Who was the wonder-worker that annexed the Land of the Gods to Buddhadom and re-read the Kojiki as a sutra, and all Japanese history and traditions as only a chapter of the incarnations of Buddha?

K[=o]b[=o] the Wonder Worker.

The Philo and Euhemerus of Japan was the priest Kukai, who was born in the province of Sanuki, in the year 774.  He is better known by his posthumous title K[=o]b[=o] Daishi, or the Great Teacher who promulgates the Law.  By this name we shall call him.  About his birth, life and death, have multiplied the usual swaddling bands of Japanese legend and tradition,[10] and to his tomb at the temple on Mount K[=o]-ya, the Campo Santo of Japanese Buddhism, still gather innumerable pilgrims.  The “hall of ten thousand lamps,” each flame emblematic of the Wisdom that saves, is not, indeed, in these days lighted annually as of old; but the vulgar yet believe that the great master still lives in his mausoleum, in a state of profoundly silent meditation.  Into the hall of bones near by, covering a deep pit, the teeth and “Adam’s apple” of the cremated bodies of believers are thrown by their relatives, though the pit is cleared out every three years.  The devotees believe that by thus disposing of the teeth and “Adam’s apple,” they obtain the same spiritual privileges as if they were actually entombed there, that is, of being born again into the heaven of the Bodhisattva or the Pure Land of Absolute Bliss, by virtue of the mystic formulas repeated by the great master in his lifetime.

Let us sketch the life of K[=o]b[=o],

First named Toto-mono, or Treasure, by his parents, who sent him to Ki[=o]t[=o] to be educated for the priesthood, the youth spent four years in the study of the Chinese classics.  Dissatisfied with the teachings of Confucius, he became a disciple of a famous Buddhist priest, named Iwabuchi (Rock-edge or throne).  Soon taking upon himself the vows of the monk, he was first named Kukai, meaning “space and sea,” or heaven and earth.[11] He overcame the dragons that assaulted him, by prayers, by spitting at them the rays of the evening star which had flown from heaven into his mouth and by repeating the mystic formulas called Dharani.[12] Annoyed by hobgoblins with whom he was obliged to converse, he got rid of them by surrounding himself with a consecrated imaginary enclosure into which they were unable to enter against his will.

We mention these legends only to call the attention to the fact that they are but copies of those already accepted in China at that time, and are the logical and natural fruit of the Tantra school at which we have glanced.  In 804, K[=o]b[=o] was appointed to visit the Middle Kingdom as a government student.  By means of his clever pen and calligraphic skill he won his way into the Chinese capital.  He became the favored disciple of a priest who taught him the mystic doctrines of the Yoga.  Having acquired the whole of the system, and equipped himself with a large library of Buddhist doctrinal works and still more with every sort of ecclesiastical furniture and religious goods, he returned to Japan.