Page:Shinto, the Way of the Gods - Aston - 1905.djvu/98

88 island, countenances this idea. The derivation of tama-boko also lends itself to it. Tama may be rendered ball or knob as well as jewel, and the tama-boko might therefore be a shaft surmounted by a knob representing the glans, reminding us of the spears tipped with pine cones which were carried by the Bacchantes in the Dionysia. We have another Japanese case of a conventionalized phallus in the wo-bashira. Moreover, on the theory that the tama-boko is a phallus, we have a satisfactory explanation of the circumstance that tama-boko no is used as a standing epithet of michi, road, which has puzzled Japanese scholars. The tama-boko no michi would then mean "the road where phallic symbols are set up." There is abundant evidence that objects of this kind were a familiar sight by the roadsides near the capital in ancient times. The poet Tsurayuki (tenth century) has left a short poem in which he expresses his intention of praying to the Tamaboko no chiburi no kami when starting on a journey. The Chiburi no kami were the phallic road deities, protectors of travellers. Notwithstanding the Japanese poets' habit of using stock epithets without much regard to their proper meaning, this juxtaposition is highly suggestive. Another name for the phallic Sahe no kami was Chimata no kami, or road-fork-gods, because they had no temples and were worshipped by the road-sides and at cross-ways. The road between Utsunomiya and Nikkô, when I travelled along it in 1870, was still a tama-boko no michi—in the phallic sense. Another link between the hoko and the phallus is suggested by a statement in the Shiki Monogatari that the weapon which formed, and still forms, the central object in the great Goriōye festival procession at Kioto is known as the Sai no