Page:Shinto, the Way of the Gods - Aston - 1905.djvu/256

246, and robbery, none of which is so much as mentioned in the Ohoharahi. Indeed we could scarcely expect to find such offences noticed in it, as the application of the criminal law in these cases places the guilty persons far beyond the reach of a purifying process.

In an organized community like the ancient Japanese there must have been many torts recognized by public opinion. We know that adultery and dishonesty were punishable. Yet Shinto takes no notice of them. The only civil wrongs singled out for religious denunciation relate to agriculture. The ancient authorities enumerate, among the misdeeds of Susa no wo, "breaking down the divisions of rice fields," "filling up irrigation ditches," "sowing seed over again," with one or two other offences of a similar kind, and the Ohoharahi includes them in its schedule of sins which require absolution. But surely rights of property (we can recognize germs of them in the lower animals) are long antecedent to religion, and offences against them are recognized as offences against man before they became sins against God.

Moreover, the Ohoharahi is wanting in the first essential of a criminal law. It provides no fixed punitive sanction. It is true that the culprit was in some cases obliged to supply at his own cost the necessary offerings for the ceremony, and that practically this amounted to a fine. The original intention, however, was not to punish the offender, but to avert the wrath of the Gods. And it must be remembered that individual cases of purification were exceptional. For the offences of the nation generally, which it was the main object of the Ohoharahi to absolve, no punishment was practicable, or indeed dreamt of. The Ohoharahi fines of purificatory offerings may have contributed to a system of criminal law, but they were certainly not its main source. The case of Japan seems to prove