Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 29, 1918.djvu/266

 256 The Rosary m Magic and Religion,

I also wish to express my grateful thanks to Dr. W. Crooke for invaluable help in dealing with the rosaries of India, on which he is so great an authority. A large number of the rosaries included in the Pitt-Rivers Museum were presented by him some years ago.

My thanks are also due to the Rev. H. Thurston, S.J., who has been most kind in checking all my work on Christian rosaries. He moreover supplied me with a number of references in literature, and, what is of greater value still, has given me several of his own learned papers on the subject. I am also indebted to him for the loan of a number of the slides which I propose to show you.

To Dr. Gaster I would express my gratitude for much kindly encouragement in my work and for invaluable help and criticism.

The Rosary is designed as an aid to the memory, and, when used in religious exercises, provides a convenient method for counting the recitation of prayers, or the repetition of the names and attributes of the Deity. It generally consists of a string of knots or beads.

The use of such an instrument is very widely spread, but its earliest home seems to be in Asia, where it can lay claim to a fairly venerable antiquity.

Time will not permit me to discuss at any length the possible origins of the rosary, and indeed I can do no more than put forward suggestions, it being out of the question at this stage to interpret facts with any certainty.

The use of knots as mnemonic signs is almost universal, and such a simple device may have been invented again and again ; its appearance in many countries does not necessarily prove that it was invented in one locality and transmitted thence to other centres.

In the quipu of ancient Peru is seen perhaps the highest development of a system of knots as a means of aiding the memory and for keeping records. It was a system of