Spirituality
Prayer beads an ancient devotion
Prayer beads originally were devised to help people to keep track
of repetitive devotions. They enabled one to pray while doing routine jobs and
between activities. In the very earliest times, prayers were marked by dropping
little pebbles one by one on the ground.
About 500 years before Christ, people tied knots in strings.
Primitive forms of prayer beads were made of fruit pits, dried berries, pieces
of bone, and hardened clay. The wealthy used precious stones and jewels.
St. Dominic is a latecomer to the scene. The Western Church picked
up on the idea in 1213 when parts of Europe were devastated by the crusade
against the Albigensian heresy. According to tradition, Dominic sought the help
of Mary, who instructed him in a dream to preach the rosary as an antidote to
sin. The word, rosary, comes from the Latin word rosarium, which means
wreath or chaplet of roses.
By Dominic’s time, other spiritual traditions were already
well grounded in their own prayer bead practices. The Hindu religion has had
prayer beads for a long time. Its rosary consists of 109 beads -- 108 to mark
the 108 names of God and one to mark the beginning of the prayer cycle,
“Dancing Shiva, who shows grace, peace and creative power, and destroys
and treads on the evil dwarf.”
Sakyamuni, the East Indian who was the founder of Buddhism, was
well grounded in prayer beads. On one occasion, he gave a distraught king a
spiritual practice based on his Hindu heritage. He directed Vaidunya to thread
108 seeds of the Bodhi tree on a string, and while passing them through his
fingers to repeat, “Hail to the Buddha, the darhma (teaching) and the
sangha (community).
Another interpretation of this Sanskrit prayer is translated as
“Hail to the jewel in the heart of the lotus (compassion).” Repeating
the mantra on each of the mala’s 108 beads serves to drive away
evil “filling you and all other beings with peace and bliss.”
Islam also has its prayer beads, called tasbih or
subhah. The 33-bead strand, repeated three times, honors the 99
“beautiful names of Allah” (the One Unity or God). Some of these
names, or Wazifas, include Mercy, Compassion, Opener of the Way, Lover
and Beloved.
The Anglican Church created its own rosary in the 1980s. It also
has 33 beads, remembering the years Christ lived. The rosary is grouped in
sevens and is based on Incarnational theology, starting with the cross. Four
sets of beads represent the seven days of creation, seven days in a week, and
seven seasons of the church year. They are divided by four large cruciform
beads representing the centrality of the cross.
-- Sharon Abercrombie
National Catholic Reporter, December 13,
2002
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