As for subtlety and complexity, much of this mortuary literature is
comparable to the Veil of Isis. Behind the mystery of the text--in which
almost every character has two readings--there is the mystery of the
phrase; and again behind this are successions of riddles belonging to a
gnosticism older than all the wisdom of the Occident, and deep as the
abysses of Space. Fortunately the most occult texts are also the least
interesting, and bear little relation to the purpose of this essay.
The majority are attached, not to the sculptured, but to the written
and impermanent literature of cemeteries,--not to the stone monuments,
but to the sotoba: those tall narrow laths of unpainted wood which are
planted above the graves at fixed, but gradually increasing intervals,
during a period of one hundred years.[18]
[Illustration: SOTOBA IN KOBUDERA CEMETERY
(_The upper characters are “BONTI”--modified Sanskrit_)]
The uselessness of any exact translation of these inscriptions may be
exemplified by a word-for-word rendering of two sentences written upon
the sotoba used by the older sects. What meaning can you find in such
a term as “Law-sphere-substance-nature-wisdom,” or such an invocation
as “Ether, Wind, Fire, Water, Earth!”--for an invocation it really
is? To understand these words one must first know that, in the
doctrine of the mystical sects, the universe is composed of Five Great
Elements which are identical with Five Buddhas; that each of the Five
Buddhas contains the rest; and that the Five are One by essence, though
varying in their phenomenal manifestations. The name of an element has
thus three significations. The word Fire, for example, means flame as
objective appearance; it means flame also as the manifestation of a
particular Buddha; and it likewise means the special quality of wisdom
or power attributed to that Buddha. Perhaps this doctrine will be more
easily understood by the help of the following Shingon classification of
the Five Elements in their Buddhist relations:--