「馬少ナキ長門」の牛灯と柱松 －妖獣シイ（𤯝）信仰の二元的発生とミッシング・リンク（前編）

This author has already composed three papers on Shii （Komma 2021, 2022a, 2022b）. The present paper is a sequel to the first and the second papers. 　In the first paper, the author tentatively clarified the historical process of the formation of the notion of Shii. Several old Chinese books imported into Japan refer to Shii（Sei in Chinese） stating that it can miraculously sneak into anybodyʼs chamber at any time without being noticed, and often harms anybodyʼs eyes and limbs, and may even kill its victims at times. 　　Though these Chinese books never include cattle （nor horses） among Shiiʼs victims, when the natives of the Nagato and Suou domains in westernmost Honshu suffered from massive fatalities of their cattle in the early 17th century, they believed Shii to be the supernatural cause of the incident. After several decades, a Shintou priest living in the Suou domain, who was sent to a village in the Chikuzen domain in northernmost Kyushu, witnessed an incident in that region similar to theirs. So, he confidently and eagerly recommended the villagers to find and kill raccoon-dog-like creatures. Somehow, they successfully hunted some heads. Hence, Shii leaped into infamy in nearby villages. 　An exclusively famous Confucian, KAIBARA Ekiken, in the Chikuzen domain at that time, wrote about the incident vividly in his book titled “Chikuzennokuni-nochinofudoki”. 　This resulted in the high notoriety of Shii in the western half of Honshu and all of Kyushu and Shikoku. The first paper may be summarized in this way. 　In the second paper, the author compares his first paper with Dr. KISHI Hiroshiʼs papers. Kishi is a veterinarian, who identified rinderpest as the etiological cause of the massive fatalities of native cattle in his homeland, the Nagato and Suou domains at that time, by referring to many archives that satisfied his five conditions, that included （a） only cattle,（b） who were infected with virus,（c） and who died（d） rapidly, （e） and massively. He is the only person who substantiated the actual existence of the great outbreaks of rinderpest during the early-modern times in Japan. His papers assisted the author, as now we can safely say that the myth of Shii in Japan originated mainly due to the two great rinderpest outbreaks during the early-modern period in Japan. 　The next question is why the very notion of Shii arose suddenly in western Japan during the period of the massive death toll caused by the Kyouhou great famine in 1732 which did not fulfill Kishiʼs five conditions mentioned above, because not only cattle but horses also died in great numbers. 　In the second paper, the author insists on the following. The extremely miserable experiences during the two great outbreaks of rinderpest in the early- and mid-17th century, made the native peasants realize that horses could substitute their dead cattle as plowing animals. Hence, they feared the Kyouhou great famine, during which their horses and cattle died, leaving behind no plowing power, other than human beings themselves. 　This particular paper, as the sequel to the above-mentioned papers, takes up the following two final topics, （1） “Where, when, how, and by whom was the notion of Shii originated in Japan?” and（2） “Why does a Shii harm horses only, but not cattle, in the Chikuzen and Higo domains, while it originally harmed cattle only in the Nagato and Suou domains ?,” with the proviso that the last half will appear on the following Issue No. 212 of the “Jinbun Kenkyu” （Studies in Humanities） in September 2024.