56
“Ko-ji-ki,” or Records of Ancient Matters.
[Vol. VIII.
Beckoning-Ancestor-Lord[1] and His Augustness Grand-Jewel,[2] and causing them to pull out with a complete pulling the shoulder [-blade] of a true[3] stag from the Heavenly Mount Kagu,[4] and take cherry-bark[5] from the Heavenly Mount Kagu, and perform divination,[6] and pulling up by pulling its roots a true cleyera japonica[7] with five hundred [branches] from the Heavenly Mount Kagu, and taking and putting upon its upper branches the augustly complete [string] of curved jewels eight feet [long],—of five hundred jewels,—and taking and tying to the middle branches[8] the mirror eight feet [long],[9] and taking and
- ↑ Ame-no-ko-ya-ne-no-mikoto, also read Ama-no etc. and Ama-tsu etc. The signification of the syllables ko-ya, rendered “beckoning ancestor” in accordance with Motowori’s view connecting the name with the share taken by the god who bore it in the legend here narrated, is obscure. Mr. Satow thinks that Koya may be the name of a place (see these “Transactions” Vol. VII. Pt. IV. p. 400).
- ↑ Futo-tama-no-mikoto. The name is here rendered in accordance with the import of the Chinese characters with which it is written. Motowori, however, emits a plausible opinion when he proposes to consider tama as an abbreviation of tamuke, “holding in the hands as an offering,” in connection with what we are told below about this deity and Ame-no-ko-ya-ne holding the symbolic offerings.
- ↑ The word “true” (ma) here and below is not much more than an Honorific.
- ↑ We might also, though less well, translate by “Mount Kagu in Heaven.” This would suit the view of Motowori, who is naturally averse to the identification of this Mount Kagu with the well-known mountain of that name in Yamato (see Sect. VII. Note 12). But of course an European scholar cannot allow of such a distinction being drawn.
- ↑ Or perhaps the bark of the common birch is intended. The word in the original is haha-ka.
- ↑ See Mr. Satow’s already quoted note in Vol. VII. Pt. II. p. 425 et seq., and more especially pp. 430–432, of these “Transactions.”
- ↑ In Japanese saka-ki. It is commonly planted in the precincts of Shintō temples.
- ↑ We might also translate in the Singular “to a middle branch,” in order to conform to the rigid distinction which our language draws between Singular and Plural.
- ↑ A note to the edition of 1687 proposes to substitute the characters 八咫 for 八尺, and a note in the original tells us to read them not ya-ta, but ya-ata. Hereupon Motowori founds his derivation of ya-ta from ya-atama, “eight heads,” and supposes the mirror to have been, not eight feet in length, but octangular, while Moribe, who in the case of the jewels accepts the obvious interpretation “eight feet [long],” thinks that the mirror had “an eightfold flowery pattern” (ya-hana-gata) round its border. But both these etymologies are unsupported by
