THE PRAYING MACHINE. OME time ago I had the good fortune to receive two interesting presents. One was from an anonymous benefactor, and consisted of a Buddhist book, beautifully written on leaves of bark, from a Burmese temple. The other present was sent me by an Anglo-Indian officer, and consisted of a Praying Machine such as is commonly used in Thibet. The two things came from widely different quarters, but they are strangely connected. The book consists of the first teachings of Buddha. It opens with what is traditionally his very first discourse to some Brahmins who had begun to follow him, but were afterwards offended and forsook him. These Brahmins had clung to Buddha while at the outset of his religious career he was undergoing those terrible. self-mortifications by which he was brought to the last degree of attenuation. This was a kind of sanctity traditional with the Brahmins, and which they could understand. But when Buddha, after his vision of the angel with the guitar of three strings-the loosely-drawn which gave no music, the too tightly-drawn which gave an un When Buddhism took to praying-machines it was because of the decay of both-it was ruin mingling with ruin. One of the first things carved on the ancient monuments of the world was the foot and wheel. Archeologists think that it originally indicated the superior powers of those who rode in chariots-the foot added to the wheel denoted fleetness. And there were days when superiority in fleetness made one a king among men. This secular symbol gradually became sacred, as with ignorance things commonly do, when their meaning is gone. The human imagination got hold of it just as it has taken up the cross and twined it with a thousand exotic meanings. The wheel became the circle of the universe—its motion became the symbol of ascending and descending life— it was the sun,—the moon,—all manner of glorious things. Even our British ancestors became possessed in some mysterious way of this symbol, and used to roll a burning wheel down a hill-side at the Solstice, as an image of the solar movement. When Buddhism was preached among the nations which had this wheel-symbol, it followed the plan of all missionary religions; it borrowed the sacred emblems among the people to whom it went. It is doubtful whether Buddha himself knew anything about the wheel; but, in nearly all the countries into which his religion was carried, it became represented at an early period. by what is called the Wheel of the Law. The holy wheel from being a sort of fetish long ago became spiritualised. First, it was interpreted to mean a system of morals,— every spoke a virtue, and the circumference complete and rounded moral life. Next, it was taken up by philosophy, and made to represent a great circle of transmigration. And finally it became the form of a cosmogony,—the holy mountain Meru being the centre of the earth, and around it wheels within wheels revolving -such as the belt of oceans, the belt of the world's crystal walls, and the great circles of stars and of angels. The sacred wheel from being all this became an amulet, inscribed with sacred texts. Gradually, as is likely, it was made hollow, and the texts written on paper were stuffed into it. In that way, probably, was developed the little praying barrel, or hollow metallic wheel, whose circular movement has in its time represented the rising and setting stars, the birth and death of man, and even the pure circle of graces and virtues. The best use we can make of it would seem to be to make of it a mirror, and find whether there may not be in our own Christendom much that corresponds to this miserable form into which a great soul and movement have been dwarfed. There is no difficulty in finding praying-machines in Europe. The Rosary, for instance, is directly borrowed from the Buddhists, who string nuts together to count their prayers by, and regard so many rounds of their rosary as reaching a certain advantage, just the same as so many revolutions of the prayingmachine. The simple-hearted Jesuit Father Rubruquis, who went to Thibet just six centuries ago, wrote home, "They (Buddhists) have with them also, whithersoever they go, a certain string, with 100 or 200 nutshells thereupon, much like our beads, and they do always mutter these words, 'Om mani hactavi,-God thou knowest,' as one of them expounded it to me. And so often do they expect a reward at God's hands as they pronounce these words in remembrance of God." If the old man had gone more deeply into the matter, he would have found many more resemblances. For instance, he would have found Buddhists repeating litanies like this :— I adore the Tatàgata, the universally radiant sun! I adore the Tatàgata, the moral wisdom! I adore the Tatàgata, the chief lamp of all the regions of space! and so on for 137 verses. It might have recalled to Rubruquis the many verses in his own litany. Heart of Mary, full of grace, pray for us! Heart of Mary, sanctuary of the Holy Trinity, &c., What is it in the praying-machine which strikes us as grossly superstitious and barbarous ? Several things. First of all, there are in it those vain repetitions which Jesus rebuked in the formulas of his time. These deteriorated Buddhists think they shall be heard for their much rolling of barrels. Does that idle notion survive in Christendom? What shall be said of the oft-recurring "Good Lord deliver us!" and "We beseech thee to hear us, Good Lord," of the prayer-book and its feeble. imitations? Then we have the vain repetitions— Lord have mercy upon us! Son of God, we beseech thee to hear us! Lamb of God, we beseech thee to hear us! |