Here is the second installment in my series on a case study of prayer beads as used (and interpreted) in multiple religious contexts. If you missed the first installment, you can still read it here.
Borrowing Background among Religions
Whenever a chronological look at a subject is desired, it is always best, though trite, to begin at the beginning. The beginning for beads in this story may have been in a cave in France among humanity’s “cousins” thirty-eight thousand years ago, but the beginning of prayer beads is thankfully a bit more recent. To trace the beginnings of beads used for spiritual purposes, we must head to the East. As mentioned previously, the first recorded use of prayer beads was in the second millennium before the common era, and this use was in India. The first sets of prayer beads appeared under the names of japa-mala or “muttering chaplet” and smarani or “remembrancer.”[1] These stringed beads varied widely by each Hindu sect in both number of beads and types of prayers assigned to them. At this stage in the evolution of the practice of prayer beads, they truly were just a counting device, and many different permutations could coexist in an analogous way to all of the types of calculators available at the local Wal-Mart. Typically, the prayers associated with the beads in Hinduism correspond to the many deities of that religion through naming a deity for each bead. The physical methods of praying with them varied notably as well, yet we can glimpse some customs that would eventually be transplanted with the practice itself. For instance, some Hindu sects encourage practitioners to hide their hands while they count out their prayers in a gesture of humility remarkably similar to how Jesus of Nazareth instructed his followers to pray in secret.[2] However, this type of comparison gets a bit ahead of the story because the use of prayer beads moved first from Hinduism to Buddhism even as the Buddha himself arose in the Indian context.
Use of prayer beads in a Buddhist context may well go back to the Buddha, yet they also originate from the religious context of the Brahman caste in India. Within Buddhism, however, the purpose of the beads begins to shift theologically from a sole focus on naming gods to the process of overcoming illusion and desire. In this context, Buddhist prayer bead strands typically consist of 108 beads, and this number corresponds to the number of attachments or “sinful inclinations” to be eradicated through recitation of prayers.[3] As Buddhism spread east from India, the spiritual practice of prayer beads moved along as well. By the time Buddhist prayer beads took root in China and Japan, the use and arrangement of the beads became quite complex. The Japanese sho-zuku-jiu-dzu has 112 beads, and they are divided into equal strands of 55 by two large “parent” beads. Each parent bead then has “dewdrop” beads. The beads symbolize the various deities of the Buddhist pantheon, and the “dewdrops” represent their various positions of authority in relation to good and evil and in relation to this world and the next.[4] While prayer beads followed Hinduism and Buddhism along an eastern route, this particular practice followed a slightly different path in the developing religions of the West.
Interestingly, Judaism is the only major world religion which does not have a significant connection to the spiritual practice of prayer beads. While Jews of recent times have occasionally used beads, they have not been attached to particular prayer or liturgical activities; rather, they are simply “worry beads” used to pass the time.[5] With the rise of Christianity, prayer beads became a delineated practice in the West. The earliest connections to the use of beads within Christian prayer actually begins with knotted rope. A longstanding tradition connected to the Eastern Orthodox komvoschinion, or prayer rope, attributes the invention of this practice to St. Anthony of Egypt (251-356 CE). According to legend, the saint tied knots in a rope for each time he prayed to God for mercy (Gk. Kyrie Eleison); however, Satan would steal into Anthony’s hut by night and untie these knots. Anthony eventually thwarted the devil by tying the knots with seven strands of rope, forming the sign of the cross within each knot.[6] From this initial Egyptian connection, it is likely that the practice of the prayer rope moved to the West with John Cassian, as he set up monasteries in France in the early fifth century. While it is uncertain when the spiritual practice which Western Christians borrowed from Eastern ones transformed from ropes to beads, sets of prayer beads were discovered in the grave of Abbess Gertrude (d. 659) in Belgium and Lady Godiva of Coventry (d. 1041).[7] Therefore, we know that the use of prayer beads in some form had taken root in Western Christianity no later than the seventh century of the common era.
On a theological basis, prayer ropes and beads continued in the different branches of Christianity with connections to different prayer traditions. In the Eastern Church, the prayer rope practice was never superseded by beads, and the main prayer associated with it continues to this day to be the Jesus Prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God; have mercy on me, a sinner.”[8] On the Western side of things, the practice achieved greater fluidity in the medieval period. The use of ropes evolved into strands of beads, and the associated prayers underwent an evolution as well. While early prayer beads in the West were associated with some form of the Jesus Prayer, they were gradually superseded by recitation of the Paternoster (“Our Father”) or Lord’s Prayer.[9] This association grew so strong by the thirteenth century that both London and Paris had specialized professions for the making of “paternoster beads.”[10] Concurrently, the beads began to be connected with their modern usage as the recitation of the Rosary was introduced and began to grow in popularity.
Two traditions vie within Christianity concerning the origin of the Rosary. The first tradition connects the Rosary to the general rise of devotion to the persons of Jesus and Mary among the illiterate peasantry of medieval Europe. According to this tradition, the Rosary began as an easily memorable repetitive prayer for laypersons to replace the recitation of the Psalter in the Divine Office and in their personal devotions.[11] After the series of prayers developed, Thomas of Contimpre was the first to use the term rosarium, or rose garden, to refer to the prayers as a unit.[12] While this gradual origin for the Rosary is likely more accurate, the second tradition offers the appeal of specificity and the allure of vision. In an apocryphal tale of the life of St. Dominic, the saint received the prayers of the Rosary directly from the hand of the Virgin Mary in a vision as a tool to fight the Albigensian heresy, which the Dominican orders were founded to combat.[13] The Rosary was then popularized by these preaching orders. Either of these origins for the Rosary do not specifically tie it to the use of prayer beads. In fact, that connection is a bit murkier. Possibly, Western Christians connected the Rosary to the use of paternoster beads, prayer ropes, or the Jesus Prayer. It is also possible that the Rosary became connected to the use of prayer beads as returning Crusaders noticed the popularity of the practice among Muslims.[14] No matter which path of connection was followed, it is certain that by the end of the medieval period Western Christians had linked the prayers of the Rosary and the use of prayer beads in practice and theology. It was not until the much more recent past that Christian use of prayer beads would popularly be associated with any other group of prayers, such as is the case with the Anglican rosary and the mentality of “there is no right or wrong way to use it.”[15] Yet, before moving to consideration of present borrowing and utilization of prayer beads among the world religions, Islam still needs to be treated.
Prayer beads are common spiritual fixtures of Muslim devotion as they are for many other religions. Within Islam, the origin of the use of prayer beads is connected to Muhammad himself through the legend that he castigated some women for counting prayers with pebbles rather than counting prayers on their fingers.[16] The cycle of prayers recited with prayer beads typically consists of the ninety-nine names or attributes of God, and the beads are separated into strands of thirty-three beads apiece. With this type of prayer as the focus in Islam, it seems to echo the use of prayer beads in Hinduism and Buddhism, suggesting that the spiritual use of beads may have actually come to Islam through their push to the East. Still, Muslims may have been influenced by Egyptian Christians as they moved toward the West as well. For example, compare the Eastern Orthodox prayer rope, which has one hundred knots, divided by three knots of a larger size and ending with a small-cross shaped braid, with the description of a typical Muslim set of prayer beads, as consisting of ninety-nine beads with a terminal “imam” or leader bead.[17] So, definitely by the time of the rise of Islam, borrowing of this particular spiritual practice is clearly visible as it moves from one religion to another (or perhaps from more than just one). Transmission of the use of prayer beads is thrown into starker relief as we move toward the present day.
Newer religions have appropriated and reinterpreted the use of prayer beads in thinly veiled ways from the nearest major world religion that utilizes the practice. As an example, the religion of Baha’i, founded in the mid-1800s by a Persian man known as Baha’u’llah in what is now Iran, embraces the use of prayer beads to recite a specific form of the name of God (Allah-u-Abha) ninety-five times every day.[18] It is quite easy to see that Baha’i borrows this practice from Islam with very little change in its behavioral aspects. From a Western perspective, a similar borrowing has happened between Neo-Paganism and Christianity. Wiccans and other Neo-Pagans display an increasing interest in prayer beads. These groups borrow the traditional Catholic Rosary beads, replacing the terminal Crucifix with a symbol of a fertility goddess, world tree, or Pentacle. Neo-Pagans also write accompanying prayers that focus on their own theological understandings.[19] As the process of borrowing moves closer and closer to the present, one senses the importance of the question of how much of the theology associated with the practice gets transferred along with it? While the exact answer would clearly depend on the specific case in question, an answer to this question can be approached by examining the process of spiritual borrowing as it is happening.
[1]Miller, Beads & Prayers, 78.
[2]Miller, Beads & Prayers, 79. Cf., Matthew 6:6.
[3]Miller, Beads & Prayers, 80.
[4]Miller, Beads & Prayers, 83.
[5]Winston, Bead One, Pray Too, 6. Cf., Miller, Beads & Prayers, 85.
[6]Winston, Bead One, Pray Too, 8.
[7]Anne Winston-Allen, Stories of the Rose: The Making of the Rosary in the Middle Ages (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997), 14.
[8]Miller, Beads & Prayers, 92.
[9]Winston-Allen, Stories of the Rose, 14.
[10]Miller, Beads & Prayers, 91.
[11]Joseph Therese Agbasiere, “The Rosary: Its History and Relevance,” African Ecclesial Review 30.4 (1988): 243.
[12]Pennington, Praying by Hand, 9.
[13]Agbasiere, “The Rosary,” 243.
[14]Miller, Beads & Prayers, 87.
[15]Winston, Bead One, Pray Too, xii.
[16]Miller, Beads & Prayers, 84.
[17]Miller, Beads & Prayers, 92, 84.
[18]Winston, Bead One, Pray Too, 10.
[19]Winston, Bead One, Pray Too, 10-11.