{
 "schema": 1,
 "id": "seed",
 "type": "material",
 "names": {
  "name": "Seed and nut",
  "native": "रुद्राक्ष",
  "script": "Devanagari",
  "lang": "sa",
  "said": "rudraksha — rudra-aksha, 'eye of Rudra'",
  "aliases": [
   "stone",
   "pit",
   "bead",
   "ojo de venado",
   "blueberry bead"
  ]
 },
 "region": [
  "south-asia",
  "himalaya-tibet",
  "island-sea",
  "mesoamerica",
  "china"
 ],
 "countries": [
  "IN",
  "NP",
  "ID",
  "MX",
  "CN"
 ],
 "facets": {
  "kind": "plant"
 },
 "text": {
  "what": "The hard inner stone of a fruit, dried, drilled and strung, or carried whole. Seeds are the part of a plant built to survive being eaten and buried, which makes them the one plant material in this atlas with any chance of lasting — and the reason a plant charm can be a bead rather than a bundle.",
  "story": "The best-documented one is the rudraksha, the dried stone of Elaeocarpus ganitrus. The tree grows 18 to 24 metres, is evergreen and fast-growing, and puts out buttress roots as it matures; it starts bearing fruit three to four years from germination and then yields between 1,000 and 2,000 fruits a year. The ripe stone sits inside a blue fleshy husk, and the blue is not a pigment but structural colour, which is why the beads are sometimes called blueberry beads. The stones carry ridges called faces — mukha — usually between one and twenty-one, rarely up to twenty-six or twenty-seven, and the count is the grading system: the single-faced ekamukha is the rarest, an eleven-faced bead is worn by renunciants, a married person wears a two-faced bead, and a five-faced bead stands for Hanuman. Nepali beads run 20 to 35 mm, Indonesian ones 5 to 25 mm.\n\nThe origin story is an eye. Sage Bhusunda asks Kalagni-Rudra where the beads come from, and the answer given in the late-medieval Upanishads is that Rudra closed his eyes for the destruction of the Tripurasura, drops of water fell from them to the earth, and those tears became rudrakshas. The name is the same claim: rudra, Shiva, and aksha, eye.\n\nThe stringing is specified. Beads are commonly strung on silk or on black or red cotton thread, less often on copper, silver or gold wire, and may be damaged if strung too tightly. There is a long tradition of 108 beads plus one — the extra, called the meru, bindu or guru bead, marks the beginning and end of a cycle — with garlands also made as 27+1 and 54+1.\n\nThe supply chain is named. Rudraksha are primarily sourced from India, Indonesia and Nepal for jewellery and malas and are valued similarly to semi-precious stones; the popular varieties come from around Kathmandu and the Arun valley in Nepal and from Kulu and Rameshwaram in India, with groves mostly in Uttarakhand and natural trees in the alpine forests of the Dhauladhar and lower Shivalik ranges. There is a dedicated 184-acre grove, the Ch. Devi Lal Rudraksha Vatika in Yamunanagar district, Haryana, which also holds over 400 endangered ayurvedic medicinal herbs. The fruit was studied enough for an alkaloid, rudrakine, to be identified in it in 1979.\n\nMexico sells a different eye. At the Mercado de Sonora, among the magical and religious plant items, is a seed called deer's eye, sold against the evil eye. China puts seeds on metal instead of stringing them: Chinese marriage charms depict dates and peanuts for reproduction, lotus seeds for continuous births, chestnuts for male offspring and pomegranates for fertility — the seed as a sign cast in bronze rather than as an object worn.\n\n*Inference —* every date in this record is textual. The Upanishads and the Tirumurai describe the garlands; no excavation dates one, because the cord rots and the beads scatter. A seed charm is durable in the hand and invisible in the ground.",
  "how": "Picked, husked, dried, drilled and strung — on silk, on black or red cotton, or on wire. The Devi Bhagavata Purana sets out the preparation of rudraksha garlands, and one Upanishadic passage lists the permitted materials for the beads of a garland as coral, pearl, crystal, conch, silver, gold, sandal, Putra-Jivika, lotus or rudraksha, bound with golden thread, silver caps on the right and copper on the left, each bead's face meeting the next bead's face and tail meeting tail, in a circle.",
  "today": "Rudraksha are grown as a crop and valued like semi-precious stones, and the cultivation is documented down to named groves and districts. The seed is also the only material in this batch that carries its own quality grading in public — a count of faces, visible on the bead, which a buyer can check and a seller can argue about."
 },
 "dating": {
  "period": "late-medieval Upanishads to the present",
  "from_year": null,
  "to_year": null,
  "living": true,
  "label": "attested in late-medieval texts; undated at its start",
  "method": "textual",
  "tier": "cited",
  "source": "s:wp-rudraksha",
  "note": "The sources read here date the rudraksha garland only by the texts that describe it — several late-medieval Upanishads and the Tirumurai — and give no year for either, so no from_year is entered. The one precise date available is 1979, when the alkaloid rudrakine was identified in the fruit, which dates a laboratory and not a practice. Because from_year is blank, this record does not appear on the timeline."
 },
 "object": {
  "form": "rosary",
  "materials": [
   "seed",
   "thread"
  ],
  "worn": [
   "neck",
   "wrist"
  ],
  "count": 109,
  "length_mm": 35,
  "source": "s:wp-rudraksha",
  "note": "the count is the common 108 beads plus the meru; the measurement is the published upper end of the Nepali range, 20 to 35 mm"
 },
 "against": [
  {
   "harm": "evil-eye",
   "who": "stallholders at the Mercado de Sonora, who sell a seed called deer's eye against it",
   "source": "s:wp-mercado-de-sonora",
   "tier": "cited"
  },
  {
   "harm": "infertility",
   "who": "Chinese marriage charms, whose lotus seeds stand for continuous births and whose pomegranates stand for fertility",
   "source": "s:wp-chinese-numismatic-charm",
   "tier": "cited"
  },
  {
   "harm": "bad-luck",
   "who": "the Upanishadic account attributed to Kalagni-Rudra, which promises the benefit of giving cows in charity for uttering, seeing and touching the bead",
   "source": "s:wp-rudraksha",
   "tier": "cited"
  }
 ],
 "kin": [
  {
   "to": "rudraksha",
   "as": "the seed itself, graded by the count of faces on its surface",
   "rel": "carried-by"
  },
  {
   "to": "ojo-de-venado",
   "as": "the Mexican deer's-eye seed, sold in the same market aisle as the herbs",
   "rel": "carried-by"
  },
  {
   "to": "counting-beads",
   "as": "the practice the string is for: 108 and one, marked by the meru bead",
   "rel": "practice"
  },
  {
   "to": "thread",
   "as": "the cord the tradition specifies — silk, or black or red cotton — and the part that rots first",
   "rel": "material"
  },
  {
   "to": "herb",
   "as": "the soft part of the same plant, which leaves no trace where the stone would",
   "rel": "parallel"
  },
  {
   "to": "eye",
   "as": "the sign in the name: rudra-aksha, the eye of Rudra, and in Mexico the eye of a deer",
   "rel": "motif"
  },
  {
   "to": "cowrie",
   "as": "the other small hard object strung by the hundred, where the shell does what the stone does",
   "rel": "parallel"
  },
  {
   "to": "hindu-kavacha",
   "as": "the tradition that sets out which beads may be strung, in what order, and on what",
   "rel": "tradition"
  }
 ],
 "links": [
  {
   "label": "Rudraksha — Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudraksha"
  }
 ],
 "sources": [
  "s:wp-rudraksha",
  "s:wp-mercado-de-sonora",
  "s:wp-chinese-numismatic-charm"
 ],
 "provenance": {
  "default": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:wp-rudraksha"
  },
  "fields": {
   "text.story": {
    "tier": "cited",
    "source": "s:wp-rudraksha",
    "note": "the closing paragraph on the textual-only record is this project's inference and is marked in the text"
   }
  }
 },
 "images": [],
 "x_commons_files": [
  "File:Rudraksha beads.jpg",
  "File:Elaeocarpus ganitrus fruit.jpg"
 ],
 "confidence": "high",
 "updated": "2026-09-17",
 "blurb": "The hard inner stone of a fruit, dried, drilled and strung, or carried whole.",
 "region_terms": [
  {
   "key": "south-asia",
   "name": "South Asia",
   "hemi": [
    "N",
    "E"
   ]
  },
  {
   "key": "himalaya-tibet",
   "name": "The Himalaya and Tibet",
   "hemi": [
    "N",
    "E"
   ]
  },
  {
   "key": "island-sea",
   "name": "Island Southeast Asia",
   "hemi": [
    "N",
    "S",
    "E"
   ]
  },
  {
   "key": "mesoamerica",
   "name": "Mesoamerica",
   "hemi": [
    "N",
    "W"
   ]
  },
  {
   "key": "china",
   "name": "China",
   "hemi": [
    "N",
    "E"
   ]
  }
 ],
 "hemispheres": [
  "E",
  "N",
  "S",
  "W"
 ],
 "kin_out": [
  {
   "to": "rudraksha",
   "type": "amulet",
   "name": "Rudraksha",
   "as": "the seed itself, graded by the count of faces on its surface",
   "rel": "carried-by"
  },
  {
   "to": "ojo-de-venado",
   "type": "amulet",
   "name": "Ojo de venado",
   "as": "the Mexican deer's-eye seed, sold in the same market aisle as the herbs",
   "rel": "carried-by"
  },
  {
   "to": "counting-beads",
   "type": "practice",
   "name": "Counting beads",
   "as": "the practice the string is for: 108 and one, marked by the meru bead",
   "rel": "practice"
  },
  {
   "to": "thread",
   "type": "material",
   "name": "Thread and cord",
   "as": "the cord the tradition specifies — silk, or black or red cotton — and the part that rots first",
   "rel": "material"
  },
  {
   "to": "herb",
   "type": "material",
   "name": "Herb and root",
   "as": "the soft part of the same plant, which leaves no trace where the stone would",
   "rel": "parallel"
  },
  {
   "to": "eye",
   "type": "motif",
   "name": "The eye",
   "as": "the sign in the name: rudra-aksha, the eye of Rudra, and in Mexico the eye of a deer",
   "rel": "motif"
  },
  {
   "to": "cowrie",
   "type": "material",
   "name": "Cowrie",
   "as": "the other small hard object strung by the hundred, where the shell does what the stone does",
   "rel": "parallel"
  },
  {
   "to": "hindu-kavacha",
   "type": "tradition",
   "name": "Kavacha — the Hindu armour tradition",
   "as": "the tradition that sets out which beads may be strung, in what order, and on what",
   "rel": "tradition"
  }
 ],
 "source_list": [
  {
   "id": "s:wp-rudraksha",
   "kind": "encyclopedia",
   "title": "Rudraksha",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudraksha",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:wp-mercado-de-sonora",
   "kind": "encyclopedia",
   "title": "Mercado de Sonora",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercado_de_Sonora",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0"
  },
  {
   "id": "s:wp-chinese-numismatic-charm",
   "kind": "encyclopedia",
   "title": "Chinese numismatic charm",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_numismatic_charm",
   "accessed": "2026-09-16",
   "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0"
  }
 ],
 "tiers": {
  "text.what": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:wp-rudraksha"
  },
  "text.story": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:wp-rudraksha",
   "note": "the closing paragraph on the textual-only record is this project's inference and is marked in the text"
  },
  "text.how": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:wp-rudraksha"
  },
  "text.today": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:wp-rudraksha"
  },
  "dating": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:wp-rudraksha"
  },
  "object": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:wp-rudraksha"
  }
 },
 "primary_image": null,
 "tag_facts": [],
 "recognition_facts": [],
 "acclaim": 0,
 "against_facts": [
  {
   "key": "evil-eye",
   "label": "The evil eye",
   "gloss": "harm carried by a look, often an admiring one",
   "who": "stallholders at the Mercado de Sonora, who sell a seed called deer's eye against it",
   "quote": "",
   "source": "s:wp-mercado-de-sonora",
   "tier": "cited",
   "note": ""
  },
  {
   "key": "infertility",
   "label": "Infertility",
   "who": "Chinese marriage charms, whose lotus seeds stand for continuous births and whose pomegranates stand for fertility",
   "quote": "",
   "source": "s:wp-chinese-numismatic-charm",
   "tier": "cited",
   "note": ""
  },
  {
   "key": "bad-luck",
   "label": "Bad luck, unspecified",
   "who": "the Upanishadic account attributed to Kalagni-Rudra, which promises the benefit of giving cows in charity for uttering, seeing and touching the bead",
   "quote": "",
   "source": "s:wp-rudraksha",
   "tier": "cited",
   "note": ""
  }
 ],
 "material_facts": [
  {
   "key": "seed",
   "label": "Seed and nut",
   "kind": "plant"
  },
  {
   "key": "thread",
   "label": "Thread and cord",
   "kind": "textile",
   "note": "red thread runs from the Mediterranean to Mongolia"
  }
 ],
 "worn_facts": [
  {
   "key": "neck",
   "label": "At the neck",
   "group": "body",
   "note": "the world's default position"
  },
  {
   "key": "wrist",
   "label": "On the wrist",
   "group": "body"
  }
 ],
 "form_fact": {
  "key": "rosary",
  "label": "Strung count"
 },
 "holding_facts": [],
 "span": "undated",
 "country_names": [
  {
   "iso": "IN",
   "name": "India"
  },
  {
   "iso": "NP",
   "name": "Nepal"
  },
  {
   "iso": "ID",
   "name": "Indonesia"
  },
  {
   "iso": "MX",
   "name": "Mexico"
  },
  {
   "iso": "CN",
   "name": "China"
  }
 ],
 "kin_in": [
  {
   "from": "rudraksha",
   "type": "amulet",
   "name": "Rudraksha",
   "as": "the material: a fruit stone, hard enough to drill and outlast the wearer",
   "rel": "material"
  },
  {
   "from": "tree",
   "type": "motif",
   "name": "The tree",
   "as": "how a flying rowan gets into the fork of an oak — the potency came from a bird's droppings",
   "rel": "material"
  },
  {
   "from": "herb",
   "type": "material",
   "name": "Herb and root",
   "as": "the hard part of the same plant, which does survive, and therefore does have a record",
   "rel": "parallel"
  }
 ]
}