738 REPOET OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1893. 



yellow. Great quantities are carried away from this place every year 

 by Mongol aud Tibetan pilgrims. 



PI, 3G, tig. 3 shows a rosary of 99 bone beads divided into three series 

 of 33 beads each by date stones. The two ends of the string pass 

 through a large bead made of a piece of conch shell. This is the style 

 of rosary used by Mohammedans in China. The number 99 corresponds 

 to the number of the nauies or attributes of Allah.* 



Prayer icheels. — The same teachings which caused the northern Bud- 

 dhists to believe in the eflQcacy of continually mumbling unintelligible 

 formulas must be held responsible for the invention of the ingenious 

 mechanical contrivance known as a " j)rayer wheel " or "prayer-barrel," 

 which, when turned the right way — from left to right — is as efficacious 

 as if the person turning it, or who had it built, recited himself all the 

 prayers inclosed in it on printed slips of paper. Each complete revo- 

 lution of the wheel counts as one repetition of all the prayers contained 

 in the barrel. 



Alexander Cunningham (Ladak, p, 37o) says that the earliest men- 

 tion of the prayer- wheel is found in the Records of the Western World 

 of the Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Fa-hsien, who visited India in the fifth 

 century of our era. This, however, is an error resulting from a mis- 

 translation in Abel Remusat's rendering of the Chinese text. Gen. 

 Cunningham also gives a medal of Hushka (first century A. D,) on 

 which is a man holding in his hand what he takes to be a fjrayer 

 wheel. At all events the prayer wheel is and has been for five or six 

 centuries at least a popular instrument in not only Tibet but in Korea 

 aud Japan, in which two latter countries, however, only the larger 

 cWos Vor-Jo are found. (See on this subject Emil Schlagintweit, Bud- 

 dhism in Tibet, p. 229 et seq. and Land of the Lamas, p. 334.) 



The prayer-wheel is of two kinds: The first comprises hand wheels, 

 wheels turned by the wind or by water, and small stationary wheels 

 or barrels placed either in a house or in rows near a temple or along 

 an interior gallery of a house or the base of a ch'iirten. The second 

 class are nnich larger machines and are only found in temples. They 

 are sometimes 30 or 40 feet high and !■> or 20 feet in diameter. In them 

 is placed a collection of the canonical books of lamaism (Kandjur), and 

 by means of bars fixed in the lower extremity of the axis of the barrel 

 it is put in motion. These wheels, from the works in them being "the 

 law " (ch^os), are called cJi'os k^or-lo, while the first class of wheels hav- 

 ing usually only the formula oni mani pudme hum (colloquially called 

 "the mani'') printed on the pages wrapped up in them, are known as 

 mani li'or-lo. 



The prayer- wheel consists of a cylinder of metal, or, in the larger 

 wheels, of leather pr even wood, through which runs an axle of wood 

 or iron around which it pivots. In the interior are arranged, one on 



" On Burmese Buddhist rosaries, see Dr. L. A. Waddcll, Proc. Asiatic Soc. of Bengal, 

 December, 1892. 



