Heavenly rock-boundary wherein to practise religious abstinence[1] on behalf of my descendants. Do ye, Ame no Koyane no Mikoto and Futo-dama[2] no Mikoto, take with you the Heavenly divine fence, and go down to the Central Land of Reed-Plains. Moreover, ye will there practise abstinence[3] on behalf of my descendants.' So she attached the two Deities to Ame no Oshi-ho-mi-mi no Mikoto and sent them down. It was when Futo-dama no Mikoto was sent that the custom first began of worshipping this Deity with stout straps[4] flung over weak shoulders when taking the place of the Imperial hand. From this, too, the custom had its origin, by which Ame no Koyane no Mikoto had charge of divine matters. Therefore he was
- ↑ This and other passages show that the Shintō place of worship might be merely a piece of ground enclosed for the purpose. The modern word for a Shintō shrine, viz. ya-shiro, house-enclosure or house-area, suggests the same inference. See Satow, "Japanese Rituals," in "T.A.S.J.," Vol. VII., Pt. II., p. 115. It will be remembered that the Roman templum and the Greek τέμενος had originally a similar signification.
- ↑ The ancestor of the Imbe, or abstainers.
- ↑ Including avoidance of ceremonial impurities, and hence used for religious worship generally. See above, note to p. 41.
- ↑ For supporting a tray on which the offerings were placed. See "T.A.S.J.," Vol. VII., p. 112.
planted round the enclosure consecrated for Shintō worship. But this interpretation is not without difficulty. In Suinin Tennō's reign we hear of a himorogi which was brought over from Corea and preserved as a sacred treasure. This could hardly have been a hedge. Another interpretation makes the himorogi an offering, and interprets the "Kuma" himorogi of the passage just referred to as an offering of bear's paws, one of the eight dainties of ancient Chinese literature. But it is not easy to see how this should be preserved as a sacred treasure.
The derivation does not help us much. Hi is no doubt sun, used metaphorically, as in hi-kagami, sun-mirror or sacred-mirror; hiko, sun-child (prince); hime, sun-female (princess). This is fairly well represented by the Chinese character 神 in the text. The remainder of the word, viz. morogi, is probably moro, a word of multitude, all, many, and gi (for ki), wood. There is a proper name, Take-morogi, where morogi is written with characters which imply this derivation. Hi-moro-gi is therefore a sacred row or group of sticks of some sort or another.
I may mention a suspicion that the himorogi may be connected, perhaps by way of a survival, with a time when the Japanese Deities were a row of posts roughly carved into human shape. See above, p. 3.
