91
the deity who is most closely connected by ties of worship with the persons comprehended ‘within’ a family or a community. The Jimmei Shiki contains the name of some Uji-gami, who were simply ancestral gods, but on the other hand, the Fujiwara family, which was descended from Ame-no-koya-ne no mikoto, worshipped Take-mika-dzuchi and Futsu-nushi as their Uji-gami. The importance attached in ancient time to the worship of the Uji-gami is shown by grants of rice and immunities with respect to passports being given by the Mikado to nobles, in order that they might perform these duties. A regulation of the year 895, after stating that the uji-gami are mostly located in the Five Home Provinces[1], says that any one who asks for leave in the second, fourth and eleventh months for the purpose of worshipping his ancestors, is to obtain it at once. It would appear from this order that the term had not at that time lost its original meaning. Hirata thinks that the confusion arose from the fact that the uji-gami, or ancestral gods, of the hereditary local chiefs called Kuni no miyatsuko were at the same time the patron gods of the locality. Their subjects would naturally use both terms as synonymous, and as the one fell out of use, the other would come to be employed for the local god, whether he were an ancestor or not.
It is suggested by the author of the Matsu no Ochiba that what is now called the Uji-gami of a village was originally the collective name under which the inhabitants worshipped their respective ancestors in a single temple, and that this family-god eventually came to be looked on us the patron-god of the locality. Or perhaps, when there was already a temple to the local god, they worshipped their ancestors in the same building for convenience sake, and thus the two were in the end confounded in one. Hirata does not approve this conjecture, but it certainly seems as probable as his own view, which, indeed, it appears to supplement. A third supposition is that Uji-gami is a corruption of Uchi no kami, the god of a family or
- ↑ Kinai, that is Yamashiro, Yamato, Idzumi, Setsu and Kawachi.
