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Rh doctrine imported from India; for down to that time, no one had hit on the notion of including the various fragmentary legends and local usages under one general designation. But viewing the matter broadly, we may say that the second period of Shintō, which lasted from about A.D. 550 to 1700, was one of darkness and decrepitude. The various petty sects into which it then split up, owed what little vitality they possessed to fragments of cabalistic lore filched from the baser sort of Buddhism and from Taoism. Their priests practised the arts of divination and sorcery. Only at Court and at a few great shrines, such as those of Ise and Izumo, was a knowledge of Shintō in its native simplicity maintained; and even there it is doubtful whether changes did not creep in with the lapse of ages. Most of the Shintō temples throughout the country were served by Buddhist priests, who introduced the architectural ornaments and the ceremonial of their own religion. Thus w,as formed Ryōbu Shintō,—a mixed religion founded on a compromise between the old creed and the new,—and hence partly (for other causes have contributed to produce the same effect) the tolerant ideas on theological subjects of most Japanese of the middle and lower classes, who will worship indifferently at the shrines of either faith.

The third period in the history of Shintō began about the year 1700, and continues down to the present day. It has been termed the period of the "revival of pure Shintō." During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, under the peaceful government of the Tokugawa dynasty of Shōguns, the literati of Japan turned their eyes backward on their country's past. Old manuscripts were disinterred, old histories and old poems were put into print, the old language was studied and imitated. Soon the movement became religious and political,—above all, patriotic, not to say chauvinistic. The Shōgunate was frowned on, because it had supplanted the autocracy of the heaven-descended Mikados. Buddhism and Confucianism were sneered at, because of their foreign origin. Shintō gained by all this. The great scholars Mabuchi (1697-1769), Motoori (1730-1801), and Hirata