National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

> > > >
Color New!IIIF Color HighRes Gray HighRes PDF   Japanese English
0101 The Pulse of Asia : vol.1
The Pulse of Asia : vol.1 / Page 101 (Color Image)

New!Citation Information

doi: 10.20676/00000233
Citation Format: Chicago | APA | Harvard | IEEE

OCR Text

stones, eight or ten inches in diameter, on every one of
which the lamas, "for value received," had inscribed the
universal prayer, "Om mani padme hum," often inter-
preted as "Oh, the jewel of the lotus." The number of
repetitions of this prayer determines the amount of credit
which the worshiper of Buddha lays up for himself in
heaven. In the lamaseries the lamas write it on pieces of
paper, which are put in hollow wooden cylinders about a
foot high and eight inches in diameter. The cylinders are
set up in long rows on the outside of a building at a height
of three or four feet above the ground, and are mounted so
that they revolve easily on vertical axes. Visitors to the
lamaseries as well as the lamas themselves take occasion
to walk past the rows of cylinders and to strike each one
with the right hand in such a way as to cause it to revolve.
Each revolution gives the worshiper as much credit as if
he had himself said, "Om mani padme hum." The lamas
often carry little hand cylinders full of prayers, which they
swing round and round instead of telling their beads.
Every house has its prayer-inscribed streamers of cloth
fluttering from poles on the roof, to keep off demons; and
every man, woman, and child is said to wear a charm for
the same purpose. Streamers are used to cure all varieties
of trouble. At Leh we were shown one set up on a pole
a few months before to prevent the demon of the cattle
plague from killing the yaks and oxen. The people con-
fessed their regret that it had proved a much less effective
preventive than had the drastic measures employed in cer-
tain valleys where all ingress and egress, whether of man
or beast, had been strictly forbidden.