It is
certain also, as we have seen, that the Yamato men made ultimate
conquest and unification of all the islanders, not merely by the
superiority of their valor and of their weapons of iron, but also by
their dogmas. After success in battle, and the first beginnings of rude
government, they taught their conquered subjects or over-awed vassals,
that they were the descendants of the heavenly gods; that their
ancestors had come down from heaven; find that their chief or Mikado was
a god. According to the same dogmatics, the aborigines were descendants
of the earth-born gods, and as such must obey the descendants of the
heavenly gods, and their vicegerent upon the earth, the Mikado.
Purification of Offences.
These heaven-descended Yamato people were in the main agriculturists,
though of a rude order, while the outlying tribes were mostly hunters
and fishermen; and many of the rituals show the class of crimes which
nomads, or men of unsettled life, would naturally commit against their
neighbors living in comparatively settled order. It is to be noted that
in the god-way the origin of evil is to be ascribed to evil gods. These
kami pollute, and pollution is iniquity. From this iniquity the people
are to be purged by the gods of purification, to whom offerings are duly
made.
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