Page:Shinto, the Way of the Gods - Aston - 1905.djvu/263

Rh if he has wounded somebody, or, if he has accidentally hurt himself, so that more than three drops of blood have flowed, for that day. If he has vomited or passed blood, he must not worship for two days, if he has an abscess, until it is cured, for seven days after moxa is applied, and for three days in the case of the operator. At the present day the common word for wound is kega, that is to say, defilement.

Baldness and emaciation were regarded as disqualifications for the position of Imperial Princess consecrated to the service of the Gods

It was no doubt the fear of contagion and an instinctive feeling of horror and repulsion which inspired this class of taboos. Contact with death, disease, and wounds are displeasing to living human beings, and therefore to the Gods. In ancient Greece it was not themis for the Gods to look on death. There is an obvious absurdity in referring such incidents of religious ritual to the principle that we must seek for the origin of forms of divine worship in observances towards the dead.

Eating Flesh.—Eating flesh is not included among the causes of uncleanness enumerated in the Kojiki or in the Ohoharahi. A Chinese notice of Japan written centuries before the dawn of Japanese history says that the "abstainers" (medicine men) of Japan were not allowed to comb their hair, to wash, to eat flesh meat, or to approach women. But this was perhaps asceticism rather than religion. A prohibition of the eating of the flesh of the ox, the horse, the dog, the monkey, and the fowl in A.D. 647 was certainly due to Buddhist influences. The first hint that it was offensive to the Shinto Gods to eat flesh is found in the Kogo-jiuï, where it is stated that when the son of Mitoshi no Kami saw that Ohotokonushi no Kami had given beef to his field labourers he spat upon their offering and