“Urushi Kinpaku E no Ban” (56 centimeters in diameter, 17 centimeters high)

Yomiuri Shimbun Oct 8, 2013

NARA—Beautiful craftwork pieces symbolizing the splendor of the Tempyo period in the eighth century, along with gorgeous items that added to the life of the nobility, are among the 66 items displayed at the 65th Annual Exhibition of Shoso-in Treasures, which will run from Oct. 26 to Nov. 11 at the Nara National Museum.

Items on display at the annual exhibition come from the collection of the Shoso-in repository near the Great Buddha Hall at Todaiji temple in Nara. Many of these pieces are associated with Emperor Shomu (701-756), which were dedicated to the Buddha statue of the temple by his wife, Empress Komyo (701-760), after his death.

A careful examination of the breathtakingly elaborate details of the displayed items will give visitors a rich impression of the creativity and skill that craftspeople of the past possessed.

Among this year’s displays, “Urushi Kinpaku E no Ban” (lacquered incense burner tray with painting on gold leaf) is probably one of the most extraordinary pieces among the collection due to its beautiful shape and dazzling vivid colors.

The piece is said to be modeled on a lotus flower and is believed to have been used when incense was burned for the Buddha. Paintings on a gold-plated base adorn its wooden petals. The paintings drawn with delicate touches include those of such imaginary animals as karyobinga, a bird that has a human head and is believed to live in heaven, and hanakuidori, a bird holding a flower in its beak. People in the Tempyo period likely tried to become closer to the Buddha’s world through these paintings, along with fragrances rising from the tray.

Some other exhibits this year also feature elaborate animal paintings.

“Hinoki no Wagon,” a six-stringed cypress Japanese zither, will be displayed with a set of “Taimai-e,” or semitransparent plates that are believed to have been attached to the long sides of the instrument. These plates are decorated with paintings of a parrot in flight, a rabbit running in the field and a howling tiger.

“Hinoki no Wagon” (156 centimeters long, 17 centimeters wide, 4 centimeters thick)

“Shika Kusaki Kyokechi no Byobu” (screen with clamp-resistant design of deer and grasses under a tree) is a dyed work of art, bearing the image of a pair of deer facing each other under a tree. The image is made with the kyokechi dyeing technique of using wooden boards to clamp fabrics.

“Shika Kusaki Kyokechi no Byobu” (149.5 centimeters long, 56.5 centimeters wide)

“Heiradenhai no Enkyo” is a round bronze mirror with floral and bird designs in mother-of-pearl and amber. The item features the image of 16 pretty birds around flowers. These birds are elaborately depicted with mother-of-pearl inlay work using seashells.

“Heirandenhai no Enkyo” (27.2 cm in diameter)

Meanwhile, “Toko” describes an aspect of the nobility’s lives. It is a gilt bronze jar used for an arrow-throwing game. People tried to throw the arrows into the jar’s neck, which is adorned with the image of mountain hermits having a good time in the fields.

Toko” (31 centimeters high, 21.7 centimeters in diameter at its widest point)

Three masks for gigaku stage performances will also be on display. Gigaku is a play that was brought to Japan from China and often performed at temples. One of the masks, named “Taikofu,” appears to depict an old man and will be on display for the first time. Another mask, “Suikoju,” is the likeness of a Persian drunkard, indicating international links in the Tempyo period.

65th Annual Exhibition of Shoso-in Treasures

will run from Oct. 26 to Nov. 11 from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. (7 p.m. Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays and Nov. 4). Open daily.

Nara National Museum in Nara

http://www.narahaku.go.jp/english/index_e.html

The Yomiuri Shimbun has provided special support for the exhibition.

Meoto Iwa (夫婦岩), the Husband-and-Wife Couple or the Wedded Rocks, are a couple of small rocky stacks in the sea off Futami, Mie, Japan. They are joined by a shimenawa (a heavy rope of rice straw) and are considered sacred by worshippers at the neighbouring Futami Okitama Shrine (Futami Okitama Jinja(二見興玉神社). According to local lore and Shinto beliefs, the rocks represent the union of the creator kami, Izanagi and Izanami. Although the above pictured Meioto Iwa rocks are the most famous ones, there are many other meioto iwa rocks to be found elsewhere in the japanese landscape, see More Unfamiliar Glimpses of Japan’s page on “Meioto iwa on husband and wife rocks“.

Such iconography and the idea of a Creator-Couple or Cosmic Couple are rampant throughout the ancient prehistoric world, and particularly widespread among the tribes of the Austro-Asiatics, the ISEA-Austronesians as well as the Polynesians.

Separation of the heavens and Earth. This map shows the distribution of the story of the separation after the watery serpentine darkness of chaos from the South and West Pacific up to the northwest through China South Asia and then the Middle East and ending in northern Europe.

Stephen Oppenheimer writes about the mythical belief at p. 321 of his book “Eden in the East: The Drowned Continent of Southeast Asia”:

The story of creation with Sky Father locked in close and dark sexual union with Mother Earth, is found in a band stretching from New Zealand to Greece. The locked-couple picture is seen at its fullest in a little understood string of islands, the Lesser Sundas of eastern Indonesia. And in the surviving megalithic societies of Sulawesi, Maluku and the Nusa Tenggara, a concept of Father Sky and Mother Earth, who were previously locked in a tight embrace remains central to cultural beliefs. According to the Mappurondo faith of the Torajas of Sulawesi, Heaven, as in other megalithic groups of the archipelago, is called Langi; Mother Earth is Padang or Pngkapadang. These names are cognate with Rangia and Papa of the Maoris. Langi appears as a sky god further west among the Donggo of Sumbawa, but this time as the primary god of a trinity that includes a water god Oi and a wind god Wango. In the mountainous island of Flores there are myths telling of Mother Earth and Father Sky who were previously bound together by a sacred vine. The vine was chewed up by a dog. As a result the lovers flew apart and were permanently separated. Accordingly to the people in Western Flores, the proof of this is seen in the behaviour of the  bamboo, which bends towards the earth as if it is still pushed down by the weight of the sky on his over. Throughout this region the ideas of the duality of godheads and the duality of their sex are explicit in the architecture and arrangement of houses. In the highlands of Flores each village has two sets of shrines, one phallic and the other box-like to represent the two sexes. Menhirs and dolmens also take in the respective gender symbolism in this area.

Also it is just interesting to note that just as can be found in the highlands of Flores the phallic and box-like couple shrines, such paired shrines are also seen in highlands of Nagano in Japan.

What does the heavenly rope vine symbolize and what is its origin? Below we explore some possible ideas and explanations for the celestial ladder twine.

The straw rope tying the husband and wife together is a visual metaphor that  recalls the myth from Flores Island (an island arc extending east from Java island of Indonesia).  As mentioned in the excerpt from “Eden in the East” above, a rope twine used to tie the Sky Father and Earth Mother together until a dog chewed up the vine, causing the two to fly apart, a mythical explanation for the separation of Sky and Earth.

In Ayahuasca, shamanism, and curanderismo in the Andes, Steve Mizrach examines the concept of a otherworldly “soul vine”, a concept that seems to have diffused to the Americas from the Altai-Siberia or Mongolia. In Brazil, there is a  term ayahuasca that comes from the Quechua, meaning literally “the vine of souls,” — it is also called “the visionary vine” or the “vine of death.” The folk term refers to the botanical species of liana known as Banisteriopsis Caapi , which is also known as Yage among the Indians of Brazil. The Andean shaman uses Yage, “the vine of souls,” to contact the dead as well as to divine the location of water.

Mizrach draws a connection between the vine as a connector between the Underworld with passages of water [perhaps similar to the proverbial River of the dead?]:

“The ancestors’ spirits residing within the huacas are thought to guard underground water. Perhaps one of the “ceremonial” uses of the lines are for the shaman to travel during his “spirit journey,” guiding him like a magnet to the places of the dead where he can bargain for water. Indeed, during their “soul flights,” shamans typically report that they are “guided” on their journey by “spirit paths” that lead them to the appropriate destination. One of the ayllus’ main responsibilities are water rights, and they maintain this role through their link to the ancestors who guard the water for their descendants. (Lamadrid 1993.) This may not be a (meta)physical journey, per se, but the shaman at least uses the lines as a symbolic , imaginal path for the journey to the places of the dead.”

The yage is used to help the shamans achieve shamanic flight and to ascend the heavens up the Milky Way as well.

“In their visions, the “vine of souls” stretches out to become a milky serpent, becoming the Milky Way, “the road of souls” which they use as a rope to climb into the heavens. But are such beliefs found among the indigenous peoples of the Andes?

Schultes reports that indigenous shamans using Yage in the Andes claim to feel a “rushing wind” pushing upwards which then they realizes is the torrent of “water” forcing them up the Milky Way. (Schultes 1992.) After ascending the Milky Way, they are then able to talk with those ancestors who were also able to ascend to the “celestial Paradise.” As a mortal, however, the shaman cannot remain, but while in his ‘spirit body’ he may ask questions of the heavenly beings, who may know antidotes for sorcery he has not otherwise been able to counteract. There seems to be the mythic belief that rainbows and the Milky Way are diurnally related phenomena. A shaman trapped in the underworld may not be able to return unless he can find the “rope” of the Milky Way.” 

The Ladder-to-Heaven documents the mythical idea of a ladder made of reed or vine among the South American tribes (the Nivalke, the Mataco, the Tupi, Sikuani and the Chorote). For eg., the Chorote of Gran Chaco identify

“a hummingbird named Sen as the hero of the primeval ascent. In the early days of the world Sen began shooting arrows one after the other until he had a long chain extending from heaven to earth. Shortly thereafter, a spider came along and spun a web alongside the arrow chain thereby creating a rope-like structure reaching to heaven. It was along this rope that Sen and the other Chorote heroes, as birds, ascended to heaven…

“Suddenly, from up there, where the stars come out, a ladder descended. It was made from the same kind of reeds that the Indians used for the shafts of their arrows. 
Suddenly a ladder made of reeds appeared; it reached from the sky down to the ground.”16

The Shipaya also envisaged the ladder-to-heaven as composed of reeds.”

In Myth in History: Mythological Essays, Peter Metevelis (p. 255) tabulates the countries that possess:

•  a myth of ropeway access to the Upperworld as including Iceland, India, China, Japan, Korea, Indonesia, Melanesia, North and South America, and Polynesia;
•  a myth of a vine to sky rope as including Indonesia, Philippines and North and South America

In the case of Japan, the straw vine appears as a boundary marker that marks off where the entrance to the Underworld or Heavenly River is, and it is used to quickly fence off the entrance after Amaterasu emerges from the Iwato cavern thus preventing the Japanese sun goddess from returning to the Underworld. This myth is said to be closest to the myth found in the Indo-Iranian Vedic literature — of Usas, the Dawn woman and heralder of the rising sun, who is hidden in a cave on an island in the middle of the Rasa stream at the end of the world, says Michael Witzel in his Vala and Iwato The Myth of the Hidden Sun in India, Japan and beyond.

This idea of a rope-ladder is also found among the Australian aborigines, and among the Tungus shamans of Manchuria who refer to the celestial rope as a “road” to heaven.

Whether the celestial rope as a heavenly ladder, road or path to and from heaven, originated from Africa or is found there as a result of back migrations, we do not know … but African sacred traditions of the Dinkas speak of heavenly path or rope that men once traversed freely to and from heaven to converse with the gods, but which collapsed or was destroyed in primeval times as a result of an accident, after which Heaven has been separated from Earth.

There are many other variants of this ladder to heaven that Peter Metevelis identifies, including spider spun webs (Nicobar, Micronesia, Polynesia, Africa, North and South America), iron chain from heaven (Greece, Korea); Heavenly being’s hair (Germany, Australia), Earth’s navel-string (Indo-china)

Takamagahara, Shigakogen, Japan  Photo: A. Kawagoe

The etymology and meaning of “hara” and the possible origins of the Takamahara (or Takagamahara) cosmology

The concept of “hara” is such a fundamental concept that it is part of Japanese common parlance, children yell “hara heta” or “I’m famished” when they come home, literally, “empty centre”.

The concept of “hara” is now best known and associated with Tantric healing and kundalini concepts, and though the Japanese version of it appears to be derived from a Sinicized form of Indo(Sakka?)-Tibetan Bon belief system or tantras of Kashmir Shaivism as some call it, we may need to consider that the true origins of the “hara” concept may in fact lie elsewhere (Anatolia, Greece or Iran).

Tantra and Taoism explains that the Japanese “hara” concept is derived directly from the Taoist and Qi Gong belief systems, and quoting Karlfried Dürckheim’s Hara, The Vital Centre of Man, also distinguishes it from the Hindu chakra systems:

“What could therefore be called ‘The Taoist Body’ has its spiritual and physical centre not in the head or heart but in the hara – specifically in the tan tien (Chinese) or tanden (Japanese), a centre that that has no central place in any Indian anatomy of the ‘chakras’. For though it can be identified with the svadhisthana chakra – which is sometimes described as a few inches below the navel – this chakra is also often falsely associated with sexual feeling and the sexual organs, whereas the tan tien is understood as both the physical and spiritual centre of gravity of the human being – hence the point of ultimate balance of rest and movement. This reflects the literal meaning of svadhisthana as “the seat of the Self”.

Yet there remains a stark contrast between the heart-centred ‘Tantric Body’ and the hara-centred ‘Taoist Body’, one nowhere more strikingly enunciated than in the words of Laozi himself:

“Empty the heart, fill the abdomen.” 

The message is echoed by Zhuangzi:

“Rather than listen with the ear, listen with the heart. Rather than listen with the heart, listen with the Qi.  [ie. the ensouled breath with its centre in the hara - the tan tien]

“The Way … is the fasting of the heart.”

Deacon writes also that “…in Japan there are also several disciplines – either of Chinese origin or alternatively heavily influenced by Chinese Qi Gong philosophy – which speak of three tandens …

This basic practice of centering both breathing and awareness in the warm and womb-like interiority of the hara is also the key to the ‘belly thinking’ acknowledged and so much valued in traditional Japanese culture. For it is from the ocean of awareness that expands within the hara that all thoughts are first conceived and germinate, only to rise as ‘steam’ or ‘air’ into the space of the head where they take form as mental words. This is reflected in the ideogram for Qi – steam rising from a rice bowl…”

Hara, as a Japanese concept, is deep and fundamental, governing much of Japanese thinking, for hara  deeply interlinked with the word, tanden “is translated from the Japanese to mean cinnabar field and is also known as the elixir field. It can therefore be understood as a place in the body where the elixir of life is created” (Source: The deeper meaning of hara” Since prehistoric times, coffins and grave goods and sometimes human bones were painted with cinnabar or such symbolic substitutes).

This rocky hara-belly meaning of the Japanese (and the idea that Raiju thunderbeast, companion to Raijin the thunder deity, is attracted to the navels of children) is similar to the idea of the Omphalos-Navel of the Earth idea of the Greeks, which are often egg-shaped religious stones or baetylus, which is thought to be connected via a cord to the Sky god. In Greek, the word omphalos means “navel” (compare the name of Queen Omphale). According to the ancient Greeks, Zeus sent out two eagles to fly across the world to meet at its center, the “navel” of the world. In the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem there is also an omphalos. The existence of this stone is based upon the medieval cosmology which saw Jerusalem as the spiritual if not geographical center of the world (see T and O map). This tradition is likely based on an ancient Jewish tradition that saw Jerusalem as the navel of the world.^[1] In the Jewish tradition, the Ark in the Temple in Jerusalem, through which God revealed himself to His people, rested on the Foundation stone marking the “navel of world”. (According to Midrash Tanhuma to Ezekial 38,12, based on the phrase “the nations…that dwell in the middle of the earth”  in the Jewish tradition, the Ark in the Temple in Jerusalem, through which God revealed himself to His people, rested on the Foundation stone marking the “navel of world”.  This Jewish tradition is known to have begun in Hellenistic times, when Jews were already quite familiar with Greek culture—and thus might be a deliberate emulation of and competition with the above tradition regarding Delphi. See Wikipedia article Omphalos). Thus for the Japanese, the idea of protecting their mid-waists and navels (and their children’s) has to do with the metaphysical concepts and ancient cosmological worldviews of a connection between the birthing navel and the Other World, see Why thunder deities and thunder-beasts are attracted to Japanese children’s navels

In The Tantric Womb, we are told that Hara is analogous to or interchangeable with the womb and in Hinduism, also equated with ‘Shiva’:

“For a man, the Hara is an analogous access point as the womb. Different of course, but with many similarities. ‘Hara’ in Hinduism is an earlier word for ‘Shiva’. In Japan the word is closely interlinked to the Chinese word ‘Dantian’ – the place in the body where the elixir of life is created. In the martial arts it is a known center of a man’s power where he also has direct access to Source via the non-gender specific, interdimensional, transformational Source Point. It is located a couple of inches below the navel, inside the body, closer to the spine than the navel.
At the point of hara the mind has no place to stay still for it is everywhere, completely in union with the universe, no beginning and no end. It is open and at ease. This is hara – the realization of your true nature”.

The Hara line, according to the Hindu metaphysical tradition and chakra belief system, quoting Barbara Brennan’s book, Light Emerging is explained thus:

This is the Hara line which stretches from our crown right up to our source in the “heavens”, and also right down into the Earth, connecting us to our physical source. [Note: The newborn baby is considered, according to Japanese as well as Native Amerindian tradition, to be connected via its umbilical cord to the stars and the Otherworld, see Cord-ceremony] It is a sound, or a vibration, a frequency, that keeps us in our human bodies and it is intimately connected to our integrity or ability to live in truth.

“The Hara line exists on a dimension deeper than the auric field [Ka body]. It exists on the level of intentionality. It is an area of power within the physical body that contains the tan tien*. It is the one [musical] note [or vibration] with which you have drawn up your physical body from your mother, the Earth. It is this one note that holds your body in physical manifestation. Without the one note, you would not have a body. When you change this one note, your entire body will change. Your body is a gelatinous form held together by this one note [or vibration]. This note is the sound that the centre of the Earth makes.”

Source: The Sex Rites II: The Hara Line and the Aura (Istargate)

We can in fact trace this idea of aligning one’s  Hara as a sort of metaphysical plumbline concept to the ancient Cosmic Pillar World View, possibly originating with or at least developed by the Indo-Iranians. (The concept also reminds us of the Biblical scripture, Amos 7:7-9 in the third of the prophet Amos’ five visions, he sees the Lord standing on a wall – with a plumbline in His hand, … and the imagery of “The God of the Plumbline” is a metaphor for the Almighty as the ultimate Judge of Israel.) 

Mt. Damavand, highest peak in the Alborz/Elborz/Elburz mountain range of the Iran (known in ancient times as Hara_Berezaiti). 

The origin of Hara as a physical (or metaphysical / symbolic) World Mountain

The Hindu scriptures, the Vedas, refer to the Mount Hara as Mount Meru or Sumeru (the Great Meru), and describe the Himalayas as stemming from Mount Meru which itself stands at the centre of the known world. The Vedas also refer to Arya Varta as Paradesha, the original country. In the Vedas, Bharatavarsha, Ancient India, lay to the south of the Himalayas.

Mary Boyce, the British scholar of Iranian languages and authority on Zoroastrianism, said that when the Khotanese Saka became Buddhists, they referred to Mt. Sumeru of Buddhist legends as Ttaira Haraysa, the peak of Hara. Mt. Sumeru in Buddhist mythology lies at the centre of the earth and according to Anklesaria’s translation of GB 5B.1, “Mount Tera is in the middle of the earth.”

Hara Berezaiti and Alburz or Alborz

To the Iranians, Mount Hara appears to have been both a physical mountain as well as a metaphysical one.

“The Mehr Yasht at 10.118 talks about the Sun riding rising above the peaks (tara) of the Hara Berezaiti. Tara (also spelt Tera, Terak or Taera) is sometime taken to mean a specific mountain in the Hara. E. W. West translates the Lesser Bundahishn (LB) at 12.2 as “Terak of Alburz” i.e. Tera of the Hara Berezaiti. When West translates 12.4 as “The Terak of Alburz is that through which the stars, moon and sun pass in, and through it they come back”, but when B. T. Anklesaria translates 9.6 of the Greater Bundahishn (GB) as “The Tera of Alburz is that through which the Stars, Moon and Sun revolve and through which they come back”, it makes more sense to read Tera(k) as the peaks or the space between peaks through which the stars, moon and sun rise and set. Indeed, at LB 5.4. we have “As it is said that it is the Terak of Alburz from behind which my sun and moon and stars return again” and at LB 5.5, “For there are a hundred and eighty apertures (rojin) in the east, and a hundred and eighty in the west, through Alburz; and the sun, every day, comes in through an aperture, and goes out through an aperture….”

Alborz-Alburz reflects older usage (see Wikipedia article), it is said that numerous high peaks were given the name and some even reflect it to this day, for example, Mount Elbrus in the Caucasus Mountains, and Mount Elbariz (Albariz, Jebal Barez) in the Kerman area above the Strait of Hormuz. As recently as the 19th century, a peak in the northernmost range in the Hindu Kush system, just south of Balkh, was recorded as Mount Elburz in British army maps.

All these names reflect the same Iranian language compound, and share an identification as the legendary mountain Harā Bərəzaitī of the Avesta. The name Elbrus is derived by metathesis from Alborz. The name Alborz is derived from that of Harā Barazaitī, a legendary mountain in the Avesta. Harā Barazaitī reflects Proto-Iranian *Harā Bṛzatī. *Bṛzatī is the feminine form of the adjective *bṛzant- “high”, the ancestor of modern Persian boland (بلند) and Barz/Berazandeh, cognate with Sanskrit ‘Brihat’ (बृहत्). Harā may be interpreted as “watch” or “guard”, from an Indo-European root *ser- “protect”. In Middle Persian, Harā Barazaitī became Harborz, Modern Persian Alborz, which is cognate with Elbrus.

The Legend of Alborz/Alburz according to Encyclopedia Iranica:

The most ancient layer of belief about the mythical “high Harā” appears to be that it was a huge mountain rising in the middle of the world, around whose peak (Av.taēra-, Pahl. tērag) “revolve the stars, moon, and sun” (Yt. 12.25), thus creating night and day. Each morning the “sun goes forth to cross high Harā in its flight” (Yt. 10.118); and Mithra, who goes before it, has his abode on the lofty, shining mountain, “where there is neither night nor darkness, neither cold wind nor hot . . . neither do mists rise from high Harā” (Yt. 10.50). Further, “just as light comes in from Harborz . . . water too comes in from Harborz” (Bd. 11.6); for the mythical river Arədvī Sūrā Anāhitā was held to pour down from the mountain’s peak into the ocean Vourukaša (Yt. 5.3; cf. Bd. 10.5-6), being thus the source of all the waters of the world. In Vendidad 21 an incantation links together light and the waters, high Harā and the ocean Vourukaša. In the yasna liturgy (Y. 42.3) the worshipers offer sacrifice to sky and earth, wind and the “Peak of Harā.” The peak is also called Mount Hukairya (Pahl. Hukar), “Of good activity” (Yt. 10.88); and worshipers of Arədvī Sūrā praise “Mount Hukairya the verdant, which deserves all praise” (Yt. 5.96), while in the Bundahišn “the lofty Hukar, through which springs the water of Ardvīsūr,” is called “the chief of summits” (Bd. 11.9; cf. Pahl.Rivayat 15.4).

The “abode and dwelling of the clouds” is on Harborz (Mēnōg ī xrad 44.16); and there the Baga set the sacred plant haoma to grow. There too the yazata Haoma, as priest of the gods, offers sacrifice, specifically to Mithra (Yt. 10.89) and to Sraoša (Y. 57.19). Figures of ancient Iranian myth, namely Haošyaŋha (Hōšang) and Yima (Jamšēd) are also said to have offered sacrifice on the mountain, to the divinities Arədvī Sūrā, Druvāspā, and Vayu (Yt. 5.21, 25; 9.3, 8; 15.7, 15).

The Iranian concept of the great central world mountain has its parallel in the Indian one of the Mount Mēru or Sumēru; and when in course of time the Khotanese Sakas adopted Buddhism, they used the name “Peak of Harā” (ttaira haraysä) to render Sanskrit Sumēru (see H. W. Bailey, Khotanese Texts IV, Cambridge, 1961, p. 12). Already in ancient times, however, Iranian thinkers enlarged this concept of Harā; according to their speculative cosmogony the earth was originally a round plane, from whose flat surface the mountains grew up as if they were plants, having “roots” going deep into the ground and joined to the root of Harā. This name was now given also to a great chain of mountains held to encircle the earth’s round rim. “As the first mountain there stood upon this earth high Harā, which encircles entirely the eastern lands and the western lands” (Yt. 19.1). “Mount Harborz encircles the world. The suŋrevolves above Mount Harborz, around (its) Peak (Tērag). . . . Harborz was growing until the completion of 800 years: for 200 years up to the star station, for 200 years up to the moon station, for 200 years up to the sun station, and for 200 years up to the summit of the sky” (Bd. 5b.1, 9.1-2). “As Harborz grew up, all the mountains were moving, for all have grown up from the roots of Harborz. . . . Their roots passed in that way from one to another and they are established in mutual connection” (Indian Bundahišn 8.2-3). The concept of an encircling mountain range again has a parallel in the Indianlōkālōka, a ring of mountains encompassing all the continents of the earth (see W. Kirfel, Die Kosmographie der Inder nach den Quellen dargestellt, Bonn and Leipzig, 1920); but the special development whereby this range was given the same name as the single central peak, with all other mountains held to be linked to them both, appears part of the general tendency of ancient Iranian thinkers to seek unity behind apparent diversity (a tendency which seems to have prepared the way for Zarathuštra’s monotheism). Attempts were made to limit resulting ambiguities by referring fairly regularly to the central mountain by the synonyms of Taēra (Tērag) and Hukairya (Hukar), while the encircling range is sometimes distinguished as the Harborz var or “enclosure” (Dādestān ī dēnīg, pursišn 20.2; Indian Bundahišn 5.3).

There was evidently a tendency from ancient times to attach legends to the great world mountain, which in one Pahlavi text is said to rise up from Ērānvēǰ (Av. Airyanəm Vaēǰah), the region which had come to be regarded as the mythical homeland of the Iranians (Dādestān ī dēnīg, pursišn 20.2). The following strange legend is preserved in Bundahišn 24.24: “Every third year many from non-Iranian lands gather together upon the summit of Mount Harborz, in order to go into the Iranian lands to cause harm and bring destruction on the world. Then the yazadBorz [i.e., Ahura bərəzant; see under Apam Napāt] comes up from the depths of the water Arang and arouses, upon the highest point of all that high mountain, the bird Čamrūš, which pecks up all those from non-Iranian lands as a bird pecks up grain.” Other legends concerning the mountain, under the later form of its name, “Alborz,” are preserved in the Šāh-nāma. Thus the mother of Ferēdūn (Av. Thrāetaona) bears her infant son for safety to the “lofty mountain,” Alborz, which here, it seems, is thought to rise in “Hendūstān” (ed. Borūḵīm, I, p. 46.145-47; tr. A. and E. Warner, London, 1905-12, I, p. 152). There the child is brought up by a holy recluse. More is told of the mountain itself in the legend of Zāl, for the Sīmorḡ is said to have her nest on “Alborz, nigh to the sun and far removed from men” (I, p. 132.83; tr. p. 241). It was at the foot of Alborz that the infant Zāl was exposed, because of its remoteness. Here again the mountain is said to be in India (I, pp. 135.111, 136.130; tr. I, pp. 243, 244). The Sīmorḡ swoops down and carries the child up to her nest on Alborz, “whose top was midst the Pleiades. Thou wouldst have said “It will obstruct the stars.”” No tracks, even of wild beasts, led up the precipitous slopes to the rocky peak (I, p. 137.145, 155; tr., I, pp. 244, 245). There Zāl grew up, and from there he was in the end brought down again by the great bird, since no man could scale that height (I, p. 142.246; tr., I, p. 250).

In a subsequent incident in the epic Rostam breaks through Afrāsīāb’s troops, at the borders of Iran, in order to reach Mount Alborz and find Kayqobād, who, like his forbear Ferēdūn, had grown up in safety on the mountain’s lower slopes, a “blest land” (I, pp. 291, 158ff., 293.195-96; tr., I, pp. 382ff., 384). Later Rostam speaks of having brought Kayqobād to the land of Iran from Mount Alborz (II, p. 467.536-37; tr., II, p. 144). In one or two other places in the epic it seems likely (though the passages are not wholly unambiguous) that Mount Alborz is conceived as being within Iran, i.e., is thought of as the great mountain range which now bears that name.

Taera -> Terak -> Tera -> Ttaira -> Taira Peaks

Ichaporia and Humbach as well as Sethna do not translate “taera” as the name of a mountain but rather as “peak“. However, it does make more sense in the contexts above to read it as several or a set of peaks rather than a single peak. But that sense of a single peak rising into the heavens is now embedded in Hindu and Buddhist mythology as well. In the Zamyad Yasht, there is no mythology in the description of the mountains. They are listed quite matter-of-factly and the word “taera” appears buried in the middle of verse 19.6 in a rather obscure manner.

Mary Boyce informs us that when the Khotanese Saka became Buddhists, they referred to Mt. Sumeru of Buddhist legends as Ttaira Haraysa, the peak of Hara. Mt. Sumeru in Buddhist mythology lies at the centre of the earth and according to Anklesaria’s translation of GB 5B.1, “Mount Tera is in the middle of the earth.”

Principal Hara Peaks – Mount Hukaria and Daitik

The Greater Bundahishn translated by B. T. Anklesaria (at 17.18) describes the Hukar (Huk-airya in the Avesta) as being the ‘chief’ of the summits. Huk-airya means the ‘good Arya’ or the ‘good and beneficent Arya’ – the environs of which, Airyana Vaeja, was a paradise with ideal conditions: no inclement weather, natural beauty and where the people enjoyed good health. The GB at 9.3 also states that, “As the other mountains have grown out of Alburz, in number, two thousand two hundred and forty-four mountains, that are the lofty Hugar/Hukar (Huk-airya), the Tera of Alburz, the Daitih peak….” We note that the Hugar/Hukar (Huk-airya) is described at both the chief of the mountains as well as lofty (tall – towering above others. At GB 9.7, “The lofty Hugar/Hukar (Huk-airya) is that from which the water of Aredvisur descends from the height of a thousand men.” At 9.9, “The Daitih (Chakad-i-Daitik in the Lesser Bundahishn) peak is that which is in the middle of the world, of the height of a hundred men, whereon is the Chinvad bridge; they judge the soul at that place.” Much attention is given to “Tera” being the name of a pivotal mountain at the centre of the earth, but in the Daitih we have another contender for this description. The height of a hundred men does not make it a very tall mountain and one suitable perhaps for a significant temple or sanctuary (see the thangka painting below). We could have two versions of the myth, one with a very tall central mountain and the other with a shorter mountain crowned by a temple or sanctuary as depicted by the thangka painting below. Both versions appear to exist currently either explicitly or implicitly, and the shorter version appears to make more sense with reality.

The combined manner in which the Hukar, Tera and Daitik are described in the Bundahishn has resonance with the manner in which Mount Meru, Sumeru, is described in Hindu and Buddhist texts”.

High Hara

At this point, all the bells ring out loud, and we are reminded of Taka-ma-ga-hara, and Ama-terasu, heavenly goddess of the Shining (who came from that celestial world above). We hear the word “tera” used and echoed as the word for Japanese temple (not shrine, implying the formation of the concept was already in the context of the crucibles of Buddhism and key Central Asian thought of the times)… and though the word is given Chinese form, its Iranian sound has no equivalent in Chinese words “shi” or “miao” for temple.

The word Taka-ma-ga-hara takes on even deeper meaning, when you consider that Taka in Japanese means High Hara, and is also synonymous with ‘plain’, and ‘taira’ is also the Japanese word for ‘plain’. Taka-ma-ga-hara is thought of in Japan as the Celestial Plains, and the celestial plains are to be found on earth in Japan as well as Mount Hara, just as the metaphysical Hara-Benzeitis or Alburzes are also physical places on earth to the Iranians, just as Mt Meru (or Sumeru) is for the Hindus and Buddhists.

The word also occurs among the Greeks, and in the Greek language, it is found as the Har or Hor signifying a mountain See Jacob Bryant’s “A New System or an Analysis of Ancient Mythology“. There is also another European (Germanic-Swabian-Suebi peoples who were an Elbe Germanic tribe whose origin was near the Baltic Sea or the today, the term “Swabian Sea” known to the Romans as the Mare Suebicum) equivalent of  High Harz in the Hochharz) - the Harz; Hardt, Hart mountains and Alburz has its equivalent in River Elbe. Hara thus finds a close cognate in Harz which is the highest mountain range in Northern Germany, the name Harz derives from the Middle High German word Hardt or Hart (mountain forest), Latinized as Hercynia. The common etymology and meanings of the words Hara, Harz Terak-Tera-Dtaira-Daira, etc. suggests the origin of the Takamagahara cosmology may have originated from tribal migrants nostalgic for these mountains.

We might also wish to factor mountains in Armenia or Mesopotamia further afield to Mt Hermon which is essentially Hara-mun, a mountain significant to both key Druze communities as well as Hebrew tribes connected to the Books of Chronicles and Enoch lineages. The Vulgata renders the Hebrew hārəy Ǎrārāṭ asmontes Armeniae, so we have another Harae-Ararat named for the peak that is associated with the Biblical Mountains of Ararat where Noah’s Ark came to rest after the great flood(Genesis 8:4). This association of Mount Ararat with the biblical mountains is ancient, entering Western Christianity in the fourth century, with Jerome‘s reading of Josephus.

Alternatively, “Togarma, Armenia, in which Mt. Arrarat is situated, is the Takamakahara, from which the ancestor of the Japanese race is said to have descended. Takamagahara means the Plain of High Heaven” … this observation was been made by Dr. Jenichiro Oyabe, author of “Origin of Japan and the Japanese and who attributed Togarma as the founder of the Japanese (and therefore regarded the Japanese to be descendants of the Hebrew race). The Biblical Togarmah was held to be the ancestor of the peoples of the South Caucasus: (the Georgians, the Armenians) and some Turkic peoples; Others (Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (37 – c. 100 AD), Roman Catholic priest Jerome (c. 347 – 420 AD) and Isidore of Seville (c. 560 – 636 AD)) regarded Togarmah as regarded Togarmah as the father of the Phrygians.  Cognates are found in the Greek Thargamos and in the Hittite Bronze Age kingdom of Tegarama in Anatolia; or with the Assyrian Til-Garimmu (the city was inhabited during the Old Assyrian Kingdom and Hittite Empire).  

Armenians call themselves Hayer and their county Hayastan (the land of the Hayasa) after their founder Haik, who according to Moses of Chorene was son of Togarmah. In the past the country was historically called by natives Metz Hayk/Hayq (Greater Armenia) and Poqr Hayk/Hayq (Lesser Armenia). Armenian Moses of Chorene and also Georgian Leonti Mroveli regarded Togarmah as the founder of their nations along with other Caucasian people.

Mount Hermon (Haramun /Hebrew: Har Hermon)
However, we still see the best fit for Takama- ga-hara in the Iranian High Hara, or Taka-Hara, closest in meaning and sound. We do not discount the possibility, however, that as the Iranian plateau was a receiver of genetic inputs from various directions, the Iranian concept of High Hara, is derived from either the Hittite or Hebrew Togarma-Haya or alternatively, an Indo-European/Aryan/Hittite/Hebrew ancestral source of all the related groups (see Colin Renfrew’s latest hypothesis “Beyond the Silk Road”), we might triangulate the Hara mountain legends and names to the general area of the Indo-European-Indo-Iranian-Armenian mountain chains, around Zagros.

Furthermore, Ama-terasu can be surmised to mean the Celestial Shining goddess of the Terak peak or plain.

Genetically, we find it hard to accept that the Japanese are descended from the Hebrew race, as neither Y-DNA haplogroup J nor R1a1 haplogroups are found anywhere among the Japanese people. We do however, find Y-DNA D (with the YAP+ alleles) in great abundance among the Japanese. And they are found among the Arab Yemeni and Israeli Druids, in the Kalasha (who say they are descended from Alexander the Great, the Macedonian) who live in the Hindukush valley, as well as in tribal Yunnan along with Xinjiang, in the Southwest of China were the receiving point for many groups from the West. We also find among the Japanese royal and elite historical clans traces of N and Q and R1b1b haplogroups which may suggest a migratory history to some extent in common with Hunnic (Mongol-Turk?) lineages of the Ashina, Khazaria and Getae-Rajput peoples. Note: Y-DNA haplogroups of proto-Turks are N and Q. 800 BCE Ural-Altay languages speaking Turks occupied Central Asia and assimilated some of the R1b and R1a (Caucasian? Tocharians, Sogdians etc.) In the meantime they were also mixed with C3 and O haplogroups due to their relations with Mongol and Chinese people. So, when Oguz tribes migrated to Anatolia they were already formed by Q, N, C3, O, R1a, R1b. In addition to these groups today Turkish population includes J1, J2, Anatolian R1b, R1a, G, E1b.

The Aryan or Indo-Iranian landscape in Japan

By examining the myths of the Aryans or Indo-Iranians, we find a number of interesting coincidences of geographical locations and nomenclature, and enigmatically begin to see an Aryan landscape in Japan.

“Airyanem Vaejah was the legendary home of the Indo-Iranian people. It is believed that between ca. 5000 B.C. and 2000 B.C., Indian and Iranian tribes lived together in one place and spoke mutually intelligible languages. Sometime in the third millennium B.C., the two groups separated, reaching Iran and India via much-debated routes (94). Not surprisingly, the Avesta and the Rig Veda, the literary monuments of the Iranians and Indians respectively (second millennium B.C.) have similarities which extend beyond linguistics, to the very gods themselves, and the themes of parts of the narratives. Regrettably, the Iranian epic material in the Avesta was purged, sanitized or recast by the zeal of Zoroaster and his followers in the 7th century B.C. and later. Complicating matters is the fact that only a tiny percentage of the historically known Avesta has survived. It is only in oblique, presumably pre-Zoroastrian passages or in much later epic material (supposedly deriving from the earliest Iranian myths) that one encounters anything comparable to the passions and jealousies of the Greek or Indian deities (95).

Airyanem Vaejah, whose location is disputed, contained the first mountain created on earth, Hara Berezaiti or High Hara. The Vedas, which do not mention Airyanem Vaejah directly, nonetheless are familiar with this premier mountain (96). Close to the mountain was a sea, called Vourukasha in the Avesta, where the “Tree of All Seeds” grew. Coursing down the mountain, or near it, was a mighty river. [26] The early Indo-Iranians believed that all mountains were connected by their roots to High Hara; and that all bodies of water were connected to the magical sea (97).

Ahura Mazda, the god who created High Hara, also built palaces on it for the greatest gods: Mithra, Sraosha, Rashnu, Ardvi-sura Anahita, and Haoma, all of whom ride in special chariots. While humans could not live on the holy mountain, the greatest mythical heroes made sacrifices there. The way to the other world, a special abode of the blessed (where the largest and most choice specimens of plants and animals were found) lay through the foothills of Hara/Meru. The Chinvat bridge of Zoroastrian mythology, over which the souls of the dead had to pass was on or near High Hara. The motif of birds dwelling near the summit is shared by Iranian and Indian accounts, as is the theme of the theft of the intoxicating plant haoma/soma from the mountain’s summit by a magical bird (Syena/Garuda/Simurgh); and the slaying of a multi-headed, multi-eyed dragon nearby (98). In the Indian tradition, Agni, the rock-born god of fire with tawny hair and iron teeth is connected with the sacred mountain. In the Iranian tradition, High Hara is also associated with metallurgy. Fire and metals were introduced to humanity after the hero Hoshang(Haoshyangha) sacrificed on the mountain (99). High Hara was also the locale of many of the most memorable contests in Iranian mythology (100).

The Avesta and the Vedas do not contain sufficiently precise geographical information to locate Airyanem Vaejah. [27]Despite this, for more than a century scholars have attempted to locate this legendary “original homeland” based on various interpretations of details. Thus, unbelievably, references to the severity of the winter storms in the mountains and certain poetic statements led to a “polar hypothesis”(101). The fact that the Avesta has survived only in an eastern Iranian language, the statement that the prophet Zoroaster’s initial visions and early teaching occurred here, and the belief that cattle raising developed exclusively on the steppes of eastern Iran, led to the selection of eastern Iran as the most likely site, by some (102). In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a number of scholars suggested that Airyanem Vaejah should be sought in the Caucasus or adjacent areas. This view, which was developed most thoroughly by A.V.W. Jackson, was shared by James Darmesteter, an early translator of the Avesta and A.J. Carnoy, author of the study “Iranian mythology” in Mythology of All Races (vol. 6), among others (103). According to these hypotheses, the sacred mountain (High Hara) and the magical sea (Vourukasha) would correspond to either Mt. Rewanduz and Lake Urmiah; Mt. Ararat or Mt. Aragats and Lake Sevan; Mt. Suphan or Mt. Nemrut and Lake Van; or Mt. Savalan or Mt. Demavend and the Caspian Sea. This last is the favorite of later Iranian tradition. Jackson suggested that Azerbaijan was the most likely site for Airyanem Vaejah, and that the later Zoroaster also hailed from this land of mountains, rivers, and prized pasturage (104)”

Regarding identification of the Veh with the Indus River, the Greater Bundahishn at 11.A.2 as translated by B. T. Anklesaria states, “The river Veh passes on in the east, goes to the land of Sind and pours into the sea in India. There they call it the river Mitran [and also call it the river Indus].” The Lesser Bundahishn translated by E. W. West, at 20.7 states, “The Mehrva River they call the Hendva River…”. Hendva would be connected to Hindu. 20.9 also states, “The Veh River passes on in the east, goes through the land of Sind, and flows to the sea in Hindustan, and they call it there the Mehra River.” We note that this river is called Hendva, Mehrava, Mehra, Mitran (Mithra/Mitra and Mehr ["mir"meaning king and used to name Himalayan mountain peaks] are related words, the former being the older form which seems to be the trend in the Greater Bundahishn. The Lesser Bundahishn starts with the declaration at 20.1 that two rivers flow from the north – from the Alburz (Mountains) – and that the one towards the East is the Veh River.

We are therefore left with two Veh rivers, one identified with the Amu Darya (Oxus) and the other with the Mitran or Mehra (the Indus). Masudi in his Historical Encyclopaedia writes that the “Guebers (sic) i.e. Zoroastrians, felt that the Jaihun (Oxus) was connected with the Indus to form one river, the Veh.” The ancients may have perceived the Veh as a mythical circumventing river, one that circumvented Airyana in the east and the west – perhaps even all the way around.

Rivers Flowing into Neighbouring Countries

Verse 10.14 of the Avesta’s Mehr Yasht, states that the rivers which originate in Airyo shayanem*, the Aryan abode, flow swiftly into the countries of Mourum [later Margu(sh) (English-Greek Margiana) and eventually Marv located in today's Turkmenistan], Haroyum (Aria in modern Afghanistan), Sughdhem (Sugd in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan) and Khairizem [Khvarizem beside the Amu Darya (Oxus) River in Uzbekistan]. [*Note: shayanem is used to denote a few countries/lands/abodes in the Vendidad's list of sixteen nations. As "abode" or "dwelling place", the word may denote a region rather than a country, a region over which the Airya had spread by that time.]

There are very few sets of rivers that meet this description and they all originate in the mountains of Afghanistan and Tajikistan radiating westward from the Pamirs. Since 1. Bakhdhi (Balkh) is a significant omission from this list, 2. Khairizem is a nation not mentioned directly in the Vendidad’s list of nations and appears to be a “younger” nation than the Vendidad nations [together with Parsa (Persia) and Mada (Media) also not mentioned], and 3. the Aryan lands are called by a slightly different name than in the Vendidad, one possibility is that this Meher Yasht description was part of the younger Avesta, by time of whose writing, the original Aryan lands, Airyana Vaeja, had begun to move westward along the northern Hindu Kush slopes, towards the Kuh-e Baba, Kuh-e Hissar and Safid Kuh – the northern Afghanistan mountain region south of Balkh. To us it is not without significance that there is a Murgab River in the Pamir highlands of Tajikistan, then in the northern Afghanistan and eventually in Pars.

The larger river flowing into Mourum (Eng-Gk Margiana) is the Murgab River; the main river flowing through Haroyum (Eng-Gk Aria) is the Hari-Rud River; the main river flowing through Sughdhem/Sugd (Eng-Gk Sogdiana) is the Zerafshan River. The Kashka Darya also flows through Sughdhem. Sughdhem was likely bordered by the Amu Darya (Oxus) in the west/south-west and Syr Darya (Jaxartes) Rivers in the east/north-east. There are of course, other smaller rivers. The Pamirs together with the Hindu Kush and its western extensions including the Safeed Kuh and Siah Kuh mountains that border today’s Northern Afghanistan are where these rivers originate.

The Lesser & Greater Bundahishns at LB Chapter 20 and GB Chapter 11.A respectively provide additional information. We reproduce here portions of the Bundahishn related to the rivers of Central Asia identified above via the Meher Yasht. However, the Bundahishns only assign the rivers Daraja and Daitya to ancient Iran-Vej (Airyana Vaeja). Regardless, we still see these lands the rivers flow through as part of greater Aryan nation, Iran-Shahr:

LB 13. The Daitya river is the river which comes out from Eranvej, and goes out through the hill-country; of all rivers the noxious creatures in it are most, as it says, that the Daitya river is full of noxious creatures. [Our note: it is significant that the Daitya is noted as "going through hill country".] GB 11.A.7 states “The river Daitya comes out of Eranvej and proceeds to Dutistan.” We have yet to identify Dutistan.

Source readings and references:

Tantra and Taoism: On their essential nature and relation

Dürckheim, Karlfried “Hara, The Vital Centre of Man”  Unwin 1980

Wilberg, Peter Head, “Heart & Hara – the Soul Centres of West and East”  New Gnosis Publications 2003

Zoroastrians, Their Religious Beliefs and Practices by Mary Boyce

Japanese Author Traces Nippon Origin to Hebrew Race Aug 15, 1929

Aryans: Location of the Aryana Vaeja (Zoroastrian Heritage) by K. E. Eduljee

[Whilst it is often said that the Japanese religious system is derived from the Tibetan bon religion, much of the key royal mythology, shrine and folk lore found in the Kojiki and Nihon shoki and other early records and documents, parallel more closely those of the ancient Indo-Iranian, Greco-Bactrian and Central Asian interaction spheres, occasionally with some Sinicization or Koreanic transformation. ]

Alborz - Encyclopaedia Iranica

Elburz

Mount Hermon

The Druze: A Population Genetic Refugium of the Near East

Watch out for more on the Druze peoples.

The Asahi Shimbun October 25, 2013

Kanji characters for a “suizo” (drunk elephant) are written on the face of a wooden shogi piece found in the remains of a well in Nara. (Kazunori Takahashi)

By KAZUTO TSUKAMOTO/ Staff Writer

August 09, 2013 The Asahi Shimbun

TAKASHIMA, Shiga Prefecture–Ancient molds for daggers with a double-ringed pommel and a straight blade, which have no precedent in Japan or even the nearby Korean Peninsula, have been unearthed at an archaeological site in this western city, cultural property officials said.

The Shiga Prefectural Association for Cultural Heritage said Aug. 8 the finds from the Kami-Goten site likely date from between 350 B.C. and A.D. 300.

Japanese archaeologists were astonished by the discovery as the artifacts bear a striking resemblance to finds in far-flung areas of northern China.

The two siltstone molds, each 30 centimeters long, 9 cm wide and 4 cm thick, were found overlapping each other. The designs allowed bladesmiths to cast both the handle and the blade as a single piece.

Each mold has two rings, each measuring 2.3 cm across, at the end of the handle that is decorated with saw-tooth and herringbone patterns. Both of those geometrical patterns are commonly seen on the surface of bronze bells unearthed in Japan.

The daggers would have had a straight blade and no guard.

The saw-tooth patterns on the handle led Harutaro Odagi, an associate professor of archaeology at Tenri University, to suggest the molds must have been fashioned in Japan.

“The artifacts, likely modeled after bronze daggers of northern China, were probably made in Japan, although how the design got here is a mystery,” Odagi said.

According to the prefectural cultural heritage association and other archaeologists, Japan in the distant past specialized in one type of dagger: the “slender bronze dagger,” introduced from Korea, although some of them were much larger and intended for ritual use.

Slender bronze daggers trace their origins to weapons called Liaoning bronze daggers and made during China’s Spring and Autumn and Warring States Period (770 B.C.-221 B.C.) in areas covering today’s Korea and northeast China.

Bronze daggers of that type have been unearthed in Japan, most notably in northern Kyushu and areas around the Inland Sea. A characteristic of those weapons is a narrow part in the middle of the blade. The blades and handles were cast separately.

These molds for daggers with a double-ringed pommel were unearthed from the Kami-Goten archaeological site in Takashima, Shiga Prefecture. (Ryo Kato)

By contrast, the latest finds resemble “Ordos daggers,” or bronze artifacts manufactured and used during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States Period by equestrian nomads in areas to the north of China, which cover today’s northern Hebei province, northern Beijing and central and southern Inner Mongolia.

Ordos daggers have straight blades, are cast as a single piece, and have two pommel rings that imitate a pair of birds facing each other.

Hiroshi Yoshida, an Ehime University associate professor who is an expert on ancient bronze daggers, noted that the archaeological site is close to the sixth-century Kamo Inariyama burial mound, which has produced a multitude of gilded-bronze ornaments in a style that is clearly from Korea.

An artist’s rendition of daggers the molds would have produced (Provided by the Shiga Prefectural Board of Education)

“The forces governing that area may have had Korean and Chinese connections since Japan’s earliest days,” Yoshida said.

Kazuo Miyamoto, a professor of East Asian archaeology at Kyushu University, noted that a slender bronze dagger influenced by Ordos design, cast as a whole and with a double-ringed pommel, has been unearthed in Karatsu, Saga Prefecture.

“People probably learned from the overall design and attempted to make similar things on their own,” Miyamoto said.

The molds show no trace of having been used. Also, no daggers have been unearthed there.

“The artifacts were probably not for practical use or were flops,” said Yoshinori Tajiri, an associate professor of archaeology at Kyushu University.

(This article was written by Tatsuya Gunji and Senior Staff Writer Kunihiko Imai.)

A stone sculpture of Yakushi Nyorai kept at Jishoin temple is believed to be the work of acclaimed sculptor Kaikei. (Provided by Sango town research group)

September 02, 2013, The Asahi Shimbun

By NAOKI MATSUYAMA/ Staff Writer

SANGO, Nara Prefecture–Researchers say they have discovered what may be the oldest work by acclaimed sculptor Kaikei, who was active in the Kamakura Period (1192-1333).

A stone sculpture of Yakushi Nyorai (the Buddhist deity of healing) that was kept at Jishoin temple in Sango, Nara Prefecture, was confirmed to be a work by Kaikei, and could date more than six months before the oldest existing work by the redoubtable “Busshi” (sculptor who specializes in Buddha statues).

The temple is affiliated with another believed to have been established by the Buddhist monk Jokei (1155-1213), who was also known as Gedatsu Shonin.

The research group established by the Sango board of education began looking into the stone sculpture in May because it was in danger of falling over. The sculpture was kept in a hilly area toward the back of Jishoin temple. The researchers took apart the granite sculpture measuring 2.2 meters high, 2 meters wide and between 25 to 30 centimeters thick.

A stone cap was placed on the sculpture and on the underside of the cap were markings that said the sculpture was created based on the “original vow” of Gedatsu Shonin. Markings also bore a close resemblance to a signature mark often used by Kaikei in identifying his other works.

The research group was able to determine that the stone sculpture was the work of Kaikei based on a passage from a biography of a Buddhist priest who was close to Jokei, which said a stone sculpture of Yakushi was created by Kaikei based on a request made by Jokei.

The sculpture originally had an image of Yakushi carved into the stone along with bodhisattvas and other deities, but the faces have faded due to exposure to the weather as well as being touched for centuries by believers.

An illustration shows what the Yakushi Nyorai stone sculpture might have looked like when it was first created. (Provided by Sango town research group)

There are also other markings on the sculpture that could be interpreted to mean it was completed in February 1189, on the first anniversary of the death of the oldest son of an aristocrat who was a follower of Jokei.

Until now, the oldest confirmed existing work by Kaikei was created in September 1189. It is in the possession of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

Members of the research group said the stone sculpture would shed new light on Kaikei because it was created before he became one of the representative artists of the Kamakura Period.

“We do not know of any other stone sculpture connected to Kaikei,” said Hisao Miyake, a professor of Buddhist art history at Nara University. “It is very valuable because we can learn about a new side to Kaikei.”

The research group will announce its findings at a symposium scheduled in November at Shujitsu University in Okayama city.

The remains of a ditch, believed to have served as a canal to convey materials when building the Heiankyo, are uncovered in Kyoto’s Kamigyo Ward. (Noboru Tomura)

October 18, 2013 The Asahi Shimbun

By TSUYOSHI SATO

KYOTO–A private excavation group based in Kobe has found the remains of a canal-like ditch likely used in the construction of the Heiankyo, which served as the capital of Japan a millennium ago, here in Kyoto’s Kamigyo Ward.

The “Kodai Bunka Chosakai” group (ancient culture investigation group) said Oct. 17 that the discovery will make it possible to see the advanced civil engineering methods of the Heian Period (794-1185).

It is believed that houses of officers at Naizenshi (imperial table office), a department that prepared and served food to the emperor, were located in this area during the period.

According to group members, the remains of the ditch are about 5 meters wide and about 50 to 80 centimeters deep, which obliquely extended for about 20 meters from a northeast direction to a southwest direction.

It is thought that materials, which were used for the building of the Heiankyo, had been arranged in the southwest direction from this site.

Due to the flat and artificial bottom of the remains, researchers determined that the ditch was a canal used to convey the materials from the Kamogawa river to build the Heiankyo. The canal was filled in after construction work was completed, they said.

A clay pot from the first half of the ninth century was also unearthed from the soil used to fill in the canal.

In addition, the group also confirmed the discovery of remnants from the Tsuchimikado-oji path, one of the main thoroughfares in the Heiankyo.

According to the group members, the remains show the Tsuchimikadooji path was constructed some time after the Heiankyo’s “daidairi,” the location of the government offices and the house of the emperor, was built, using the canal.

“They are precious vestiges, allowing us to see the process how the Heiankyo was developed,” said Koji Iesaki, leader of the investigation.

An apartment building is scheduled to be built on the site of the archaeological dig once the research has been concluded.

Asahi Shimbun, December 04, 2013

By Shunsuke Nakamura

KOGA, Fukuoka Prefecture–Even after being buried for more than 1,300 years, horse armor and military equipment found at a site close to the Funabaru burial mound could be brought to life through advanced industrial technology.

The use of X-ray CT fluoroscopy and computer technology has led to the creation of images that reproduce what the ancient military artifacts, which date to the late sixth century to seventh century, may have originally looked like.

The site stirred major interest among archaeology buffs after its discovery this spring. The equipment was part of items buried in holes dug around the burial mound. Among the more than 200 items that have been unearthed are a wide range of types of armor and armaments.

Above image: A rare helmet used to protect a horse’s head from the late sixth to early seventh century (Shunsuke Nakamura)

The artifacts include such rare finds as a helmet to protect a horse’s head, other horse adornments, a number of lacquered bows and other items that likely came from abroad.

The variety and high quality of the artifacts have led some experts to suggest that the find is on the same level as those found at the Fujinoki burial mound in Nara Prefecture, which have been designated as national treasures.

A major reason for the large variety of items uncovered is the close cooperation from the very beginning of the dig between experts in conservation science and archaeology. That cooperation led to accurate measurement of the dimensions of the items found, early discovery of the detailed patterns and structure of the artifacts, as well as the discovery of the cloth attached to a horse adornment.

Normally in archaeological studies, drawings are made after artifacts are unearthed and cleaned. However, in that process, many important pieces of information also tend to become lost or damaged.

For the latest dig, the items were left in the large clumps of dirt when they were dug up. CT scanning was conducted of the items at the Kyushu Historical Museum in Ogori, Fukuoka Prefecture.

A museum official said the CT scanning allowed for the undisturbed collection of information, such as small fragments, which normally would have been lost.

Computer technology was also used to reproduce what the items originally looked like.

A gilt-bronze decorative fitting had a rare design not commonly found in Japan. A number of small columns were placed on top of a hexagonal metal sheet, with the distance between opposing points about 11 centimeters. A CT scan led researchers to determine that the item was a remnant of a decorative fitting for a horse. [it was reproduced in the TV programme, commented upon below]

Researchers at the Kyushu National Museum in Dazaifu, Fukuoka Prefecture, cooperated in reproducing what the fitting may have originally looked like. Work is now continuing to reproduce the item by using a 3-D printer.

Officials of the Koga municipal board of education said the methods used in studying the items could serve as a model for other archaeological projects if certain conditions are met.

By SHUNSUKE NAKAMURA/ Senior Staff Writer

::::

During the broadcasted NHK programme “CLOSEUP” (Dec 2, 2013), the feature showed the above and following images, asserted that researchers concluded unequivocally that the find of gilt bronze horse fittings were made in the Yamato kingdom(called Wa in the Chinese historical records), calling for a reversal of the popular view that Japan was a backwater colony of Korea.

With the help of 3D printer, the above excavated find was successfully reconstructed as seen below:

That hundreds of keyhole mounds are found in Japan (with a sizably large population existed on the island of Kyushu that was capable of producing horse fittings), while only a few related ones are found in South Korea, supports the view that the Yamato kingdom was no backwater province but a powerful independent kingdom in its own right.

Above: These are the few keyhole mounds actually found in South Korea.

:::

Related article: More rare ancient finds uncovered in Fukuoka Source: The Asahi Shimbun [June 08, 2013] via the Archaeology News Network

Well-preserved lacquered bows and farm tools from at least 14 centuries ago were discovered in a site here that had already earlier uncovered a complete set of trappings and ornaments from a war horse … see additional excerpted material:

“The bows were uncovered at a site about 5 meters from the Funabaru burial mound, which dates to the late sixth century to early seventh century. The lacquered bows were between 2.2 to 2.3 meters long. At least six bows were discovered buried in a row in the northern part of the site.

Metal ornaments used on the bows were also found at equal distances to each other. Parts attached to the tips of the bows to tie the bowstring were also found. The parts were made of metal and antlers.

It is apparently the first time that so many bows have been found in a single location during excavations of sites from the “burial mounds age,” which ran from the third through seventh centuries. The set will likely exceed the bows found at the Doboyama burial mound in Takatsuki, Osaka Prefecture.

Several dozen arrowhead were also found together in the southern part of the site. Among the farm tools found were a spade head and sickle made from iron.

Researchers also confirmed that there were at least four sets of horse armor at the site, which extended for about 5.3 meters in a north-south direction. A short extension was found at a right angle to the southern part of the site, forming a reverse L-shape.”

Layout of cosmically heaven-aligned city, Changan of the Tang Dynasty, Shaanxi History Museum: “Scenes of Flourishing Tang”, P27. Zhejiang People’s Fine Arts Publishing House, 1999.

During the Nara period, the Japanese court actively sought to absorb the body of advanced ideas and knowledge of astronomy, engineering and city-building, medicine, technology, arts and music and governmental organization, that were coming out of the Chinese Tang Dynasty’s capital city Changan (Cho-an to the Japanese).  These ideas were transmitted via two-way diplomatic missions between Nara and the Changan capital, and for the most part, the incoming corpus of knowledge and ideas, studied, embraced and adopted enthusiastically, including its fashions — much of which almost wholesale. More details and background on this here.

Plan of Nara (image open source: Wiki College Study Blue notes by Ornello di Franco)

The city of Changan, …

“continued to be the principal capital of the empire and entered the greatest period of its development under the Tang Dynasty (618-907). “At the height of its glory in the mid-eighth century, Chang’an was the most populous, cosmopolitan, and civilized city in the world” (Richard B. Mather, foreword to Xiong, p. ix), occupying some 84 sq. km. with around one million inhabitants. It suffered major damage during the An Lushan rebellion in the mid-8th century, but even toward the end of the Tang period, when the empire was in disarray, the “enormous size” of the city impressed an Arab visitor.

Under the Tang, the city was a major religious center, not only for Buddhism and Taoism but also for several religions which were relatively recent arrivals in China: Zoroastrianism, Nestorianism and Manichaeism… a Japanese pilgrim noted in 844 that there were over 300 Buddhist temples in Chang’an.” – ”Chang’an (Xian)” (a University of Washington’s resource)

The writer Anthony Aveni in “Bringing sky to earth” gives us a good account and concise summary of the Tang Empire-Son of Heaven’s worldview that would have been transmitted to Japanese during the Nara period.

“…cities with long written histories – like Beijing – provide us with some unanticipated connections.

The written legacy helps us understand the reasons behind the desire to orientate one’s capital to the stars. A strong bond existed between astrology and good government: a mandate from heaven underlay all Chinese dynastic ideology.

Chinese society has always been bureaucratically organized. Family histories contain lengthy chapters on astronomy, with data such as where and when celestial objects appeared or disappeared, their colour, brightness, direction of motion and their gathering together in one place. These histories also suggest implications that such data might have on family affairs: thus one Chinese historian and court astrologer explains that when planets gather, either there is great fortune or there is great calamity. He knows this because when they gathered in Roon (Scorpio), the Zhou dynasty flourished, but when they gathered in Winnowing Basket (Sagittarius), Qi became the emperor.

The Chinese called their constellations the ‘heavenly minions’. But when they looked among them in the north they saw not a pair of wheeling bears flanked by a dragon as we do, but rather a celestial empire. Which constellations did they recognize and what do the Chinese stars tell us about their ideas concerning rulership and the orientation of the city? Confucius compared the emperor’s rule with Polaris, the north star: just as the emperor was the axis of the earthly state, so his celestial pivot was the polar constellation. The economy revolved around the fixed emperor the way the stars turn about the immoveable pole. According to one legend, the Divine King was born out of the light radiated upon his mother by the Pole Star. Four of the seven stars in what we know as the Little Dipper, plus two others, constituted the Kou Chen or ‘Angular Arranger’ of the Chin Shu dynasty. These stars made up the great ‘Purple Palace’ and each of their celestial functionaries had its terrestrial social counterpart. One member of the group was the crown prince who governed the moon while another, the great emperor, ruled the sun. A third, son of the imperial concubine, governed the five planets, while a fourth was the empress, and a fifth the heavenly palace itself. When the emperor’s star lost its brightness, his earthly counterpart would sacrifice his authority, while the crown prince would become anxious when his star appeared dim, especially when it lay to the right of the emperor.

The four surrounding stars of the palace proper are Pei Chi, the ‘Four Supporters’. On Chinese star maps they appear well situated to perform their task, which is to issue orders to the rest of the state. The ‘Golden Canopy’ is made up of seven stars, most of them corresponding to the pole-centred stars of our constellation Draco. It covered the palatial inhabitants and emissaries. Beyond them lay the stars of the Northern Dipper. More concerned with realizing celestial principles in the earthly realm, these ‘Seven Regulators’ are aptly situated to possess the manoeuvrability to come down close to Earth so that they can inspect the four quarters of the empire. According to one version, the Big Dipper is the carriage of the great theocrat who periodically wheels around the central palace to review conditions. Its stars are the source of Yin and Yang, the two-fold way of knowing what resolves the tension between opposing polarities: male and female, light and dark, active and passive. Yin and Yang wax and wane with cosmic time and make up the potentiality of the human condition. For every affair of state the starry winds of good and bad fortune blow across the sky.

Why this royal fixation with the stars of the north? Like the power invested in royalty, they were eternally visible, never obscured by the horizon. Indeed in temperate latitudes the stars that turn about the pole are raised quite high in the sky. The fixity of the polar axis is a cosmic metaphor for the constant power of the state.

Given the close parallel between the events surrounding the palace economy and the celestial arrangement, it seems logical to enquire whether Chinese royal architecture, like that of Stonehenge and Teotihuacan, is also situated in perfect harmony with the land- and skyscape.

To harmonize the arrangement of the royal capital with the local contours of cosmic energy, the king would call in a geomancer to perform the art of feng shui. This expert would decide where to select and how to arrange a site. His sources of cosmic knowledge were the local magnetic field, the paths of streams and the land forms; he might also consult oracle bones, engraved pieces of bone and shell used in divination. Sometimes workers would need to remove vast quantities of boulders or plant forests of trees to regulate the disposition of Yin and Yang energies passing in and out of the site.

There is an account of the foundation ritual associated with the city of Lo-yang of the Zhou dynasty at the close of the second millennium bc. On the second day of the third month:

Diog-Kung, Duke of Zhou, began to lay the foundations and establish a new and important city at Glak (Lo) in the eastern state. The people of the four quarters concurred strongly and assembled for the corvée … In the second month, the third quarter, on the sixth day in the morning the King walked from the capital of Diog (Chou) and reached P’iong (Feng). The Great Protector preceded Diog-Kung to inspect the site. When it came to the third month … on the third day the Great Protector arrived at Glak in the morning and took the tortoise oracle as bearing on the site. When he had obtained the oracle, he planned and laid out the city. On the third day the Great Protector and all the people of Yin began work on the public emplacements in the loop of the Glak river.

The attention to detail regarding place and time suggests that acquiring proper urban form depended on getting things right with nature – especially the cardinal axes. If it were to function properly, the city needed to be accurately partitioned into its quarters.

Beijing still preserves its ancient cosmic plan. If you stand in Tiananmen Square you can line up the Bell and Drum Towers, the Monument to the People’s Heroes, and the Mausoleum of Mao Zedong on a perfect north-south axis. Continue that line and you’ll discover that it runs through the gates of the old city. Today the cosmic axis is defined by a marble pavement that marks the imperial meridian. The Hall of Supreme Harmony, which houses the emperor’s throne, lies at its northern terminus; this symbolizes the circumpolar region where the earth meets the sky.

Beijing offers a lasting reminder of the cosmically ordained duties of the emperor. He had to perform a specific task at the beginning of the first month of each season, these being determined by the court astronomers who followed the course of the moon and sun and the five planets across the lunar mansions of the Chinese zodiac. The emperor would go to the eastern quarter ouf his domain to start the new year every spring equinox to pray for a sound harvest; then, followed by his ministers, he would plough a ceremonial furrow in a field. At the other seasonal pivots he would visit the other quarters of his city.

This calendar would have been familiar to any farmer, for it was based on what he could see in the sky. At the beginning of summer Antares lay due south at sunset, while on the first of winter the Tristar of Orion’s Belt took its place. Of course, farmers knew well when they could plant, but they needed to be aware that the official time to do so occurred when the handle of the Dipper pointed straight down, for then was it the first day of spring – the time for the king to come forth and speak to the people about the new year’s harvest.

The keeping of the observations and the preparation of the calendar resided in the state observatory. This institution lay hidden within the bowels of the Purple Palace. The importance of astronomical observing in the world of politics made secrecy a necessity. One directive issued by a ninth-century Tang Dynasty king reads:

If we hear of any intercourse between the astronomical officials or of their subordinates, and officials of any other government departments, or miscellaneous common people, it will be regarded as a violation of security relations which should be strictly adhered to. From now on, therefore, the astronomical officials are on no account to mix with civil servants and common people in general. Let the Censorate see to it.

And so the astronomers, spurred on by their government, performed their appointed task: to give the correct time so that the affairs of state might be properly conducted. ”

Source of article excerpt: Bringing the Sky Down to Earth by Anthony Aveni | Published in History Today Volume: 58 Issue 6 2008 (retrieved online Jan 25, 2014: http://www.historytoday.com/anthony-aveni/bringing-sky-down-earth)

Anthony F. Aveni is the Russell Colgate Distinguished Professor of Astronomy and Anthropology and Native American Studies at Colgate University. He is the author of People and the Sky: Our Ancestors and the Cosmos (Thames & Hudson).

Further recommended sources and readings:

Nara capital built in the shadow of the Chinese empire & under the influences of the Silk Road  (Heritage of Japan wordpress blog)

C. Cullen, Astronomy and Mathematics in Ancient China (Needham Resarch Institute, 2007)

Victor Cunrui Xiong, Sui-Tang Chang’an: A Study in the Urban History of Medieval China (Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, The University of Michigan, 2000).

The system of Japanese numerals is the system of number names used in the Japanese language, and its forms evolved as the language evolved.

“The native system of numerals is simple and partly based on vowel alterations to show doubling: pito ’1′~puta ’2′; mi ’3′ ~ mu ’6′; yo ’4′ ~ ya ’8′.

However, the system does not provide easily for formation of higher numbers … Some SJ numbers were used in OJ … But the intake of SJ numerals is usually thought not to have taken place until EMJ.

The Japanese numerals in writing are almost entirely based on the Chinese numerals and the grouping of large numbers follow the Chinese tradition of grouping by 10,000.  For most purposes today, the Chinese number system is used, rather than native numbers. However, native numbers are often used for counting numbers of items up to 10 – as in hitotsu, futatsu, mittsu (one item, two items, three items), notably days on the calendar, and with other Japanese counter words – and for various exceptions (fossils). These exceptions include 20 years old (hatachi), the 20th day of a month (hatsuka), 八百屋 (yaoya, greengrocer, literally “800 store”), and 大晦日 (ōmisoka – last day of the year, literally “big 30th day”)…see The Number System of the Ancient Japanese.

Origin of the number systems

The origin of the earlier ‘native ‘ number system is obscure, scholars attribute it to various Uralic-Altaic/Finno-Ugric/Melanesian sources, but so far clear evidence and proof is lacking. See Stefan Tanaka’s summary of earlier theories on the origins of the native counting system, including Shiratori’s that:

“…placed them within the Ural-Altaic family. the Ainu language, though monosyllabic like the languages of Southeast Asian cultures, provided, he said, objective proof of a Ural Altai affinity, for it exhibited agglutination like some Ural-Altaic affinity, for it exhibited agglutination like some Ural-Altaic languages, particularly Finn-Ugri and Samoyed, and also a similarity in the basic construction of some numbers, especially six through nine.”

“…The original numerical system, he suggested was based on a reduplicative scheme that was in turn reflected in the counting system. ancient Japanese used two hands to count: two (puto) was formed by adding one (pito) finger on one hand to the identical one on the other hand; three (mi) doubled to six (mu); four(yo) doubled to eight (ya); and five (it) doubled to ten(to)..”–Japan’s Orient: Rendering Pasts Into History by Stefan Tanaka

The task of tracing the origin of the Chinese number system, however, is more productive, and strong similarities can be seen in the number system adopted in ancient Japan with those used by the earliest Sino-Tibetan tribes…see the closest cognates charted below:

Japanese   English Proto-Sino-Tibetan         Written Tibetan/ Tibetan /Kannauri

ichi     ONE*ʔit / *kat / *tjak ~g-t(j)ik.                       geig   / cheek.     / id

ni       TWO*g/s-ni-s                                                       gnis   / nyee         / nis

san      THREE*g-sum                                                      gsum/ soom       / sum

yon/shi  FOUR*b-ləj                                                            bzi  / zhee           / pu

go       FIVE*l/b-ŋa                                                         lgna / nga            /ga

roku     SIX*d-(k-)ruk                                                      drug/ drook       / kuk

shichi   SEVEN*s-ni-s                                                         bdun / dun        / stif

hachi    EIGHT*b-r-gjat ~ b-g-rjat                              brgyad / gyay        / rai

ku1/kyū2  NINE*d/s-kəw                                                      dgu / goo         / zgui

1) From Early Middle Chinese Goon, the initial reading when first borrowed into Japanese

2) From Middle Chinese Kan’on, a later reading. Borrowed after palatalisation occurred in Middle Chinese.

juu      TEN*gip / *tsi(j)i(j) ~ tsjaj                                   bcu / choo        / sai

ni-juu   TWENTY*(m-)kul

hyaku    HUNDRED*b-r-gja

sen      THOUSAND*s-toŋ

Further comparative sources and references:

Korean counting system (non-native, Sino-Korean):

1-Il  2-i  3-sam  4-sa  5-o  6-yuk  7-chil  8-pal  9-gu  10-ship

The above system is close to the Hakka counting system (below)

1-jit 2-ngi 3-sam 4-si 5-ng 6-liuk 7-cit  8-bat. 9-giu  10-siip

Ainu counting system:

1-sirep 2-tup 3-rep 4-inep 5-asiknep 6-iwanpe 7-arwampe 8-tupesanpe 9-sinepesanpe 10-wanpe 20-hotnep 100-asikne hotnep
Source: Systems of the world

Mongolian counting system:

1 – neg. 2 – hoyor. 3 – guraw. 4 – doruw. 5 – tav. 6 – zurgaa 7 – doloo. 8 – naym. 9 – yes. 10 – araw

Buryat counting system:

1-Nigen 2-Qoyar 3-rurban 4- Dorben 5 -Tabun 6-Jiryuyan 7-Doloyan 8-Naiman 9-Yisun 10-Arban

Hmong counting system:

1-Ib  2-ob  3-Peb  4-Plaub  5-Tsib  6-Rau  7-Xya  8 – Yim 9-Cuaj  10 – Kaum

Chinese numerals

Wu Chinese numerals

Cantonese

Sino-Tibetan numerals and the play of prefixes

Systems of the world

Volume 86 1977 > Volume 86, No. 1 > Kapauku numeration: reckoning, racism, scholarship, and Melanesian counting systems, by Nancy Bowers, p 105-116

Indo-European Numerals by Jadranka Gvozdanović

A 2009 study found that the Japanese in Central Japan and Chiba share a genetic trait with the Han Chinese Hakka and Minnam populations (with origins in Central China) – high frequencies of their ALDH2*504Lys allele marker and concluded that migrants likely carried the gene marker from ancient populations in East China to Japan During the Yayoi period. The marker is associated with high incidence rates of oesophageal cancer. See excerpts from the study below:

 Figure 1. The geographic distribution of ALDH2*504Lys allele frequency. The grey scale refers to the interpolated allele frequency and correspondences are on the right, e.g. 0.12 means an allele frequency of 12% in the region. The open red triangles represent the locations of the population samples. The encircling black lines are the 0.12 and 0.24 frequency borders.

“In total, the map shows a pattern of a single center of expansion within East Asia. The highest frequencies appear in a restricted area in Southeast China, among the Han Chinese in south Fujian province and east Guangdong province (the Hakka and Minnam populations), decreasing gradually to the north and west. Hakka from Changting County in Fujian have the highest frequency, 40.9%. The Hakka population samples from Taiwan and Sichuan also exhibit high frequencies, indicating that Hakka have maintained a high frequency during their migrations. The allele frequencies in other Han Chinese populations range from 9% to 40%, exhibiting a cline clearly decreasing from southeast to northwest, except for two small peaks in Shanghai in East China and Shandong in Central China.

Another high frequency area for the ALDH2*504Lys allele is Central Japan with 34.1% in Chiba. However, this high frequency area seems to be an extension from East China. The frequency decreases from around 30% in Honshu to around 10% in Ryukyu and Hokkaido, corresponding well to the migration history of modern Japanese (the descendants of Yayoi People, Hammer et al., 2006). Therefore, it is most probable that the ALDH2*504Lys allele in Japan was brought by the early Yayoi migrants from mainland East Asia.”

The researchers also “hypothesize that the oriental ALDH2*504Lys variant might have originated in the ancient Han Chinese population in Central China and spread to most areas of East Asia with the expansion of Han Chinese and their genetic influences on neighboring populations over the past few thousand years.”

Source of study: Hui Li, et al., Refined Geographic Distribution of the Oriental ALDH2*504Lys (nee 487Lys) Variant, Annals of Human Genetics, Volume 73, Issue 3, pages 335–345, May 2009 doi: 10.1111/j.1469-1809.2009.00517.x

Japan archaeological find shows 1,400-year-old roots of silk weaving.

City of Shimotsuke education board A terracotta image of a person weaving silk with a loom. The figurine was found in a sixth-century burial mound in Shimotsuke, 50 miles north of Tokyo.

by Mitsuru Obe, AWSJ Mar 6, 2014

Japan’s prewar economic development depended in significant part on exports of one item–silk. Young girls recruited from poor farm families worked day and night to make Japan the world’s biggest silk exporter, allowing it to purchase raw materials, warships and other Western industrial technology.

Now an archaeological find is showing the industry’s ancient roots. In the first such discovery in Japan, researchers unearthed a terracotta figure depicting a woman weaving silk on a loom. The find came from a sixth-century burial mound, or kofun, in Shimotsuke, some 50 miles north of Tokyo.

The unglazed pottery figure, known as haniwa, provides evidence that techniques of silk weaving already existed in the sixth century and that women played a central role in the manufacturing of silk at that early date.

Shimotsuke used to be a major silk manufacturing region, with the local silk industry designated by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization as an example of intangible cultural heritage.

Immigrants from China are believed to have brought sericulture and silk weaving to Japan around the fifth century. Rice farmers grew mulberry trees and wove silk during the off-season.

The figure of a weaving woman, 69 centimeters high, was found near the burial chamber of an 80-meter-long tomb mound, where a local chieftain or a prominent weaver was apparently buried, said Tomonori Kimura, a official in charge of cultural affairs for the city of Shimotsuke. The city unveiled the find this week.

Silk was apparently used to make kimonos and may have been offered as a gift to the court, according to the researchers.

They also discovered a clay figure depicting a more primitive loom, 22 other clay figures and some 360 unglazed pots.

Such grave mounds were built between the third and the seventh century by the ruling clan that went on to establish Japan’s present-day imperial household. The practice was also widely adopted by local chieftains.

Various kinds of terracotta figures were buried with the dead, including horses, birds, swords, shields and soldiers. The exact reason for such clay offerings is not known, but Mr. Kimura speculated that they may have been meant to honor the achievements of the deceased during his or her lifetime.

City of Shimotsuke education board This reconstruction shows what a sixth-century figurine of a woman weaving silk might have originally looked like.

NHK — Mar 29

Digitally restored Horyuji painting

A group of experts has recreated Japan’s oldest Buddhist wall paintings with cutting-edge digital technology. The paintings were lost in a fire 65 years ago.

The group led by Professor Masaaki Miyasako at the graduate school of Tokyo University of the Arts reconstructed 12 murals at Horyuji Temple’s Kondo, or main hall, in Nara Prefecture.

The paintings dated back to the late seventh century, but a fire destroyed most of them in 1949.

The group used photos taken before the fire and the salvaged murals to produce the digital images. They were printed on sheets of paper whose surface is made uneven with fine seashell powder.

One of the paintings measures three meters long and two and a half meters wide.

It shows the Amitabha Buddha and various images in bright red and green.

Professor Miyasako says the group hopes to use the technology to preserve other cultural assets.

The reimaged paintings will be on display at the university from April 26th.

Watch this video on YouTube:

http://youtu.be/yICnEqLFj8g

The Yomiuri Shimbun, Mar 20, 2014 [Online Source]

KYOTO—A wooden sculpture portraying the head of Rankei Doryu (1213-1278) was recently found inside a seated statue of the same man. Rankei Doryu was a Buddhist priest who came to Japan from Southern Song dynasty China in 1246 and later became the chief priest of Kenninji temple, the oldest Zen temple in Kyoto.

It is considered very likely that the wooden head is the only remaining sculpture dating back to the Kamakura period (1192-1333). Sculptures of that period are believed to have been lost due to many fires, including those of the late 15th-century Onin War.

The wooden head sculpture of Rankei Doryu was discovered inside the larger statue, which was created in 1676 to commemorate the 400th anniversary of his death. Seiraiin temple, part of Kenninji temple in Higashiyama Ward, Kyoto, currently holds both the older sculpture and the larger statue, which measures 68.2 centimeters in height.

The Kenninji temple was founded in 1202 by Buddhist priest Yosai (1141-1215), who spread the teachings of the Rinzai school of Buddhism. Rankei Doryu became a chief priest at Kenninji temple after he founded the Kenchoji temple in Kamakura, Kanagawa Prefecture.

Ryusuke Asami, a researcher with the Tokyo National Museum, discovered the wooden sculpted head inside the larger statue.

Because the head has sunken cheeks, a sharp jawline and lips upturned at the corners, similar to features seen in the larger statue and in a portrait drawn during the priest’s life, Asami inferred that the wooden sculpture was the head of a sculpture of the priest created some time during the Kamakura period.

Rankei Doryu, anonymous artist of the late Kamakura or early Muromachi period, http://www.pref.miyagi.jp/

These 20,000 -year-old shell artifacts on display in Naha, have chips at their tops and are believed to have served as blades (Shunsuke Nakamura)

Oldest signs of Japanese using tools uncovered in Okinawa

Feb 15, 2014 Asahi Shimbun

NAHA, Okinawa Prefecture–Archaeologists have unearthed shell tools around 20,000 years old that could help clear up mysteries surrounding the ancestors of modern Japanese people, a museum said Feb. 15.

The Okinawa Prefectural Museum & Art Museum said the shell tools–the first uncovered in Japan from the Paleolithic Age–were dug up at the Sakitari-do cave site in Nanjo, Okinawa Prefecture, near the site where the country’s oldest whole skeletons were found.

It was Japan’s oldest concurrent discovery of both human bones and artifacts.

Around 40 fragments of shells of the Veneridae family, ledge mussels and other species were found that are believed to have been used as tools by humans.

A human tooth and a foot bone were also found in the same geological formation. Carbon dating of charcoal from the same formation indicated the remains were 20,000 to 23,000 years old.

Also unearthed were two tusk shell fragments believed to have been used as beads, museum officials said.

The Minatogawa Man, the only known group of whole skeleton remains in Japan, was found only 1.5 kilometers south of the Sakitari-do cave site in the town of Yaese. The shell artifacts from the cave site are about as old as the Minatogawa Man.

Recent studies by the Okinawa museum have turned out 8,000-year-old earthenware–Okinawa’s oldest–and human bones and stone tools at the Sakitari-do cave site that are more than 12,000 years old.

Bones are preserved better in the typically calcareous soil of Okinawa than in the acidic soil of mainland Japan. This accounts for the large number of human bones from the Paleolithic Age found in these southern islands, while such finds are rare in the rest of the country.

Anthropologists and archaeologists had long been puzzled by the absence of artifacts accompanying Paleolithic human bones from Okinawa.

If any implements were to be found, experts had expected them to be made of stone, like those unearthed on the Japanese mainland. The shells from the cave site dramatically countered that accepted theory.

“The discovery of tools other than stone implements indicates there was cultural diversity in the Paleolithic Age,” said Shinji Yamasaki, a curator with the museum.

The latest finds also help prove the adaptive ability of prehistoric humans, who relied on a variety of readily available materials depending on their environment.

Experts have held high hopes for studies on shell artifacts used as tools to provide clues on the cultural genealogy of the ancestors of modern Japanese people. Such tools could show the influence of marine cultures of islands to the south, where the use of shells has a long tradition.

In fact, a dominant anthropological theory says the ancestors of the Japanese had southern traits in their skeletal builds, such as well-defined facial features. Some argue that Paleolithic humans traveled north by way of the sea via the Okinawa islands before arriving on Japan’s mainland and creating the Jomon culture about 12,000 years ago.

While that theory has little material evidence for support, the latest discovery could provide a push to revisit that hypothesis.

By SHUNSUKE NAKAMURA/ Senior Staff Writer

Mural paintings of ‘Auka beauties’, a group of female figures found on the mural wall of the stone chamber in the Takamatsuzuka burial mound in Asuka Nara Prefecture, are shown in this photo taken in August 2013 after being cleaned (Provided by the Agency for Cultural Affairs)

Mar 28, 2014 Asahi Shimbun

Stunning murals painted 1,300 years ago in the stone chamber of the Takamatsuzuka burial mound, currently under repair, will continue to be preserved in an outside facility.

The government panel that made the decision March 27 said the colorful wall paintings can stay “for the time being” outside the stone chamber even after the decade-long repair process winds up.

A key reason for this is the lack of established technology to prevent mold from re-emerging and destroying what is left of the paintings.

The murals created a huge buzz when they were discovered in 1972 at the burial mound in Asuka, Nara Prefecture.

“Given existing technologies, it would be difficult to return the mural paintings to the burial mound, although we will continue our research for doing so,” said Yorikuni Nagai, an adjunct professor of education policy with the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies, who chairs the 17-member panel, which reports to the Agency for Cultural Affairs. “We will have to build a solid preservation facility if the process is going to take 20 to 30 years to complete.”

The Agency for Cultural Affairs initially envisaged returning the mural paintings to the Takamatsuzuka burial mound once the repair work was finished.

The panel’s decision represents a departure from established policy, which is based on the notion that archaeological finds should in principle be conserved on site.

“It would be appropriate to preserve, maintain and display the mural paintings at an appropriate location outside the burial mound for the time being,” said part of a draft plan the agency presented to the panel, which subsequently approved it.

The Takamatsuzuka paintings, designated a national treasure, include the famous “Asuka beauties,” or a group of female figures originally found on the west wall of the stone chamber. The entire stone chamber was removed in 2007 from the tumulus, which dates from the late seventh or the early eighth century and is designated a special historic site by the government.

A similar decision had earlier been reached on colorful mural paintings from the Kitora burial mound, another government-designated special historic site in Asuka. They are being preserved outside the tumulus, which also dates from the late seventh or the early eighth century.

By KAZUTO TSUKAMOTO/ Staff Writer

Lake Titicaca

Photo: Wikipedia

A Japanese documentary recently broadcasted on NHK terrestrial TV, featured the theory of the origin of the name Lake Titicaca, and various lines of evidence supporting the theory that Japanese settlers arrived to populate the Americas (forming one of several waves of Asian migrants). The article “Establishing Japanese Ancestry” by Ariel Takada sums up the same points examined and made in the documentary:

- Waves of migration from Asian Siberia to the American Alaska occurred approximately 14,000 years ago. From then on, a slow movement southward began to take place all the way to Chile itself.

- In a substantial Brazilian project of ethnic research, for instance, researcher Heinz Budweg affirms that across the ocean “the Japanese, Chinese and even Indians traveled constantly to South America between 2,000 and 3,000 B.C.”

- Some of these migrants arrived via the land bridge, others by sea. The Japanese are thought to be later arrivals on the American continent

- Traces have been found demonstrating their presence have become increasingly more significant. Of these, here are a few examples:

1) Japanese vases of the Mid-Jomon period (1,600 B.C.), excavated at Napo, Ecuador. [Much earlier work focused on the similarity of Valdivian pottery to the Jomon period pottery of Japan]

2) The use of Japanese words for place names in the Americas. Here are two examples: “water” in Japanese is “mizu,” and it is suggested that it may have been the root basis for naming the Missouri River. The name of Mount Suyama in Bolivia is thought to have been derived from “yama,” which means “mountain.”

3) At the end of the ’70s, archaeologist Charlotte Emerich lived with a tribe of the Upper Xingu, proved that they communicated by way of an ancient Japanese dialect.

4) In December 1999, a team of Japanese scientists led by Kazuo Yajima of the Center of Cancer Research of Nagoya discovered Chilean mummies, buried more than 1,500 years ago, that were infected with the HTLV-1 virus (a leukemia variant), which is particular to certain regions of Japan and a few other spots in Asia. (The Chilean mummy — “Miss Chile” — infected with the virus can be found at the Museo San Pedro de Atacama in Arica.)

The Legend of the Japanese naming of Lake Titicaca

Excerpted from “Establishing Japanese Ancestry: “A Japanese myth that we grew up with and that mentions Chile talks about one of those possible currents. Additionally, the story brings to light a number of geographical names that remain in use, as well as the possible realization of a dream that may have given grounds for genetic and cultural influences over the Amerindian peoples:

“It is said that the oldest son of a great Japanese lord, obsessed with a prophecy foretelling that he was destined to be the founder of an empire across the ocean, set sail, accompanied by several faithful followers, around the year 1,100 B.C. The ocean current ‘kuro-shiö’ brought them to a beach they called ‘Arika’ (Arica), which can be translated as ‘here it is.’

Later, they traveled south while looking for the promised land, but they came to a halt at “Asaban” (“morning and night” – Azapa [in Spanish] to us) after surmising that they were on the wrong track. They retraced their steps and traveled northwest from the ‘Yutoo’ (Lluta) River, which means ‘something better’ or ‘better than the other.’ They crossed desert and mountain ranges, finally arriving at a great lake they called ‘Chichi-haha’ (‘Dad and Mom’ — Lake Titicaca), which was supposed to have been the divine sign that would lead them down the final route to the place where the prophecy would be fulfilled.”

Chichi means “father” and haha means “mother” in Japanese. Lake Titicaca a.k.a. Titiqaqa (Quechua) is a lake in the Andes on the border of Peru and Bolivia. By volume of water, it is the largest lake in South America.

Further reading:

Presence of D1 haplogroup (mtDNA) is direct evidence of genetic affinity between the Hokkaido Jomon and Native American populations

In An Historical and Philosophical View of the Chinese Empire
by William Winterbotham, at p. 126, we are alerted to the existence of a district called Tcitcicar [also known as Jijihar] that extends over the Merguen and the Saghalien-ou-hotan, City of the Black River, located on the southern banks of the River Sakhalin, another possible cognate and indication that the use of the word may have been more widespread in ancient times.

The pot containing more than 40,000 coins dating back to around the 15th century that was recently unearthed in Kyoto (Tsuyoshi Sato)

The Asahi Shimbun, July 09, 2014

By TSUYOSHI SATO/ Staff Writer
KYOTO–Construction workers in the city’s central Kawaramachi shopping district unearthed a huge earthenware pot containing more than 40,000 coins from the 15th century.

The discovery, made during work for an apartment complex, was announced July 8 by Gifu-based archaeological research company Ibisoku Co.’s Kansai branch.

The 66-centimeter-tall Bizen ware pot was found 50 cm below the surface in the city’s Shimogyo Ward. The site lies toward the southern side of Takashimaya Kyoto Store.

The coins, each drilled through the center, are tied together in bundles of 97 by thongs. It was customary during the Muromachi Period (1338-1573) to count a bundle of 97 coins as 100, Ibisoku officials said.

The coins are estimated to be worth 4 million yen ($39,400) in today’s value. The company is considering exhibiting the pot filled to the brim with coins.

By TSUYOSHI SATO/ Staff Writer