the Deity Master-of-the-Great-Land, saying: “Thy son the Deity Thing-Sign-Master has now spoken thus. Hast thou other sons who should speak?” Hereupon he spoke again, saying: “There is my other son, the Deity Brave-August-Name-Firm.[1] There is none beside him.” While he was thus speaking, the Deity Brave-August-Name-Firm came up, bearing on the tips of his fingers a thousand-draught rock,[2] and said: “Who it is that has come to our land, and thus secretly talks? If that be so,[3] I should like to have a trial of strength. So I should like to begin by taking thine august hand.” So on his letting him take his august hand, his touch at once turned it into an icicle, and again his touch turned it into a sword-blade.[4] So then he was frightened and drew back. Then on the Brave-Awful-Possessing-Male-Deity wishing to take the hand of the Deity Brave-August-Name-Firm, and asking permission to take it in return, he grasped and crushed it as if it were taking a young reed, and cast it aside, upon which [the Deity Brave-August-Name-Firm] fled away. So when [the Brave-Awful-Possessing-Male-Deity] pursuing after him, came up with him at the Sea of Suha[5] in the land of Shinanu,[6] and was about to slay
- ↑ Take-mi-na-gata-no-kami. The interpretation of the name is that proposed by Motowori.
- ↑ I.e., a rock which it would take a thousand men to lift.
- ↑ This expression seems here, as Motowori says, to be used in the sense of “Come on!” It has survived in the modern word saraba, which sometimes has that meaning.
- ↑ I.e., the Brave-Awful-Possessing-Male-Deity’s hand turned first into an icicle and next into a sword-blade on being touched by the Deity Drave-August-Name-Firm, to the alarm and hurt of the latter.
- ↑ I.e., the Lake of Suha. No satisfactory etymalogy of the name is forthcoming.
- ↑ In later times called Shinano. The usual derivation of the word is that which connects it with shina-zaka, “mountainous ascents,”—an appropriate enough name for the province in question. It is, however, more probably derived from shina, the name of a tree resembling the lime (Tiliu conlata) and nu or no, “moor.”
his hands crossed back to back (in token of consent), transformed his boat into a green fence of branches, and disappeared.” A careful comparison of the remarks in Motowori’s Commentary (vol. XIV. pp. 16–19) with those in Hirata’s “Exposition of the Ancient Histories” (Vol. XXII, pp. 50–55) and with the text itself, as also with the text of the parallel passage in the “Chronicles,” has however left no doubt in the mind of the translator that Hirata’s view is the correct one.
