle with him. The Land of Koryö, hearing that Tokushi wished to return, put him to death by poison.

6th month, 8th day. (Prince) Naka no Ohoye secretly