Perhaps somebody will now be unreasonable enough to ask whether I believe this story,--as if my belief or disbelief had anything to do with the matter! The question of the possibility of remembering former births seems to me to depend upon the question what it is that remembers. If it is the Infinite All-Self in each one of us, then I can believe the whole of the Jatakas without any trouble. As to the False Self, the mere woof and warp of sensation and desire, then I can best express my idea by relating a dream which I once dreamed. Whether it was a dream of the night or a dream of the day need not concern any one, since it was only a dream.
[Footnote 1: The Western reader is requested to bear in mind that the year in which a Japanese child is born is counted always as one year in the reckoning of age.]
[Footnote 2: Lit.: "A wave-man,"--a wandering samurai without a lord. The rōnin were generally a desperate and very dangerous class; but there were some fine characters among them.]
[Footnote 3: The Buddhist services for the dead are celebrated at regular intervals, increasing successively in length, until the time of one hundred years after death. The _jiū-san kwaiki_ is the service for the thirteenth year after death. By "thirteenth" in the context the reader must understand that the year in which the death took place is counted for one year.]
[Footnote 4: The second husband, by adoption, of a daughter who lives with her own parents.]
[Footnote 5: Children in Japan, among the poorer classes, are not weaned until an age much later than what is considered the proper age for weaning children in Western countries. But "four years old" in this text may mean considerably less, than three by Western reckoning.]
[Footnote 6: From very ancient time in Japan it has been the custom to bury the dead in large jars,--usually of red earthenware,--called _Kamé_. Such jars are still used, although a large proportion of the dead are buried in wooden coffins of a form unknown in the Occident.]
[Footnote 7: The idea expressed is not that of lying down with the pillow under the head, but of hovering about the pillow, or resting upon it as an insect might do. The bodiless spirit is usually said to rest upon the roof of the home. The apparition of the aged man referred to in the next sentence seems a thought of Shinto rather than of Buddhism.]