Page:Shinto, the Way of the Gods - Aston - 1905.djvu/375

Rh in order to frighten wild beasts and prevent them from tearing up the dead. We are told that in the reign of Horikawa (1099) nearly all the shrines were in ruin.

The Onyôshi, or official college of professors of the Yiri and Yang natural philosophy of China, who were equally prepared to compute an almanac or to exorcise a demon, were for many centuries entrusted with the performance of the harahi (purification ceremonies), and other Shinto functions.

The accompanying illustration shows another form of the admixture of Buddhism with Shinto which prevailed until quite recently. Of the three shrines here represented, the central only is dedicated to a Shinto Deity, viz., Atago, or the Fire-God, who, moreover, has the Buddhist epithet Daigongen affixed to his name. The other two are dedicated to the Buddhist deities Benzaiten and Bishamon.

The myths of the Kojiki and Nihongi did not escape from admixture with Indian cosmology and Chinese philosophy, a process which yielded the strangest results. Thus a fourteenth-century writer described the Yin and Yang as evolving by their mutual interaction Izanagi and Izanami, the earlier generations of the Nihongi story being omitted. Their child, the Sun Goddess, proves to be a manifestation of Buddha, one of whose services to humanity was at some far remote period to subdue the "Evil Kings of the Six Heavens" of Indian myth, and compel them to withdraw their opposition to the spread of the true doctrine (that is, Buddhism) in Japan.

Still there were a few exceptions to the general decay. At the two great shrines of Ise and Idzumo, the old cult was maintained in tolerable purity, and doubtless many local shrines were preserved by their insignificance from Buddhist encroachment. It should not be forgotten, moreover, that, although the history of Shinto under foreign influence was one of neglect and decay, in so far as its original elements were concerned, it borrowed from