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The Religious Use of Various Stones: Buddha

Among the Buddhist legends current in India in the seventh century A.D. is one referring to the vases offered by the "four kings of heaven" to the Buddha. They first brought four gold vases, but the Buddha declared that one who had renounced the world could not use such costly vases. Silver vessels were then substituted, and were also refused, as were successively vases made of rock-crystal, lapis lazuli, carnelian, amber, ruby and other precious materials. Finally, four stone vases were proffered. These were of violet color and transparent, but the fact that they were not of precious material rendered them acceptable to the Buddha.

The images of Buddha usually bear as adornment a small gem. This is most frequently a moonstone, but occasionally a ruby or some other gem will be used. The reason for this religious use of gems must not be sought only in the idea that precious and costly objects are most fitting as decorations of the sacred images, but it also implies a certain belief in the magic or quasi-sacred character of the gem itself.

The Saddharma Pundarika, one of the nine most sacred books of the Buddhists, composed perhaps as early as the beginning of our era, gives the following description of a celestial stupra, a sort of shrine containing a celestial being:

It [the stupra] consisted of seven precious substances, viz., gold, silver, lapis lazuli, musaragalva, emerald, red coral, and Karketana stone. This stupra of precious substances once formed, the gods of paradise strewed and covered it with mandarava and great mandara flowers. And from that stupra of precious substances there issued the voice: "Excellent, excellent, Lord Sakyamuni! thou hast well expounded the Dharmapayarya of the Lotus of the True Law. So is it, Lord; so is it, sugata."