him, the Deity Brave-August-Name-Firm said: “I will obey. Slay me not. I will go to no other place but this, neither will I go against the command of my father the Deity Master-of-the-Great-Land. I will not go against the words of the Deity Eight-Fold-Thing-Sign-Master. I will yield up this Central Land of Reed-Plains according to the command of the august child of the Heavenly Deities.” So they returned again, and asked the Deity Master-of-the-Great-Land [saying]: “Thy children the two Deities the Deity Thing-Sign-Master and the Deity Brave-August-Name-Firm have said that they will follow and not go against the commands of the august child of the Heavenly Deities. So how is thy heart?” Then he replied, saying: “According as the two Deities my children have said, I too will not go against them. In accordance with the [heavenly] command, I will at once yield up this Central Land of Reed-Plains. But as to my place of residence, if ye will make stout the temple-pillars on the nethermost rock-bottom, and make high the cross-beams to the Plain of High Heaven like the rich and perfect august nest where the august child of the Heavenly Deities rules the succession of Heaven’s sun, and will deign to establish me, I will hide in the eighty (less than a hundred) road-windings, and wait on him. Again, as for my children the hundred and eighty Deities, if the Deity Eight-Fold-Thing-Sign-Master will be the Deities’ august rear and van and will respectfully serve them, there will be no disobedient Deities.”[1]
- ↑ I.e. “If ye will build me a temple founded on the nethermost rocks and reaching up to Heaven like unto the august residence of the Heavenly Deity who is coming to replace me as sovereign upon earth, I will vanish to Hades, and serve him there; and as for the Gods my children, none of them will rebel against their new Lord, if the Deity Thing-Sign-Master be accepted as the protector of his escort.”—Some of the expressions in the original stand in need of explanation. Su, here rendered “nest” in accordance with the character 巢 employed in writing it, may mean “lattice” (簀), and refer to the lattice-work over the hole in the chimney of the roof. The “succession of Heaven’s sun” (in Japanese ama tsu hi-tsugi) means the inheritance of the sovereignty of Japan, or of Idzumo. Momotaradzu (“less than a hundred”) is the Pillow-Word for ya-so, “eighty,” and for some other words; it must be disregarded in making sense of any sentence in which it occurs. The “eighty road-windings” signify, says Motowori, “an immensely long way,” and are here meant for the long road leading to
