Note (return) — Chapter VII · - RIYŌBU, OR MIXED BUDDHISM

So complete was the victory of Riyōbuism, that for nearly a thousand years Shintō as a religion, except in a few isolated spots, ceased from sight and sank to a mere mythology or to the shadow of a mythology. The very knowledge even of the ancient traditions was lost in the Buddhaized forms in which the old stories33 were cast, or in the omnipresent ritual of the Buddhist tera.