Where there were not enough Dai Mi[=o] Jin already existing in native
traditions to fill out the number required by the new scheme, new titles
were invented. One of these was Ten-jin, Heavenly being or spirit. The
famous statesman and scholar of the tenth century, Sugawara Michizane,
was posthumously named Tenjin, and is even to this day worshipped by
many children of Japan as he was formerly for a thousand years by nearly
all of them, as the divine patron of letters. Kompira, Benten and other
popular deities, often considered as properly belonging to Shint[=o],
"are evidently the offspring of Buddhist priestly ingenuity."[25] Out of
the eight millions or so of native gods, several hundred were catalogued
under the general term Gon-gen, or temporary manifestations of Buddha.
In this list are to be found not only the heroes of local tradition, but
even deified forces of nature, such as wind and fire. The custom of
making gods of great men after their death, thus begun on a large scale
by K[=o]b[=o], has gone on for centuries. Iyeyas[)u], the political
unifier of Japan, shines as a star of the first magnitude in the heavens
of the Riy[=o]bu system, under the mime of T[=o]-sh[=o]-g[=u], or Great
Light of the East.
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