The present Mala

I first saw the Mala when I was at an ecumenical faith institute held by the religious studies department of Albright College. The institute held a panel and the panel consisted of a Rabbi, a Zen Buddhist, an African Methodist Episcopal Pastor, and a Muslim women there. The host asked questions that dealt with the religion and cultural space. The panel was very formative and inclusive. There was a good diversity of answers that came from the different backgrounds of the panelist.

The Zen Buddhist, whom the Mala belonged to, used the Mala while he was giving his presentation. Whenever the microphone was passed to him for his answer he would rub the Mala in his hands. After the institute was over I went to talk to the Buddhist because I thought the Mala was a Rosary with a missing crucifix. From the conversation I found out that the Mala is actually older than the Rosary by 1400 years. While we were talking the Muslim presenter commented that Islam also had beads that closely resembled the Mala as well.

Next, I talked to Dr. Forte of the religious studies department of Albright College. Dr. Forte told me that the Mala is used for prayer and that they can have hundreds of beads on them. To properly use the Mala one would roll a single bead between the fingers as a prayer is chanted. The person does this until they have made it through all the beads. The interesting part is that the Buddhist used the Mala for a calming effect instead of a prayer counter at that moment.

Interestingly enough, Key Terms in Material Religion has a chapter titled “Digital” which talks about the Rosary in Catholicism. There is an application from Apple called “I-Rosary” which is a digital version of the physical Rosary. There is a picture of Rosary that appears and a set of prayers that pop up and every time a prayer is completed the app moves a bead down and vibrates. I googled and found an app for the Buddhist Mala also.

This made me wonder if the same sequence happened with Christianity and the Bible and how much of the application is another gimmick to turn a profit. I was not able to get in contact with the Buddhist but I wondered could someone pray without the Mala or pray without the Rosary. To read the Bible, Quran, or Torah would be hard without the books being present which creates a need for the application. However, I think that one can manage to pray if the Mala isn’t present.

1 S. Brent Plate, Key Terms in Material Religion (New York: New York, 2015), 55-62.