The common people speak of him as Gon-gen Sama, the
latter word being an honorary form of address for all beings from a baby
to a Bosatsu.
In this way, K[=o]b[=o] arranged a sort of clearing-house or joint-stock
company in which the Bodhisattvas, kami and other miscellaneous beings,
in either the native or foreign religion, were mutually interchangeable.
In a large sense, this feat of priestly dexterity was but the repetition
in history, of that of Asanga with the Brahmanism and Buddhism of India
three centuries before. It was this Asanga who wrote the Yoga-chara
Bhumi. The succession of syncretists in India, China and Japan is
Asanga, Hiuki[=o] and K[=o]b[=o].
The Happy Family of Riy[=o]bu.
Nevertheless this attempt at making a happy family and ploughing with an
ox and ass in the same yoke, has not been an unqualified success. It
will sometimes happen that one god escapes the classification made by
the Buddhists and slips into the fold of Shint[=o], or _vice versa_;
while again the label-makers and pasters--as numerous in scholastic
Buddhism as in sectarian Christendom--have hard work to make the labels
stick. A popular Gon-gen or Dai-Mi[=o]-jin, whose name and renown has
for centuries attracted crowds of pilgrims, and yielded fat revenues as
regularly as the autumn harvests, is not readily surrendered by the old
Buddhist proprietors, however cleverly or craftily the bonzes may yield
outward conformity to governmental edicts.
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