the
six thousand seven hundred and seventy-one volumes of the Buddhist
texts; but you can make a revolving library, containing them, turn
round, by pushing it like a windlass. And if you push with an earnest
wish that you could read the six thousand seven hundred and seventy-one
volumes, you will acquire the same merit has the reading of them would
enable you to gain... So much will perhaps suffice to explain the
religious meanings of nazoraeru.

The magical meanings could not all be explained without a great variety
of examples; but, for present purposes, the following will serve. If
you should make a little man of straw, for the same reason that Sister
Helen made a little man of wax,--and nail it, with nails not less than
five inches long, to some tree in a temple-grove at the Hour of the Ox
(2),--and if the person, imaginatively represented by that little straw
man, should die thereafter in atrocious agony,--that would illustrate
one signification of nazoraeru... Or, let us suppose that a robber has
entered your house during the night, and carried away your valuables.
If you can discover the footprints of that robber in your garden, and
then promptly burn a very large moxa on each of them, the soles of the
feet of the robber will become inflamed, and will allow him no rest
until he returns, of his own accord, to put himself at your mercy. That
is another kind of mimetic magic expressed by the term nazoraeru. And a
third kind is illustrated by various legends of the Mugen-Kane.

After the bell had been rolled into the swamp, there was, of course, no
more chance of ringing it in such wise as to break it. But persons who
regretted this loss of opportunity would strike and break objects
imaginatively substituted for the bell,--thus hoping to please the
spirit of the owner of the mirror that had made so much trouble. One of
these persons was a woman called Umegae,--famed in Japanese legend
because of her relation to Kajiwara Kagesue, a warrior of the Heike
clan. While the pair were traveling together, Kajiwara one day found
himself in great straits for want of money; and Umegae, remembering the
tradition of the Bell of Mugen, took a basin of bronze, and, mentally
representing it to be the bell, beat upon it until she broke
it,--crying out, at the same time, for three hundred pieces of gold. A
guest of the inn where the pair were stopping made inquiry as to the
cause of the banging and the crying, and, on learning the