Page:Shinto, the Way of the Gods - Aston - 1905.djvu/170

160 (rough deity), and represent him with three heads, a notion which, according to Hirata, is taken from Indian myth. Usually the cooking furnace is the deity. The Japanese kitchen wench at the present day calls her cooking range Hettsui-sama, the termination sama implying personification and respect. She thinks it unlucky to lay down an edge-tool on it. But the God is also conceived of as detached from the furnace. Thus he is said to have taught the art of cooking to mankind. In that case the kama, or pot, is his shintai, or material representative. There was a Kama-matsuri (pot festival) at Kiōto before the revolution. It was celebrated at the beginning of the year, when Shinto priests read harahi. The pot was addressed in song and adjured to bring plenty of customers, usually by dyers and others in whose business caldrons were used.

Ukemochi (the Food Goddess).—Cicero, in his treatise 'De Natura Deorum,' asks whether any one is mad enough to believe that the food we eat is actually a God. The modern student of religion has no difficulty in answering this question in the affirmative. "Eating the God" is a well-known institution, from the custom of the Ainus of Yezo, who worship a bear, caught and caged for the purpose, and wind up the festival in his honour by eating him, up to the most solemn rite of Roman Catholic Christianity. An Ainu prayer, quoted by Mr. Batchelor, contains the following words: "O thou God! O thou divine cereal, do thou nourish the people. I now partake of thee. I worship thee and give thee thanks." Gratitude in the first place to, and then for, our daily bread, is an important factor in the early growth of religion. Without it we should have had no Roman Ceres, no Mexican Maize-God Centliotl, and no Ukemochi. I do not find the direct worship of our daily food in Shinto, though perhaps a trace of an older identification of the food with the God is to be recognized