CHAPTER XIX.

The Care of the Dead.

(A Shinshu Funeral.)

In the older Jodo Sect, there is a pretty custom connected with the death of a believer. A picture of Amida is hung on the wall near the head of the sick bed, and a silken or other cord, fastened at the one end to the picture, is fastened at the other to the wrist of the dying man. It is a vivid representation of a celebrated chapter in the Hokekyo, in which the glorified S'akyamuni, whom the Amidaist sects identify with Amida, is represented as throwing a rope (the merits of His Great Vow) into the midst of a burning house (this transitory life), in order that its frail and erring occupants may lay hold of it by faith, and be thus drawn out of the midst of the conflagration to the safe refuge of the Garden outside. The ceremony is, therefore, a symbolic expression of the belief of the Jodo disciples, that it is this salvation that is put into operation at the moment of the believer's death.

In the Shinshu, the ceremony would be meaningless, for it is the firm conviction of the disciple of Shinran that the Rope of Salvation was thrown to him long ago, that he seized it at the moment when he fixed his faith on Amida, and that the only thing that remains for the dying man to do is to await death with thankfulness, and a with sure and certain hope.

Perhaps the best way to set forth the beliefs and practices of the Shinshu with regard to the solemn

question of death will be to describe an actual Shinshu funeral. Such a description has been furnished me by my friend, Mr. K. Tachibana, himself a priest of the Soto Sect. It is taken from an account which appeared in the Magazine called Fuzoku Gappo at the time of the obsequies of Kosho, 21st Abbot of the Eastern Hongwanji, at Kyoto, who died on the 15th January 1894.

Three days after death, on the morning of the 18th, the corpse, arrayed in ecclesiastical vestments of a goko [**] colour, was placed in a sitting posture on a Kyokuroku, or camp-chair, in one of the official rooms of his private residence. Devout laymen were constantly in attendance, and at intervals, as groups of mourners passed through to pay their last respects to the deceased prelate, the light curtain of split bamboo was silently raised, so that they might gaze freely upon the dead, the face, however, being veiled so that only the eyes were visible. [*+]

On the evening of the following day the corpse was washed (for the second time), [*++] put into a coffin, and removed to the Head Temple, where a special mortuary chapel had been fitted up, with a picture of Amida hanging in a conspicuous place behind the coffin. Here it was kept for ten days, constantly attended by priests in minor orders, who silently burned incense before it every ten minutes, and watched by relatives and friends, by the ladies of

the late Abbot's household, and by representatives of Imperial personages, etc.