From the custom of placing garlands on the gods as a mark of honour
has no doubt arisen that of garlanding guests. This is not confined
to India but obtained in Rome and probably in other countries. The
word 'chaplet' [166] originally meant a garland or wreath to be worn
on the head; and a garland of leaves with four flowers at equal
distances. Dryden says, 'With chaplets green upon their foreheads
placed.' The word _mala_ originally meant a garland, and subsequently
a rosary or string of beads. From this it seems a legitimate deduction
that rosaries or strings of beads of a sacred wood were substituted
for flower-garlands as ornaments for the gods in view of their more
permanent nature. Having been thus sanctified they may have come to
be worn as a mark of holiness by saints or priests in imitation of
the divine images, this being a common or universal fashion of Hindu
ascetics. Subsequently they were found to serve as a useful means
of counting the continuous repetition of prayers, whence arose the
phrase 'telling one's beads.' Like the Sanskrit _mala_, the English
word rosary at first meant a garland of roses and subsequently a
string of beads, probably made from rose-wood, on which prayers were
counted. From this it may perhaps be concluded that the images of
the deities were decorated with garlands of roses in Europe, and the
development of the rosary was the same as the Indian _mala_. If the
rose was a sacred flower we can more easily understand its importance
as a badge in the Wars of the Roses.