Kino Momoye once ridiculed some of Kobo Daishi's characters, and said that one of them resembled a conceited wrestler. On the night he made this foolish jest Momoye dreamed that a wrestler struck him blow upon blow--moreover, that his antagonist leapt upon his body, causing him considerable pain. Momoye awoke, and cried aloud in his agony, and as he cried he saw the wrestler suddenly change into the character he had so unwisely jeered at. It rose into the air, and went back to the tablet from whence it had come.
Momoye was not the only man who imprudently scoffed at the great Kobo Daishi's work. Legend records that one named Onomo Toku said that the saint's character _Shu_ was far more like the character "rice." That night Onomo Toku had good reason to regret his folly, for in a dream the character _Shu_ took bodily form and became a rice-cleaner, who moved up and down the offender's body after the manner of hammers that were used in beating this grain. When Onomo Toku awoke it was to find that his body was covered with bruises and that his flesh was bleeding in many places.
When Kobo Daishi was about to leave China and return to his own country he went down to the seashore and threw his _vajra_[3] across the ocean waves, and it was afterwards found hanging on the branch of a pine-tree at Takano, in Japan.
We are not told anything about Kobo Daishi's voyage to his own land; but directly he arrived in Japan he gave thanks for the divine protection he had received during his travels. On the Naked Mountain he offered incantations of so powerful a nature that the once barren mountain became covered with flowers and trees.
Kobo Daishi, as time advanced, became still more holy. During a religious discussion the Divine Light streamed from him, and he continued to perform many great marvels. He made brackish water pure, raised the dead to life, and continued to commune with certain gods. On one occasion Inari,[4] the God of Rice, appeared on Mount Fushimé and took from the great saint the sacrifice he offered. "Together, you and I," said Kobo Daishi, "we will protect this people."
In A.D. 834 this remarkable saint died, and we are told that a very great gathering, both lay and priestly, wept at the graveyard of Okunoin, in Koya, where he was buried. His death, however, by no means meant a sudden cessation of miracles on his part, for when the Emperor Saga died "his coffin was mysteriously borne through the air to Koya, and Kobo himself, coming forth from his grave, performed the funeral obsequies." Nor did the wonders cease with this incident, for the Emperor Uda received from Kobo Daishi the sacred Baptism. When the Imperial Messenger to the temple where Kobo Daishi was worshipped was unable to see the face of this great saint, Kobo "guided the worshipper's hand to touch his knee. Never, as long as he lived, did the Messenger forget that feeling!"