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ON THE RELIGIOUS USE OF VARIOUS STONES 293
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to
a chaplet of beads for counting prayers. This legend tells of a pious
youth, who on each and every day wove a garland of roses for the statue
of the Virgin in the parish church. His religious zeal soon induced him
to become a monk, and as the restrictions and duties of monastic life
forced him to discontinue his floral offerings, he was much troubled in
conscience, and was only relieved when the abbot told him that by
reciting 150 aves at the close of each day, he would please the Virgin
as much as by the gift of flowers. The prayers were faithfully said and
they eventually became the occasion of a miraclb. One evening, as the
young monk was traversing a dense forest, it suddenly occurred to him
that he had forgotten to recite his aves. He knelt down quickly and
began to pray ; all at once he saw a radiant and beautiful figure
standing before him, and he immediately recognized in it the Blessed
Virgin. Graciously she bent over him and drew from his lips one rose
after the other, until fifty roses of supernatural beauty lay upon the
ground. Of these she then made a garland and placed it upon the head of
her faithful servant.19
The
first literary allusion to rosaries in India is in a Jain treatise
written about the beginning of our era. The Prakrit name here employed,
ganettiya, is equivalent to the sanscrit ganayitrika, or
"counter," and it is enumerated among the ten utensils of a Brahman
ascetic. The other nine are the tridanda-stick, the water jar, the
Bramanical thread, the earthen vessel named karotikâ, the bundle of
straw used as a seat, the clout, the six-knotted wood, the hook, and
the finger-ring. It is said that no mention of rosaries has been found
in Indian Buddhist literature.20
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™ Thurston, " History of the Rosary in all Countries," Journal of the Society of Arts, vol. 1, p. 271; London, 1902.
"Leumann, "Rosaries Mentioned in Indian Literature;" in Trane, of the Ninth Cong, of Orient; ( 1892), London, 1893, pp. 883-889.
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