Page:Shinto, the Way of the Gods - Aston - 1905.djvu/107

Rh the fierceness of his divine nature there was a commotion in the sea, and the hills and mountains groaned aloud as he passed upwards. The Sun-Goddess, in alarm, arrayed herself in manly garb, and confronted her brother wearing her royal necklace of jewels, and armed with sword and bow and arrows. The pair stood face to face on opposite sides of the River of Heaven. Susa no wo then assured his sister of the purity of his intentions, and proposed to her that they should each produce children by biting off and crunching parts of the jewels and swords which they wore and blowing away the fragments. Eight children born in this way were worshipped in after times as the Hachôji, or eight princely children. They figure largely in the Shôjiroku genealogies of Japanese noble families. Through one of them, named Masa-ya-a-katsu-kachi-haya-hi-ama-no-oshi-ho-mi-mi, the Mikados trace their descent from the Sun-Goddess. A-Katsu means I conquer. The allusion is to Susa no wo's having triumphantly proved the purity of his intentions by producing male children.

Susa no wo's subsequent proceedings were very rude and unseemly. He broke down the divisions between the rice-fields belonging to his sister, sowed them over again, let loose in them the piebald colt of Heaven, and committed nuisances in the hall where she was celebrating the solemn festival of first-fruits. The climax to his misdeeds was to flay a piebald colt of Heaven with a backward flaying and to fling it into the sacred weaving-hall where the Sun-Goddess was engaged in weaving the garments of the deities. She was so deeply indignant at this last insult