Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 29, 1918.djvu/272

262 knotted together at intervals—108 knots in all. This kind of rosary is not very durable, the material of which it is made being liable to the ravages of moths. Another kind used by Sikhs is made of iron beads, arranged at intervals and connected by slender iron links. They have a rosary also which is peculiar to them and is worn like a bracelet on the wrist. It is made of iron and has twenty-seven beads. The rosary with this number of beads has a particular name (Lohé ká Simarna), and it forms also a tribal mark. The Sikhs also have a bracelet rosary with knots instead of beads.

There is a certain number of verses which contain rules about rosaries. Among them are the following : "The wood of the nim tree, Nagelia putramjiva, conch shell, lotus fruit, and gems, kusa grass and rudraksha, are proper articles to make beads for telling spells (mantrá) on. Their efficacy is according to the order in which they are placed; the last one being the best."

"If you tell your mantra on your fingers once you will have the reward for telling your mantra only once, but if you do so on beads of nim wood once, you will have the reward for telling it ten times. If you do so on beads of conch or gems or coral, you will have the reward for telling it a thousand times. If you do so on beads of pearl once, you will have the reward for telling it ten thousand times. If you do so on beads of gold, you will have the reward for telling it a hundred thousand times. If you do so on beads of kusa grass, you will have the reward for telling it a million times; and if you do so on beads of tulsi wood, you will have the reward for telling it innumerable times. …"

"Those that are noisy, easily moving, broken, knotty, and strung together on a broken thread are fit to be worn by a hypocrite."