Nara period

“ India ink pressed into fantastic shapes, and writing-brushes made of deer’s hair, are carefully tied up in the pilgrim’s wallets, with the famous little Nara ningio, or images carved in wood. The Nara ningios always represent the legendary priests and people who founded Nara, and in these carvings the rural artists display great talent, giving wonderful expression to the tiny faces that are left rough faceted as first chipped off with the knife. ”

“ A JAPANESE LANDSCAPE.
The following morning they devoted to the sights of Nara, and were surprised at the number and extent of the temples and tombs. During the eighth century Nara was the capital of Japan, and it had the honor of being the residence of seven different sovereigns. The most famous of its monuments is the statue of Buddha, which was originally cast at the time Nara was the capital, and was afterwards destroyed during an insurrection. ”

“ Of the great Buddhist temple Kobuku-ji, founded in 710, and burnt for the third time in 1717, there remains little save two lofty pagodas. A railway now gives access to the town, but every effort is made to preserve all the ancient features of Nara. A museum has been formed, where many antique objects of great interest are displayed, as well as works from the hands of comparatively modern artists. Nara in the days of its prosperity is said to have had a population of a quarter of a million. ”

“ Bands of these votaries go through the temple courts, in charge of voluble guides, who intone a description of the places in the way of their craft the world over. One or two old men seem always to be sauntering up the long avenue, stopping frequently to rest, praying at every shrine, and muttering to themselves praises of the sacred place. Their wrinkled faces glow with pleasure, and they delight in watching the deer, to whom the tinkle of a pilgrim’s bell or iron-ringed staff is always a promise of cakes.
To the antiquarian, Nara is full of interest. ”

“ Some twenty miles from Kiŷoto--time-honoured residence of Mikados, and therefore a sacred city--the small town of Nara stands on a plain surrounded by rugged hills. Passing through low grey streets, leaving on the left a huge and ornate pagoda, you enter a tangle of wild greenery--an ideal wood of immense cryptomerias darkling skyward after light. A jungle of variegated foliage, so sweet and fresh, masks half their altitude, while the undulating ground beneath is broken into verdant waves chequered with blossoms of all hues. ”

“ If you are familiar enough with the mixture of reverence and love with which the Japanese regard their dowager Empress, you will readily understand the agitation of our guide. She is an exalted being, the wife of one Mikado and the mother of another, and is besides a most estimable woman with lovable qualities of her own. So when the guide learned that she was at the present time at Nara and would be there for the rest of the day, his emotions of loyalty and awe had a sudden inspiration, and there was nothing for him to do but to try to communicate them to us. ”

“ You have heard much of the sunshine and the flowers, the tea-drinking, and the various æsthetic touches of Japanese life, so it may be somewhat disillusioning to learn that there are other points of view. This thought forces itself upon my mind whenever I think of our watery journey to Nara,—for it rains in Japan. The days can be cold and dark, hotel accommodations can be scanty, and foreigners can take a long and hungry railroad ride, and have impressions that they do not care to put down in a book of travels. ”

“ Indeed, for those austerities and for their energy, the very deities were unable to look at them. Only that deity with whom they were propitiated could behold them. Without doubt, with his heart devoted to them, and impelled by a longing desire to behold them, Narada dropped down on Gandhamadana from a summit of the high mountains of Meru and wandered over all the world. Possessed of great speed, he at last repaired to that spot whereon was situated the retreat of Vadari. Impelled by curiosity he entered that retreat at the hour of Nara's and Narayana's performing their daily rites. ”

“ Nara! The ancient capital, the cradle of Buddhism, and still the holy place of pilgrimages; its forest paths echoing the jingle of the devotees’ ringed staffs, the mutter of their prayers, and the clink of their copper offerings at the temple gates. A place of stillness and dreams; an Arcadia, where the little children and the fawns play together, and the antlered deer eat from one’s hand, and look up fearlessly with their soft human eyes. Old Shinto temples, where the priestesses dance the sacred measures of Suzume before the Sun Goddess’s cave ”

“ Brought up among them with the hares and birds for comrades, as stately and as gentle as the deer, she shared from childhood, being motherless, their pure and contemplative life. Strangers often said that the fairest thing in lovely Nara was the tall and pale O'Tei. Some compared her to the unblown white lotos as it sways dreamily in the breeze. Others dubbed her pearl; but later all agreed that young Sanjo the armourer was delivered of the neatest simile when he fashioned a white fawn of purest silver and gave it to the maiden for a hairpin. ”

“ It was not a pleasant spectacle, but it excited no comment in this country, where women labor in the rice fields by the side of men.
A short ride from Kyoto brings the visitor to Nara, the seat of the oldest temples in Japan, and famous for the tame deer in the park. A long avenue of stone lanterns leads to the principal temples, in an ancient cedar grove. The main temple gives an impression of great age by its heavy thatched roof. ”

“ Nara is situated immediately to the south of Kioto. Here are many famous temples, pagodas, and torii, and here also is the largest image of Buddha in Japan, twelve hundred years old. The finest thing of all, however, is the temple park of Nara, where silence and peace reign in a grove of tall cryptomerias. Along the walks are several rows of stone lamps placed on high pedestals of stone. They stand close together and may number a thousand. Each of these lamps is a gift of some wealthy man to the temple. On great festivals oil lamps are placed in them. ”

“ From what has been stated above, one can well imagine that, in certain respects, Japan of the Nara age had much in common with Greece just about the time of the Persian invasion. In both it was an age in which a vigorous race reached the first flourishing stage of civilisation, when the national energy began to be devoted to æsthetic pursuits, but was nevertheless not yet enervated by over-enlightenment. ”

“ A semi-nomad arrangement of this kind is obviously incompatible with much advance in civilisation. It was not until the capital was established on a more permanent footing at Nara, in the beginning of the eighth century, that any substantial progress was made in literature and the arts. ”

“ If we see the mist hanging over the shore of Akashi, let us be intoxicated by its beauties: if we hear the plover piping near the village of Suma, let us dwell with fond contemplation on its distant home among the ancient rocks. At Nara, at Kyoto, or whereover we go, let us take the pleasure which each place gives us. Let us waste no tears over the past nor break our hearts with anxiety about the future: let us trust all things to the Tathāgata's hand, enjoying the present as it comes, and drinking from that honey-well of divine teaching, which bubbles up at his Sacred Feet. ”

“ We passed among them, beneath the great gates guarded by fantastic demon gods, green and red and blue, and into temples, gorgeous but often dilapidated and dusty, past pagodas and through long avenues of stone lanterns. At Nara we saw the Golden Pavilion and the Silver Pavilion, the summer places of retired princes. There are entrancing gardens with little ponds filled with goldfish, tiny bridges and imitation mountains, the "wash-the-moon" cascade, and the platforms where warriors used to sit and look at the moon—those fierce, two-sworded warriors of other days. ”

“ As many as twelve often draw a sledge, and they run very rapidly over the ice and snow, while their master keeps them in order with his long-lashed whip.
[10]
IN THE OLD PARK AT NARA
See these happy Japanese girls enjoying their ride through the park, in ’rickshaws. They look very comfortable and cool in their kimonos, don’t they?
The park they are riding in is at Nara and is such a beautiful place! It is there that a very tame herd of sacred deer is kept. Nara is on the island of Hondo, Japan, and is a very old city, famous for its carvings, cutlery and toys. ”

“ What they rejoice in thus is to produce a distorted semblance in miniature as tiny as possible of a certain aspect of nature. In the age of the Nara emperors, on the contrary, large bunches of flowers must have been used profusely in decorating rooms and tables, and perhaps to strew on the ground. ”

“ Such tales found credence in the Nara epoch, and indeed all through the annals of early Japan there runs a well-marked thread of superstition which owed something of its obtrusiveness to intercourse with Korea and China, whence came professors of the arts of invisibility and magic. A thunder deity making his occasional abode in lofty trees is gravely spoken of in the context of a campaign, and if at one moment a river is inhabited by a semi-human monster, at another a fish formed like a child is caught in the sea. ”

“ It was not until many centuries later that education reached the common people. There were also teachers (mostly Coreans) of painting, medicine, and the glyptic arts. The colossal bronze statue of Buddha and some remarkable sculptures in wood which are still to be seen at Nara, testify to the skill which the Japanese had then acquired in the last-named arts. ”

“ Yes, it was Japan, and more than that, it was Nara. If I had any reasonable doubt, before me stood the everlasting symbol of things Japanese,—the jinrikisha man. He had a melancholy and rainy-weather look, which was increased by the freedom with which he had discarded his usual costume and appeared wrapped in a covering of straw. Such a picturesque equipage and ingenuous attendant look well in a photograph, and can even afford a certain amount of pleasure in a busy city with plenty176 of daylight and interesting objects as a background ”

“ It is of course conceivable that Japanese decorative artists may not yet have emerged from the copying stage, and that they borrowed motives frankly and faithfully from foreign sources. But, on the other hand, if these objects had been of native production, would the Nara Court have placed them among the treasures of the principal temple? It seems more reasonable to believe that they were rare articles of foreign provenance, and that they indicate nothing beyond the refined taste of the Japanese of that epoch. ”

“ At Nara it is always a feast or a fast. A feast when it rains, and a fast soon after the dry season has begun. The people are feeling the pinch now and consequently spend most of their time in the forest hunting for food. Of course they take their children with them, and the teacher is discouraged because of the small attendance at school. Knowing that we were coming most have remained in the village to-day, but they want to get away hunting, so we will have school at once. ”

“ Masago, the sage, was quite angry sometimes when she considered the education of O'Tei. She, an abbess, should know something of such matters, and there was no doubt about it that the bonzes and priestesses of Nara had blundered. The heiress of Nara was destined by her birth to a grand alliance, to reign in a world of strife, and they should have combated, while the nature of their pupil was yet malleable, such tendencies as might be likely to interfere with the young lady's future happiness. ”

“ Narea, the southmost province of the Abyssinian empire, is still governed by its native princes, who are called the Beneros; its territory reached formerly to Bizamo.
The Galla have quite surrounded them, especially on the south-east and north. What is to the west is a part of Africa, the most unknown. The people of Narea have a small trade with Melinda on the Indian Ocean, and with Angola on the western, by means of intermediate nations. Narea is abundantly supplied with gold from the Negro country that is nearest them. Some have, indeed, said there is gold in Narea ”

“ The characters employed mean [260] ‘green earth’— (or ‘fine earth’?) .—Nara is connected with narasu, to make level, so awoniyoshi Nara no miyako might mean the Capital (or Palace) , erected on well-levelled fine ground, — narasu or fumi-narasu, trample level; see also K. lviii, 7, 9, 15, 24, 137. Nara also means ‘oak-tree’ and the m. k. might refer to its greenery.
awoyagino, like green willow sprays; used with place-name Kadzuraki (Kadzura = Chaplet) ; also with Hararo (name of river) , by sound-quibble with haru, stretch up (as the young willow shoot does rapidly) ”

“ The sacred Scarabaeus was destroyed by dynamite, and the Throat of Death widened until it now forms one of the entrances to the land so long unknown. The dreaded Nara was sent as prisoner down to Senegal, where she still lives in exile; but her wondrous throne still remains in her great white palace—now a barrack of the Spahis and Chasseurs—and the Arab story-tellers in every desert town, from the Atlas to Lake Tsâd, continue to relate weird and wonderful tales of the City of the Golden Tombs and the Evil of the Thousand Eyes. ”

“ He accordingly intercepted it at Oho-saka and put it all to a great rout. Ata-bime was killed, and her troops were all slain. Afterwards he sent Oho-hiko and Hiko-kuni-fuku, the ancestor of the Wani no Omi, towards Yamashiro to attack Take-hani-yasu. Here they took sacred jars and planted them at the top of the acclivity of Takasuki in Wani. [23] Then they advanced with their best troops and ascended Mount Nara and occupied it. Now when the Imperial forces were encamping, they trod level the herbs and trees, whence that mountain was given the (V. 12.) name of Mount Nara. ”