Strange as it may seem, before Buddhism captured and made use of Shintō for its own purposes (just as it stands ready to-day to absorb Christianity by making Jesus one of the Palestinian avatars of the Buddha), the house or tribe of Yamato, with its claim to descent from the heavenly gods, and with its Mikado or god-ruler, had given to the Buddhists a precedent and potent example. Shintō, as a state religion or union of politics and piety, with its system of shrines and festivals, and in short the whole Kami no Michi, or Shintō as we know it, from the sixth to the eighth century, was in itself (in part at least), a case of the absorption of one religion by another. In short, the Mikado tribe or Yamato clan did, in reality, capture the aboriginal religion, and turn it into a great political machine. They attempted syncretism and succeeded in their scheme. They added to their own stock of dogma and fetich that of the natives. Only, while recognizing the (earth) gods of the aborigines they proclaimed the superiority of the Mikado as representative and vicegerent of Heaven, and demanded that even the gods of the earth, mountain, river, wind, and thunder and lightning should obey him. Not content, however, with absorbing and corrupting for political purposes the primitive faith of the aborigines, the invaders corrupted their own religion by carrying the dogma of the divinity and infallibility of the Mikado too far. Stopping short of no absurdity, they declared their chief greater even than the heavenly gods, and made their religion centre in him rather than in his alleged heavenly ancestors, or "heaven." In the interest of politics and conquest, and for the sake of maintaining the prestige of their tribe and clan, these "Mikado-reverencers" of early ages advanced from dogma to dogma, until their leader was virtually chief god in a great pantheon. A critical native Japanese, student of the Kojiki and of the early writings, Professor Kumi, formerly of the Imperial University in Tōkiō, has brought to light abundant evidence to show that the aboriginal religion found by the Yamato conquerors was markedly different at many vital points, from that which was long afterward called Shintō.