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and the monster died. The dragon woman, filled with joy and 

 gratitude, took the hero with her to the splendid Dragon-palace, 

 where she regaled him with delicious dishes and rewarded him 

 with a piece of silk, a sword, an armour, a temple bell and a 

 bag {tawara) of rice. She said, that there would always be silk 

 left as long as he lived, however much he might cut from it; 

 and the bag of rice would never be empty ', As to the temple 

 bell, this was the most precious treasure of the Dragon-palace. 



After his return to the world of men Hidesato offered the 

 bell to Miidera, the famous Buddhist monastery near Otsu in 

 Omi province. One day a priest of Hieizan stole it, but as it did 

 not produce any sound but the words : "I wish to go back to 

 Miidera", he angrily threw it into the valley, where it was found 

 and taken back to Miidera by the monks of this monastery. 

 Then a small snake appeared and, stroking the cracks of the 

 bell with its tail, made them vanish at once, so that the precious 

 object was uninjured as before. 



The TaiheiW^, which also tells Tawara Toda's legend, says that 

 the bell was stolen during the war between Miidera and Hieizan, 

 when the former monastery was on fire, and that it fell to 

 pieces in the valley, but was restored by the snake in one night. 

 The snake was probably the dragon woman herself or a messenger 

 from the Dragon-palace. In the version of the Taiheiki the serpent 

 which Hidesato met on the bridge did not change into a woman, 

 but into a strange small man; it was the Dragon-king himself. 

 On account of the miraculous rice bag the hero was thenceforth 

 called Tawara Toda, "Rice bag Toda" ^ 



The Yuho meisho ryaku (1697)^ mentions a Buddhist priest, 

 Nanzo by name, who lived in the Enkyu era (1069 — 1073) and 

 who for three years prayed in the temple of Kumano Gongen 



1 In a later version of the legend he got a box of white wood, three or fqur sun 

 square, called debebalto, Mj -^ iSS , "Rice supplying box". This was put above the 



ceiling, and if one placed a rice box beneath and pointed at the box above, saying: 

 "Rice for to-morrow for so many persons", the next morning 'certainly such a quantity 

 of rice was in the box beneath. This miraculous box remained in the family for many 

 ■generations, and retained the same faculty of giving rice, till it was taken down to be 

 cleaned and by mistake was dropped on the stones in the garden. Then it broke, and 

 a dead little white snake fell out of it. After that no rice was provided any more, but 

 the box and the snake are still preserved by the family. 



2 Ch. XV, p. 5. 



3 In reality the name Tawara was written ffl IS , not ^^ . Tawara, ffl IS , 



is the name of a noble family at Aid (Bungo province), and of a place in Mikawa. 



4 Ch. X, p. 39; see above, p. 170, note 4. This passage is quoted in the Nihon 

 shukyo fuzoku shi (1902), p. 247. ; . 



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