^251:1 Said to be Kas'yapa Buddha, S'akyamuni's immediate predecessor.

^251:2 Kobo constantly taught that Maitreya, the disciple of S'akyamuni, who has reached to Bodhisattvaship, and is now in the Tushita heaven, from whence he came once to lecture for Asangha (see above, Chapter XVI. p. 163), will come again at the end of the age to restore all things by the confuting of heretics. This is not a universal belief among Japanese Buddhists; but it is very strongly held by the Japanese Shingon.

^251:3 In India ruling families belonging to the so-called Sun Dynast make a great deal of the Sword. Kobo Daishi, who was a Sanskritist, probably knew this, and it may have been he that pointed out the importance to the Imperial Family of Japan (also a Sun Dynasty) of the Sacred Sword. We find the same idea with Attila and the Huns, and also perhaps in King Arthur's sword Excalibur.

^252:1 This outbreak of plague is assigned in the Commentary to the year 820. Murdoch does not mention it. The Commentary passes over without a word the clause concerning the men raised from the dead. The Heart-Sutra is the Prajna Paramita Hridaya Sutra, a very short Sutra, which will be found in S.B.E.

^252:2 The Sects are not in agreement as to which is to be considered the last Sutra that Buddha preached. Some say the Nirvana teachings came last, but others give that place to the "Saddharmapundarika" or the Amida books.

^253:1 The word Iroha, like our English word "alphabet," represents the first three characters of the Japanese syllabary, as arranged by Kobo Daishi.

^253:2 This is a reference to the well-known text, of which the Iroha poem is but a paraphrase--

Shogyo mujo,
Zesho meppo
Sho metsu metsu i
Jaku metsu i raku.

"All phenomena are impermanent,
Because they are subject to the law of origination and perishing:
When this law of origination and perishing comes to an end
Calm will be found to be the true happiness."

^253:3 Hachiman, a deification of the Japanese Empress Ojin. Had Kobo been contented with identifying Japanese deities with Buddhas he would have satisfied many minds. But his introduction of unnecessary Indian deities was much resented. Nichiren, for instance, accepts Amaterasu as Dainichi, and Ojin as Hachiman, but attacks the other identifications most severely.

^254:1 Inari is the farmers' god, the god of rice. Kobo had already won the favour of the Imperial House, of the warriors, of the Fujiwaras, by his skilful identifications of deified heroes with Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. Now he claims the allegiance of the farmers. We can admire his great ingenuity; all the same, it was a terrible prostitution of the truth, and we are not astonished that the manly samurai should always have had the utmost contempt for him as an ingenious and not over-scrupulous miracle-monger.