OM MANI PADME RUM' is the "formula of six syllables" which has acquired much celebrity from the conspicuous part which it plays in the religion of the Buddhists, and especially in that form of it called Lamaism (q.v.). It is the first subject which the Thibetans and Mongols teach their children, and it is the last prayer which is muttered by the dying man; the traveler repeats this formula on his journey, the shepherd when attending his flock, the housewife when performing her domestic duties, the monk when absorbed in religious meditation, etc. It is met witheverywhere; on flags, rocks, trees, walls, columns, stone-monuments, domestic implements, skulls, skeletons, etc. It Is looked upon as the essence of all religion and wisdom, and the means of attaining eternal bliss. " These six syllables," it is said, "concentrate in themselves the favor of all the Buddhas, and they are the root of the whole doctrine • they lead the believer to re-birth as a higher being, and are the door which bars from him inferior births; they are the torch which illuminates darkness, the conqueror of the five evils;" etc. They are likewise the symbol of transmigration; each syllable successively corre sponding with, and releasing from, one of the six worlds in which men are reborn; or they are the mystical designation of the six transcendental virtues, each successive syl lable implying self-offering (dan), endurance chastity (sale), contemplation (Solana), mental energy (eirya), and religious wisdom (prajna). The reputed author of this formula is the DliyAna-Bodhisattwa, or deified saint, Aralokiteswara, or, as the Thib etans call him, Padmandni (i.e. the lotus-handed). It would not belong, accordingly, to the earliest stage of Buddhism, nor is it found in the oldest Buddhistic works of the north of India or of Ceylon. Its original sense is rather obscure. Some suppose that it means Oh (oin), the jewel (mans) in the lotus (padme), amen (Vim); "the jewel" being an allusion to the saint Avalokiteswara himself. and the word "padme, or in the :o the belief that he was born from a lotus. It is probably, however, more correct to interpret the formula thus: "Salvation (ora)[is] in the jewel-lotus (mani-padme), amen (116m);" when the compound word "jewel-lotus' would mean the saint and the flower whence lie arose. If this interpretatiOn be correct, the formula would be originally
nothing more than a salutation addressed to Avalokiteswara or Padmapani; and the mystical interpretation put upon each syllable of it, would then be analogous to that which imparted a transcendental sense to each of the letters of the syllable Om (q.v.). Dr. Emil Schlagintweit, in his valuable work on Buddhism in Thibei (Leipsic, 1863), relates (p. 120) that "in a prayer-cylinder which he had the opportunity of open ing, he found the formula printed in six lines, and repeated innumerable times upon a leaf 49 feet and 4 inches broad. When baron Schilling de Canstadt paid a visit to the temple Suliulin, in Siberia, the lamas were just occupied with preparing 100,000.000 of copies of this prayer to be put into a prayer-cylinder; his offer to have the necessary number executed at St. Petersburg was most readily accepted. and he was presented, in return for the 150,000,000 of copies he forwarded to them, with an edition of the Kan jur, the sheets of which amount to about 40,000. 'When adorning the head of religious books, or when 'engraved upon the slabs resting'on the letters of the formula are often so combined as to farm a'n anagram. The li-ingitudibal lines occurring In the letters "mani, padme kiim" are traced close to each other, and to the outer longi tudinal line at the left are appended the curved lines. The letter "em" is replaced by a symbolical sign above the anagram, showing a half-moon surmounted by a disk indi cating the sun, from which issues a flame. Such a combination of the letters is called in Thibetan yam, clip vangdan, ten entirely powerful (viz., characters, six of which are consonants, and four vowels);" and the power of this sacred sentence is supposed to be increased by its being written in this form. These kind of anagrams_ are always bor dered by a pointed frame indicating the leaf of a fig-tree."—See also E. Burnout, Intro duction d f11tdrlgrire du Buddhisme Indices (Paris, 1844); 0. F. Koeppen, Die 1?eligion dor' Buddha (Berlin, 1857-59); and the works quoted by these authors.