Prayer beads are used in many religions to keep track of prayers. They are made of various materials and have different numbers of beads. The concept came from the Chinese abacus and has spread worldwide. Different religions have their own names and variations of prayer beads, such as subha in Islam, mala in Hinduism, and rosary in Catholicism.
Prayer beads are used around the world in many major religions to help people keep track of the number of prayers they say. Each beaded necklace, made of wood, stone, gem, ivory, seed, stone, bone, shell, or berry, has a particular number of chits. These correspond to the correct, often holy, number of prayers to be repeated in a sitting or in a day. Buddhism, Islam, Catholicism and Hinduism all have a long history of distributing prayer beads, known by various names, to both religious leaders and lay practitioners.
The concept of using beads gathered on a string as counters is thought to have come from the Chinese abacus, where different colors of a small number of beads were used to count large numbers. Prior to this, people often tied and untied strings to keep track of important counts of devotions, repentances or mantras. The length of rosaries can vary according to the occasion, such as funerals, births or seasonal holidays, or for different groups, such as men, women and sacred figures.
From China, rosaries have spread all over the world, taken over by many religions. People needed to keep track of how many prayers they said and how many remained in a standard prayer cycle. A person begins praying on a special first bead, and thereafter catches each successive bead while humming or intoning a certain short line, until they have returned to the last bead, so the counting does not interfere with their religious reflection.
The number and material of pearls are as varied as the cultures that use them. Even within the same general religion, people adopt regional differences to reflect abundant natural materials or local myths and folklore recognized as significant. Often, the number of prayers, in turn, corresponds to the eras of human development, the names of the gods, the stages of forgiveness, some sanctified places or paths to enlightenment.
To better illustrate the variety and beauty of rosaries, let’s take a look at their different materials and religious applications. In Islam, prayer beads are called subha. The beads are usually made from clay and standard number 99 beads plus a different colored marker to indicate the start and end of a cycle. Hindus use the mala to count their 32-108 prayers on the seeds of the Rudraskha tree. Their divisions are made with charms such as a metal bell or thunderbolt.
Catholics call their rosaries a rosary, and this can be carved from wood, stone, glass, or other materials. A hanging cross divides the ring to show the end of the 150 prayers. Prayer beads in Buddhism were originally made from the wood of the sacred Bodhi tree, under which Buddha was enlightened. The 108 beads are further divided into three segments of 36 each in Tibetan Buddhism. They can make their own threads from bone, shell or amber beads.
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