I cannot help thinking that the identification of the Japanese Buddhas and Bodhisattvas with those of India is not sufficiently specified by Eitel and others as an identification of origin only. They have become totally transformed here,--they have undergone perfect avatars, and are not now the same. Shaka, Amida, Yakushi, Fud[=o], Dainichi, etc., may have been in India distinct personalities: in Japan they are but forms of the One,--as indeed are the innumerable Buddhas of the Lotus of the True Law. All are one. And Kshitigarbha is not our Japanese Jiz[=o],--and Kwannon is not Avalokitesvara, and the Ni-[=o] are not the figures of Indra, and Emma-O is not Yama. "They were and are not." Don't you agree with me that the popular idea of a divinity is an element of weight in such questions of doubt as we are chatting about?
With every wish that you may enjoy your journey in Shikoku, I remain, most truly ever,
P. S.... I have been teaching three days, and find no difference in the boys from those of Izumo,--they are gentle, polite, manly and eager. But I am greatly hampered by the books. There are not books enough, and the reading-books chosen are atrociously unsuited for the students. Fancy "Silas Marner" and "John Halifax," with the long double-compound complex semiphilosophical sentences of George Eliot, as text-books for boys who can scarcely speak in English! A missionary's choice! Ye gods of old Japan! I think the Mombush[=o] is economical in the wrong direction. Too much money cannot be spent on good reading-books. Less money on buildings and more for books would give better results. Buildings worth a quarter of a million (as building costs in America), and "Lovell's Library" and "George Munro's" piracies bought for text-books. I could scream!!
DEAR [=O]TANI,--Your long and most interesting letter gave me much pleasure, as well as much information. I am very glad to have had my questions so nicely answered; for I am writing an essay on Shint[=o] home-worship in Izumo,--all about the _kamidana_, etc. I know a good deal about general forms and rules, but very little about the reverence paid _in the house_ to the family dead (forefathers, father, mother, dead children, etc.)--in Shint[=o], which is very interesting to know. I think much of the modern customs shows a Chinese origin, though the spirit of pure Shint[=o] seems to be wholly Japanese.