Not by words only were all these things taught. It should be remembered that Shinto had no art: its ghost-houses, silent and void, were not even [198] decorated. But Buddhism brought in its train all the arts of carving, painting, and decoration. The images of its Bodhisattvas, smiling in gold,--the figures of its heavenly guardians and infernal judges, its feminine angels and monstrous demons,--must have startled and amazed imaginations yet unaccustomed to any kind of art. Great paintings hung in the temples, and frescoes limned upon their walls or ceilings, explained better than words the doctrine of the Six States of Existence, and the dogma of future rewards and punishments. In rows of kakemono, suspended side by side, were displayed the incidents of a Soul's journey to the realm of judgment, and all the horrors of the various hells. One pictured the ghosts of faithless wives, for ages doomed to pluck, with bleeding fingers, the rasping bamboo-grass that grows by the Springs of Death; another showed the torment of the slanderer, whose tongue was torn by demon-pincers; in a third appeared the spectres of lustful men, vainly seeking to flee the embraces of women of fire, or climbing, in frenzied terror, the slopes of the Mountain of Swords. Pictured also were the circles of the Preta-world, and the pangs of the Hungry Ghosts, and likewise the pains of rebirth in the form of reptiles and of beasts. And the art of these early representations--many of which have been preserved--was an art of no mean order. We can hardly conceive the effect upon inexperienced imagination of the crimson frown of Emma [199] (Yama), Judge of the dead,--or the vision of that weird Mirror which reflected, to every spirit the misdeeds of its life in the body,--or the monstrous fancy of that double-faced Head before the judgment seat, representing the visage of the woman Mirume, whose eyes behold all secret sin; and the vision of the man Kaguhana, who smells all odours of evil-doing.... Parental affection must have been deeply touched by the painted legend of the world of children's ghosts,--the little ghosts that must toil, under demon-surveillance, in the Dry Bed of the River of Souls.... But pictured terrors were offset by pictured consolations,--by the beautiful figure of Kwannon, white Goddess of Mercy,--by the compassionate smile of Jizo, the playmate of infant-ghosts,--by the charm also of celestial nymphs, floating on iridescent wings in light of azure. The Buddhist painter opened to simple fancy the palaces of heaven, and guided hope, through gardens of jewel-trees, even to the shores of that lake where the souls of the blessed are reborn in lotos-blossoms, and tended by angel-nurses.