Praying Wheel

Praying Wheel, an instrument for offering prayers by mechanical means, used exclusively by the Lamaist Buddhists, on the assumption that the efficacy of prayer consists in the multiplicity of its repetition. These instruments are of various shapes and sizes, from small cylinders turned by the hand to huge ones driven by water or wind. Long strips of paper with a written or printed formula, which translated reads 'The Jewel in the Lotus, Amen,' repeated hundreds or even thousands of times, are wrapped round these cylinders, and as the cylinders revolve the paper rolls uncoil, and so the prayer is said.