Page:Shinto, the Way of the Gods - Aston - 1905.djvu/183

Rh the emotion is the same, the Japanese conception differs. Musubi means growth or production. It is connected with the word umu, to bear, to bring forth, and with musu, to grow, to be born. Musu is said of moss growing on a stone and of ice forming on water. Musuko, a boy, and musume, a girl, contain the same element. As a God's name, Musubi is usually found with one of the laudatory adjectives, taka, high, or kamu, divine, prefixed to it. To these the honorific particle mi is commonly added, giving the forms Taka-mi-musubi and Kamu-mi-musubi. Even in the Kojiki and Nihongi these are recognized as two distinct deities. The Yengishiki (901-922) enumerates three more Musubi deities, and to these still others might be added. In poetry a single God Musubi is alone met with, and the Wamiōshō recognizes but one such deity. Probably the division into several persons was an esoteric refinement of which the people took little heed.

Whether we have regard to his name or to the somewhat meagre notices in the Kojiki and Nihongi, there is nothing spiritual in the Japanese conception of Musubi. But the scribes learned in Chinese who committed the old myths to writing sometimes use characters which imply a spiritual view of his nature. They mean "producing-spirit."

He is also called mi oya, or august parent. Hirata thinks that Taka-musubi and Kamu-musubi are husband and wife, the Kamurogi (progenitor) and Kamuromi (progenitrix) of the norito, and condemns his master Motoöri for holding that we have in these deities a unity in duality and a duality in unity. But his reasons are not quite convincing, and there is a passage in the Kojiki which cannot be reconciled with his view. The same author points out the resemblance of this God to the Hindu Siva, who represents the fructifying principle, the generating power that pervades the universe, producing sun, moon, stars, animals, and plants. Siva is represented in his temples by a phallus,