Page:Shinto, the Way of the Gods - Aston - 1905.djvu/189

Rh festival for the release of living things, which is, of course, a humanitarian Buddhist institution, wholly foreign to the rôle of a Japanese War-God.

The shintai of Hachiman may be a pillow, a fly-brush, an arm-rest, or a white stone.

Other legendary mortals, who in later times were honoured as War-Gods, are Jimmu, the founder of the Imperial dynasty, Jingō, the conqueror of Korea, Takechi no Sakune, her counsellor, and Prince Yamato-dake, the hero who subdued the east of Japan. None of these are treated as deities in the older Shinto books.

Temmangu, the God of Learning and Calligraphy, is undoubtedly a deified human being.

"There is nobody in the world, high or low, old or young, man or woman, who does not look up with reverence to the Divine power of Temmangu. More especially children who are learning to read and write, and their teachers, all without exception, enjoy his blessings. Every one is therefore desirous of knowing the exact truth concerning him. But there are many false notions handed down by vulgar tradition. Chinese scholars have wantonly done violence to the history of an awful deity by introducing Chinese ideas, while the Buddhists, on the other hand, have been guilty of disfiguring the story by all manner of forced analogies. Sad to say, there is no book in which the real facts have been set down after investigation."

The above is the exordium of a preface to a short life of Temmangu, prepared by Shintoists of the Hirata school. Of the work itself the following is a brief summary. The main facts of the story are beyond question. But the reader will see that, notwithstanding the claims put forward in the preface, this work must be taken with not a few grains of salt.

Temmangu's name as a mortal man was Sugahara Michizane. He was born in 845, and carne of a family which