The child in Japan is rocked to sleep by the
soothing sound of the lullaby, which is often a prayer to these gods.
Even though it may be with laughing and merriment, that, in their name
the evil gods and imps are exorcised annually on New Year's eve, with
showers of beans which are supposed to be as disagreeable to the
Buddhist demons "as drops of holy water to the Devil," yet few
households are complete without one or more of the images or the
pictures of these favorite deities.
The separate elements of this conglomerate, so typical of Japanese
religion, are from no fewer than four different sources: Brahmanism,
Buddhism, Taoism and Shint[=o]ism. "Thus, Bishamon is the Buddhist
_Vais'ramana_[42] and the Brahmanic Kuvera; Benten is Sarasvati, the
wife of Brahma; Daikoku is an extremely popularised form of Mahakala,
the black-faced Temple Guardian; Hotei has Taoist attributes, but is
regarded as an incarnation of Maitreya, the Buddhist Messiah;
Fuku-roku-jiu is of purely Taoist origin, and is perhaps a
personification of Lao-Tsze himself; Ju-ro-jin is almost certainly a
duplicate of Fuku-roku-jiu; and, lastly, Ebisu, as the son of Izanagi
and Izanami, is a contribution from the Shint[=o] hero-worship."[43] If
Riy[=o]bu Buddhism be two-fold, here is a texture or amalgam that is
_shi-bu_, four-fold.
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