account, just as at the present day there are temples of Hachiman, Kompira, Tenjin sama, San-no sama and Sengen sama, as they are popularly called, wherever twenty or thirty houses are collected together.  The shrines are classed as great and small, the respective numbers being 492 and 2,640, the distinction being twofold, firstly in the proportionately larger quantity of offerings made at the great shrines, and secondly that the offerings in the one case were arranged upon tables or altars, while in the other they were placed on mats spread upon the earth.  In the Yengishiki the amounts and nature of the offerings are stated with great minuteness, but it will be sufficient if the kinds of articles offered are alone mentioned here.  It will be seen, by comparison with the text of the norito, that they had varied somewhat since the date when the ritual was composed.  The offerings to a greater shrine consisted of coarse woven silk (ashiginu), thin silk of five different colors, a kind of stuff called shidori or shidzu, which is supposed by some to have been a striped silk, cloth of broussonetia bark or hemp, and a small quantity of the raw materials of which the cloth was made, models of swords, a pair of tables or altars (called yo-kura-oki and ya-kura-oki), a shield or mantlet, a spear-head, a bow, a quiver, a pair of stag’s horns, a hoe, a few measures of sake or rice-beer, some haliotis and bonito, two measures of kituli (supposed to be salt roe), various kinds of edible seaweed, a measure of salt, a sake jar, and a few feet of matting for packing.  To each of the temples of Watarai in Ise was presented in addition a horse; to the temple of the Harvest god Mitoshi no kami, a white horse, cock, and pig, and a horse to each of nineteen others.

“During the fortnight which preceded the celebration of the service, two smiths and their journeymen, and two carpenters, together with eight inbe [or hereditary priests] were employed in preparing the apparatus and getting ready the offerings.  It was usual to employ for the Praying for Harvest members of this tribe who held office in the Jin-Gi-Kuan, but if the number could not he made up in that office, it was supplied from other departments of state.  To the tribe of quiver-makers was intrusted the special duty of weaving the quivers of wistaria tendrils.  The service began at twenty minutes to seven in the morning, by our reckoning of time.  After the governor of the province of Yamashiro had ascertained that everything was in readiness, the officials of the Jin-Gi-Kuan arranged the offerings on the tables and below them, according to the rank of the shrines for which they were intended.  The large court of the Jin-Gi-Kuan where the service was held, called the Sai-in, measured 230 feet by 370.  At one end were the offices and on the west side were the shrines of the eight Protective Deities in a row, surrounded by a fence, to the interior of which three