CHINESE FOLKLOEE AND SOME WESTERN ANALOGIES. 581 



the top of her '\awful weaving hall," where she sat with her four- 

 score maidens weaving the august garments of the deities, and throw- 

 ing upon the frightened group "a heavenlv piebald horse, which he had 

 flayed with a backward flaying." The Goddess then closed fast the 

 portal of her heavenly rock dwelling, and all the world became dark 

 jind "the voices of the myriad deities were like unto the flies in the 

 fifth moon as they swarmed, and a myriad portents of woe all arose." 

 When the crowd was assembled about the closed door, the Goddess of 

 Mirth performed a dance with a mirror, while eight hundred myriad 

 deities laughed together, and the plain of high heaven shook with the 

 noise. Opening the door a little, the Sun Goddess inquired why the 

 company rejoiced when the world was wrapped in gloom because of 

 her absence. "We are glad," they answered, "because there is a 

 deity more brilliant than thine Augustness;" and when a pardonable 

 jealousy made her come forth to see her own fair face in the mirror, 

 they cleverly pushed the door to behind her, and the earth was once 

 more bathed in light. 



It is eas}^ to exclaim against this rather unkind reflection upon fem- 

 inine weakness and vanity, that the legend was fabricated when coarse 

 and cruel man ruled society by sheer brute strength. Yet this criti- 

 cism, if made, would be far from just or true. The incident really 

 exhibits the utter inal)ility of the combined heavenly host to compel 

 one of its female members to return to their society. After their 

 successful ruse they concede her superiority by giving her precedence 

 over all other divinities of heaven, a supremacy which she has always 

 enjoyed in the hearts of the Japanese people. In the same manner 

 the authority of her sex is exhibited in Ama Terasu's punishment of 

 her brother, the Moon God, by forbidding hiui to appear in her com- 

 pany because of brutal and tyrannical conduct toward earth's inhabit- 

 ants on a melancholy occasion. The instinctive love of woman's 

 tenderness and the idealization which goes with our appreciation of 

 her gentleness and grace have made their impress everywhere upon 

 the religions as well as the folk-tales of the world. The adoration of 

 the Virgin Mary among Christians, of Tien Hou Mang among Taoists, 

 and of Kwan Yin, Goddess of Mercy, among the Buddhists of Ghina 

 and Japan, are instances of the same fundamental idea developed in 

 more complex institutions; nor will it be denied that reverence for the 

 Ewig Weibliche thus embodied is a true feeling, a right and natural 



craving. 



It is proper to emphasize this nobler attitude toward the weaker sex 

 manifested in the earlier civilization of the East, because we are too 

 often led by the customs prevailing there to-day to conclude that the 

 Asiatic has ever been regardless of woman's rights. A great store of 

 anecdotes might be adduced to establish a contrary conclusion. One 

 must be allowed here to typify the admiration excited by unselfish and 



