Japan and the Japanese

64 JAPAN. A. D. 1550.
orders of bogging devotees ;
their extfrior of purity and self-denial,
but supposed secret licentiousness;* their fists; their garbs; the
tinkling of tails ; the sign of the cross ; the rosaries on which they
counted their prayers ; the large number of persons of noble birth
who entered upon the elerieal life; their manner of preaching; their
religious processions;
their pilgrimages; the size, .splendor and
magnificence, of their temples known as Tiras, the roofs supported
by tall pillars of cedar ; the altar within, and the lamps and incense
burning there ; the right of asylum possessed by the Tiras ;
and even the practice of confession, prayers for the dead, and the
sale of merit; in all these respects, this system presented a com-
plete counterpart at least to the show and forms and prie.-tly devices
of that very scheme of Roman Catholic worship which Xavier and
his brother missionaries sought to introduce into Japan. The only
striking difference was in the images, often of gigantic size, to be
found in the Tiras, but which, after all, were no more than a set-off
against the pictures of the Catholic churches.
At the head of the Buddhist hierarchy was a high priest called
Xako, resident at Miako, and having much the same spiritual pre-
rogative with the Pope of Rome, including
the canonization of saints.
With him rested the consecration of the Tundies, corresponding to
the bishop?, or rather to the abbots of the Catholic church all the
Buddhist clergy being, in the language of Rome, regulars (similar,
that is, to the monks and friars), and living together in monasteries
of which the Tundies were the heads. These Tundies, however,
could not enter upon their offices, to which great revenues were
attached, except by the consent of the temporal authorities, which
took care to limit the interference of the Xako and the Tundies
strictly to spiritual matters.!
* In reading the accounts of tlic bonzes, anl of the delusions which they
practised on the people, contained in the letters of the Catholic missionaries,
and the denunciations levelled against them in consequence, in those letters,
one might almost suppose himself to be reading a Protestant sermon against
Popery, or an indignant leader ngainst the pujiists in nn evangelical newspaper.
The missionaries found, however, at least they say so, among other
theological absurdities maintained by the bonzes, a iiuiiiber of the " damnable
Lutheran tenets."
t Buddha, or the sage (which tho Chinese, by the metamorphosis made by
their pronunciation of moat foreign proper names, have changed first into