Since the Edo period there has been a prevailing opinion, that the origin of the Japanese Koshin Belief had been derived from Taoism in China, but in recent years Japanese folklorists, with Mr. Kunio YANAGITA as the leader, have come to assert that it was native to Japan. Up to now neither has yet claimed a definite conclusion on this question. The writer thinks that both hypotheses have weaknesses in their methodologies : the former referred only to the literature without reaching into the folk beliefs and customs of the Edo period ; the latter depends only on the results of field work with the presumed ignorance of historical documents. In addition, neither the former nor the latter compare Japanese Koshin Belief in detail with Taoism at all. The writer intends to synthesize the historical records from the Heian period, when Koshin Belief began to appear in Japan, to Meiji Era, with recent field work results, and to compare it with Chinese Taoism and the functions of the Chinese Koshin Belief. He assumed that this method would be the best to determine whether the Koshin Belief has its origin in Japan or not. As the result, Japanese Koshin Belief has come to be judged as the complex of Chinese Taoism, Buddhism including the esoteric form, Shintoism, Shugendo, magical medicine and various Japanese folk beliefs and customs. This study has been published by him under the title of Koshin Belief in Japan. His view-point has been furthermore substantiated by his field research throughout Japan excluding Hokkaido and by his bibliographic survey on this subject. The Japanese folklorist school still insists strongly on the Japanese origin. But he cannot rely on their methodology and is suspicious of how they deal with the data the amount of which in their possession seems not sufficient enough to be handled quantitatively, as well as qualitatively. He can hardly, at present, say whether it was native to Japan, and thinks that he does not need to correct his opinion which Mr. YANAGITA should take into account.

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Suivant une legende de la Chine ancienne, on croyait que les sources des Quatre Fleuves (parmi lesquels le Fleuve Jaune) se trouvaient dans le K'ouen-louen, Montagne Sacree du Nord-Ouest de la Chine ; tandis qu'une legende bouddhique de l'Inde ancienne affirmait que les quatre fleuves : Indus, Gange et autres, coulaient du Pont d'Anavatapta (阿耨達池) dans quatre directions opposees. Par ailleurs, l'Ancien Testament place les sources du Tigris, de l'Euphrate, etc. dansle jardin d'Eden. M. K. Unno (海野一隆), qui a publie une etude sur les Quatre Fleuves dont parlent ces legendes pense qu'elles ont pris naissance dans les tribus des regions montagneuses de l' Asie Centrale, et qu'elles ne sont pas etrangeres l'une a l'autre ; et il appuie son hypothese sur surtout des documents de la Chine ancienne. Pourtant je ne suis pas entierement d'accord avec M. Unno, quand il signale des elements nonchinois dans les documents ou la legende du K'ouen-louen est conservee ; je pense que ces elements sont vraiment chinois. J'ai donc essaye d'en examiner en detail, et j'ai abouti a la conclusion suivante : la legende du K'ouen-louen est conforme a la conception du ciel propre aux Chinois, et celle des Quatre Fleuves qui en derive est, elle-meme, un produit de la pensee chinoise. Les anciens Chinois pensaient, en effet, que le ciel s'inclinait vers le Nord-Ouest, et correlativement que la terre s'elevait vers le Nord-Ouest ou une montagne gigantesque, le K'ouen-louen, supportait le ciel. Selon cette conception la source, jusque la inconnue, du Fleuve Jaune, aurait pris naissance au sud-est de cette montagne pour couler ensuite a travers la Chine, et par analogie on placait la source des trois autres fleuves aux cotes nord-est, nord-ouest et sud-ouest de cette Montagne Sacree. C'est pourquoi je pense que la legende des Quatre Fleuves est nee en Chine. Cette conception des quatre directions a certainement influence la legende des Indiens, basee sur leur pensee cosmographique. Selon celle-ci, le ciel etait un corps plat qui tournait parallelement a la terre et qui etait soutenu par une montagne gigantesque, le Mont Sumeru, situe au centre de la surface terreste, au nord de l'Inde. Par consequent, c'est de cette montagne que, dans la conception neo-brahmaniste, coulaient les Luatre Fleuves dans quatre directions. En meme temps, de cette conception cosmographique relative au Mont Sumeru est sortie, sous une autre forme, la legende bouddhique des Quatre Fleuves dont j'ai parle plus haut.

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A dialect survey was conducted in 1957 in the coastal area of Niigata prefecture ; its characteristic feature was to cover each single hamlet of the Itoigawa-Oomi district. The present study is one of the reports based on that survey. "To let a child ride on one's shoulders" KATAGURUMA in standard language) appears with 56 different forms in the surveyed area. Besides a few forms of which onlya single instance was found, the dialectal forms can be classified in five main types, each having its own geographical distribution. These five groups are : 1) te〓〓uruma type 2) 〓i〓ikaka type 3) kakkarakatsu type 4) kattendondoN type 5) ot〓i〓osaN type Te〓〓uruma is the oldest type, its representative words being found in the remote part of each of the five valleys. The word's meaning refers to a child's play in which one rides on two men's crossed hands or arms. In order of their age, the oldest type after te〓〓uruma is 〓i〓ikaka, followed then by kakkarakatsu, kattendondoN and finally ot〓i〓osaN. As regards the etymology of these words, 〓i〓ikaka is an onomatopoeia derived from the drumbeat of the festival held at Shinto' shrines ; the same festival music has also given birth to the types kakkarakatsu and kattendondoN, while the type ot〓i〓osaN means "the heavenly child" who rides on his manservant's shoulders during the Shinto procession. The last type is found distributed around the city of Itoigawa, the center of the local culture and the seat of a Shinto festival where children are carried around in the described manner. Linguistically speaking, the fact that the survey was conducted without omitting a single hamlet provided valuable clues to trace the word changes through history. Although the geographical distribution of the KATAGURUMA-words does not completely coincide with that of other words covered by our survey, it furnishes a characteristic type of area distribution in the Itoigawa-Oomi district.

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