Note (return) — Chapter X · - JAPANESE BUDDHISM IN ITS MISSIONARY DEVELOPMENT

Whether the pilgrimage16 be of Shintō or of Buddhist origin, or simply a contrivance of human nature to break the monotony of life, we need not discuss. It is certain that if the custom be indigenous, the imported faith adopted, absorbed and enlarged it. The peregrinations made to the great temples and to the mountain tops, being meritorious performances, soon filled the roads with more or less devout travellers. In thus finding vent for their piety, the pilgrims mingled sanctification with recreation, enjoying healthful holidays, and creating trade with varied business, commercial and commissarial activities, while enlarging also their ideas and learning something of geography. Thus, in the course of time, it has come to pass that Japan is a country of which almost every square mile is known, while it is well threaded with paths, banded with roads, and supplied to a remarkable extent with handy volumes of description and of local history.17 Her people being well educated in their own lore and local traditions, possessed also a voluminous literature of guidebooks and cyclopedias of information. The devotees were, withal, well instructed and versed in a code of politeness and courtesy, as pilgrimage and travel became settled habits of a life. As a further result, the national tongue became remarkably homogeneous. Broadly speaking, it may be said that the Japanese language, unlike the Chinese in this as it is in almost every other point, has very little dialectic variation.18 Except in some few remote eddies lying outside the general currents, there is a uniform national speech. This is largely owing to that annual movement of pilgrims in the summer months especially, habitual during many centuries.