Shinto, (the way of the gods) / by W.G. Aston.

  • William George Aston
Date:
1905
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Shinto, (the way of the gods) / by W.G. Aston. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    72/410 page 58
    Has hi no Omi. This was how it came to pass that the Has hi no Muraji superintend the burials of the Emperors'd This narrative is too much in accordance with what we know of other races in the barbaric stage of culture to allow us to doubt that we have here a genuine bit of history, though perhaps the details may be inaccurate, and the chronology is certainly wrong. In an ancient Chinese notice of Japan we read that “at this time (a.D. 247) Queen Himeko died. A great mound was raised over her, and more than a hundred of her male and female attendants followed her in death.” Funeral human sacrifice is well known to have existed among the Manchu Tartars and other races of North- Eastern Asia until modern times. The Jesuit missionary Du Halde relates that the Emperor Shunchi, of the T’sing dynasty (died 1662), inconsolable for the loss of his wife and infant child, “ signified by his will that thirty men should kill themselves to appease her manes, which cere- mony the Chinese look upon with horror, and was abolished by the care of his successor ”—the famous Kanghi. Another missionary, Alvarez Semedo, in his history of the Tartar invasion, says : “ It is the custome of the Tar- tars, when any man of quality dieth, to cast into that fire which consumes the dead corpse as many Servants, Women, and Horses with Bows and Arrows as may be fit to atend and serve them in the next life.” This custom was also practised in China in the most ancient times, though long condemned as barbarous. An ode in the ‘ Sheking ’ laments the death of three brothers who were sacrificed at the funeral of Duke Muh, B.C. 621. When the Emperor She Hwang-ti died, B.C. 209, his son Urh said, “ My father’s palace-ladies who have no children must not leave the tomb,” and compelled them all to follow him in death. Their number was very great. A King of Kokuryo in Corea died A.D. 248. He was beloved for his virtues, and many of his household wished
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