In this way, K[=o]b[=o] arranged a sort of clearing-house or joint-stock company in which the Bodhisattvas, kami and other miscellaneous beings, in either the native or foreign religion, were mutually interchangeable.  In a large sense, this feat of priestly dexterity was but the repetition in history, of that of Asanga with the Brahmanism and Buddhism of India three centuries before.  It was this Asanga who wrote the Yoga-chara Bhumi.  The succession of syncretists in India, China and Japan is Asanga, Hiuki[=o] and K[=o]b[=o].

The Happy Family of Riy[=o]bu.

Nevertheless this attempt at making a happy family and ploughing with an ox and ass in the same yoke, has not been an unqualified success.  It will sometimes happen that one god escapes the classification made by the Buddhists and slips into the fold of Shint[=o], or vice versa; while again the label-makers and pasters—­as numerous in scholastic Buddhism as in sectarian Christendom—­have hard work to make the labels stick.  A popular Gon-gen or Dai-Mi[=o]-jin, whose name and renown has for centuries attracted crowds of pilgrims, and yielded fat revenues as regularly as the autumn harvests, is not readily surrendered by the old Buddhist proprietors, however cleverly or craftily the bonzes may yield outward conformity to governmental edicts.  On the other hand, the efforts, both archaeological and practical, which have been made in recent years by fiercely zealous Shint[=o]ists, savor of the smartness of New Japan more than they suggest either sincerity or edification.  It often requires the finest tact on the part of both the strenuous Buddhists and the stalwart purists of Shint[=o], to extricate the various gods out of the mixture and mess of Riy[=o]bu Shint[=o], and to keep them from jostling each other.

This reclaiming and kidnapping of gods and transferring them from one camp to another, has been especially active since 1870, when, under government auspices, the Riy[=o]bu temples were purged of all Buddhist idols, furniture and influences.  The term Dai Mi[=o] Jin, or Great Illustrious Spirit, is no longer officially permitted to be used of the old kami or gods of Shint[=o], who were known to have existed before the days of K[=o]b[=o].  In some cases these gods have lost much of the esteem in which they were held for centuries.  Especially is this true of the infamous rebel of the tenth century, Masakado.[26] On the entrance into Yedo of the Imperial army, in 1868, his idol was torn from its shrine and hacked to pieces by the patriots.  His place as a deity (Kanda Dai Mi[=o] Jin, or Great Illustrious Spirit of Kanda) was taken by another deified being, a brother to the aboriginal earth-god who, in the ages of the Kami, “resigned his throne in favor of the Mikado’s ancestors when they descended from Heaven.”  The apotheosis of the rebel Masakado had been resorted to by the Buddhist canonizers because the unquiet spirit of the dead man troubled the people.  This method of laying a ghost by making a god of him, was for centuries a favorite one in Japanese Buddhism.  Indeed, a large part of the practical and parochial duties of the bonzes consists in quieting the restless spirits of the departed.