164 



"Dragon-field"? The word tatsu, dragon, is, as far as I know, not 

 found in the Nihongi, except in this name, but the fact that 

 the ancient Japanese had such a word indicates that they them- 

 selves knew a kind of dragons before they were taught by 

 Koreans and Chinese about the existence of the Chinese dragons. 

 They identified these tatsu with the lung (f|), and, as we have 

 seen above (p. 138), wrote the name of their "water-fathers", 

 mizuchi, with the character ^L, kHu (the horned dragon), while 

 the word okami was written by means of a character, partly 

 consisting of rain and dragon. 



Their dragons were kami, gods ', who lived in rivers and seas, 

 valleys and mountains (in rivulets, lakes and ponds), bestowing 

 rain on their worshippers. That those river-gods could also cause 

 wind we learn from the above quoted passage of the. Nihongi^, 

 where the god of the Northern river is said to have made a 

 whirlwind arise in order to subrnerge the calabashes. So the 

 three kinds of dragons, to be found in Japan, original Japanese, 

 Chinese and Indian, all have one feature in common, i. e. the 

 faculty of causing rain ; while the winds belong to the dominion 

 of the former two. 



The Shoku Nihongi^ states that in 715 the Emperor Grwammei 

 sent messengers to pray for rain to "famous mountains and large 

 rivers" {^ ]\\ -}^ )\\), whereupon the rain came down in torrents 

 within a few days. It is remarkable that he at the same time 

 established religious festivals in the two great Buddhist temples 

 of Nara, Kofukuji and Horyuji, and despatched messengers to 

 the different Shinto temples with nusa ( ^ ^ , offerings of hemp 

 and bark-fibre *). We often observe this dualism in the measures 

 taken by the Emperors to stop drought or too much rain, 

 especially in later times, when Buddhism became more and more 

 powerful 5. 



1 Satow, The Revival of pure Shinto, Ti-ansactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, 

 App. Vol. Ill 1, p. 43; Aston, Shinto, p. 9. 



2 Ch. XI, p. 197. 3 Ch. VI, K. T. K. Vol. II, p. 92. 



4 Cf. Aston, Shinto, pp. 213 seqq. 



5 Cf. Sandai jitsuroku, Oh. V, K. T. K. Vol. IV, pp. 87 seq. : "On the fifteenth day 

 the Emperor sent messengers to the Seven temples of Famous Shinto gods near the 

 capital in order to offer nusa and to pray for rain^. .... On the sixteenth he invited 

 priests of all the great Buddhist temples, 60 men, to come to the Palace and read 

 there the Bai Hannya kyo (Mahaprajnaparamita sutra) by way of extract; this was 

 limited to a space of three days; it is a prayer for sweet rain (in the text three 



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