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.
Multitudes of wonders are reported about K[=o]b[=o], all of which show
the growth of the Tantra school. It is certain that his erudition was
immense, and that he was probably the most learned man of Japan in that
age, and possibly of any other age. Besides being a Japanese Ezra in
multiplying writings, he is credited with the invention of the
hira-gana, or running script, and if correctly so, he deserves on this
account alone an immortal honor equal to that of Cadmus or Sequoia. The
kana[13] is a syllabary of forty-seven letters, which by diacritical
marks, may be increased to seventy. The kata-kana is the square or print
form, the hira-kana is the round or "grass" character for writing.
Though not as valuable as a true phonetic alphabet, such as the Koreans
and the Cherokees possess, the _i-ro-ha_, or kana script, even though a
syllabary and not an alphabet, was a wonderful aid to popular writing
and instruction.
Pages:
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269