Profile photo for Udayana Vatsaraaja
Udayana Vatsaraaja
· December 30
Their true name is ‘Akshamaalaa’, and they are a part of Buddhism because of its origin in India. References to Akshamaalaa-s appear in various texts and literature. For instance, in the Upanishads, there is a tale that the sages Vasishtha and Vishvaamitra had a contest to decide who was greater. They decided that the judges should be Shesha, the snake who holds up the earth, Aaditya, the sun, and the sage Agastya, who drank the very oceans from his palm. Vishvaamitra visited them, requested them to come with him, and they all said ‘no, I must hold up the earth’, ‘no, I must travel the skies and brighten all the world’, and ‘no, I can’t move very much because of the weight of the oceans within me’ respectively. Vasishtha visited them, placed his staff under the earth to hold it, placed his Akshamaalaa in Surya’s divine chariot to brighten the worlds, and had Agastya place the oceans in his small Kamandalu and brought all three of them. An Akshamaalaa generally has 108 beads, since that is 2 sets of 54- the number of letters in the Sanskrit alphabet.