Since your prayers to the
gods have been so many and
so unceasing, why
should you not return again
to the capital you left
- Meaning
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Since your prayers to the gods have been so many and so unceasing, how should you not return to the capital?
- Commentary
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Volume Two: The Floating of the Stupas
The imitation Kumano pilgrimages of Naritsune and Yasuyori were kept up with something close to fury; sometimes they prayed through the night. On one such night they sang imayō until dawn and at last fell asleep exhausted.
In that half-sleep Yasuyori dreamed. A small boat under white sail came in from the offing, and some thirty women in crimson trousers stepped ashore, beat drums, and sang an imayō together: of all the buddhas' vows, the vow of the Thousand-Armed is the one to trust; even withered grass and trees, they say, will straightway flower and bear fruit. They repeated it three times and vanished as if wiped away. Waking at the sound of his own voice, Yasuyori realized it had been a dream and wondered at it. Surely those were manifestations of the dragon god, he said; among the three Kumano deities, the Western Presence has the Thousand-Armed Kannon as its true form, and the dragon god is its guardian—this may be a sign that Kumano has heard us. They resolved to be still more diligent.
Some while later came another dream. On a wind out of the offing two leaves came drifting down onto their sleeves. Taken up, they proved to be leaves of the Kumano nagi tree, eaten through by insects; and the holes, looked at closely, formed letters. This is the poem they formed. Even after waking, the two talked of it endlessly and took great heart from it.
This is an oracle. Chihayaburu is a fixed epithet attaching to "gods," so the nature of the verse is declared in its first five syllables. Shigekereba means that the prayers have come thick and repeated. The lower verse is a rhetorical question: there is no possibility of not returning.
What is striking is the means of delivery. Insects had eaten the leaves, and the holes happened to fall into the shape of writing—a poem written by nature itself, with no human hand involved. Where the earlier dream was heard, this one is read; the two dreams are paired as sound and sight.
And it is on receiving this oracle that Yasuyori turns to action and makes a thousand stupas. The poem is placed as a thing that moves a man, and it leads directly into the two verses that follow.
chihayaburu……a fixed epithet attaching to "gods."
shigekereba……because they are thick and repeated.
nadoka...beki……how should it not be so?
nagi no ha……the sacred tree of Kumano; its leaves were carried as talismans.
imayō……a popular song form in alternating seven and five syllables, current from the mid-Heian period.
ryūjin……the dragon god of the waters, counted among the attendants of the Thousand-Armed Kannon.
Nishi no Gozen……one of the three Kumano deities, whose true form is the Thousand-Armed Kannon.
- Source
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Heike Monogatari
- Other
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