Origin 1000 to 1100
A cylinder on a spindle containing a tightly wound scroll printed with a mantra many thousands of times over, turned clockwise. Turning it is held to have the effect of reciting the mantra, multiplied by the number of copies inside and the number of revolutions. Sizes run from a handheld wheel to fixed drums several metres high that a pilgrim walks a circuit to turn, and there are wheels driven by water and by wind.
The mantra is usually om mani padme hum. Direction matters: clockwise follows the direction of the sun and of circumambulation, and turning one counterclockwise is not a neutral act. The wheels are not a substitute for practice in the tradition's own account of them, though they are frequently described that way by outsiders as though the multiplication were the whole idea.
Facts
Use
Who May Handle ItAdherents of the tradition 1 ConsecrationSanctified by the text it carries, not by a rite 1 Origins
Origin Period Learn More
The Mantra Turned by Hand
The prayer wheel is a cylinder on a spindle containing a tightly wound scroll printed with a mantra many thousands of times over, and turning it is held to have the effect of reciting the mantra it contains.
Turning as reciting
The cylinder is filled with a paper scroll on which a mantra, most often the six syllables of the mantra of the bodhisattva of compassion, is printed over and over, and the wheel is turned clockwise, each turn understood to send out the accumulated recitations and the merit and compassion they carry. The practice makes the repetition of the mantra a physical act available to the illiterate and the busy alike, and it may be done while walking, waiting or reciting aloud, so the wheel multiplies devotion in a form anyone can perform.
From hand-held to river-driven
Prayer wheels range from small hand-held cylinders spun on a weighted handle to large drums set in rows along the walls of temples, turned by pilgrims as they pass, to great wheels driven by wind or by the flow of a stream, which are held to turn the mantra continuously without human effort. The device is characteristic of Tibetan and Himalayan Buddhism and belongs to the same devotional world as the mantra printed on flags and carved on stones. Its logic, that the mantra acts through the turning as through the speaking, is internal to the tradition and is the assumption on which the whole practice rests.
The Printer, the Metalworker, and the One Rule Anyone Can Follow
Inside every prayer wheel is a tightly wound paper scroll printed, traditionally by woodblock, with a mantra, commonly Om Mani Padme Hum, repeated many thousands of times on a single long strip, and producing that scroll is a specialist printer's job entirely separate from building the wheel that will hold it.
Two different crafts joined in one object
The drum itself, whether a small handheld cylinder with a weighted chain that helps it spin, or a large fixed wheel set into a monastery wall, or a water or wind driven wheel that turns on its own, is metalwork, commonly copper, brass or silver, made by artisans who may never print a scroll in their lives. The two trades meet only when the finished scroll is sealed inside the finished drum, and a wheel with a torn or damaged scroll is opened and refitted with a fresh one rather than discarded whole.
Who may spin it, and the one binding rule
Anyone, ordained or lay, Buddhist or simply curious, may spin a prayer wheel, there is no initiation requirement, but the wheel must always be turned clockwise, the same direction the mantra inside is understood to be read, and turning one the wrong way is considered to work against its purpose rather than simply being a harmless variation.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Belongs to Tradition
The mani wheel holds a written mantra, and turning it is counted as reciting it. The practice belongs to Tibetan Buddhism specifically.
Element Of
The drum of rolled mantras turned by hand or by water, which counts the recitation without the reciting.
Sources
Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.
View At A Past Year
Choose a year to see this entry's facts and connections as the atlas records them at that moment: what it held then, what it held instead, and what it had not yet adopted. Choose Present for the current record.