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The islanders are proud of their history, and have preserved it with the greatest care, the annals of cities and families being as carefully preserved as those of the state. Jimmu the conqueror, as his story is told in the Kojiki, met strange and frightful enemies on his march.
But Chuai rejected the advice with scorn, and the Kojiki alleges that the outraged deities punished him with death, though doubtless a Kumaso arrow was the instrument. His demise was carefully concealed, and the Empress, mustering the troops, took vengeance upon the Kumaso.
Further, in studying the "Kojiki," we must remember that the sacred writings sprang out of the religion, and that the system was not an evolution from the book. Customs, ritual, faith and prayer existed long before they were written about or recorded in ink.
The Kojiki told nothing of life hereafter, and kept silence on a hundred points at which human curiosity is sure to be active, and at which the Yoga system was voluble. Buddhism came with a set of visible symbols which should attract the eye and fire the imagination, and within ethical limits, the passions also. It was a mixed and variegated system, a resultant of many forces.
A dragon is three-fourths serpent, and both the dragon and the serpent are prominent figures, perhaps the most prominent of the kami or gods in human or animal form in the "Kojiki" and other early legends of the gods, though the crocodile, crow, deer, dog, and other animals are kami.
Inari the name by which the Fox-God is generally known, signifies 'Load- of-Rice. But the antique name of the Deity is the August-Spirit-of- Food: he is the Uka-no-mi-tama-no-mikoto of the Kojiki. In much more recent times only has he borne the name that indicates his connection with the fox-cult, Miketsu-no-Kami, or the Three-Fox-God.
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