Rudraksha
रुद्राक्ष
What the Rudrakshajabala Upanishad says, read from R.A. Sastri's translation
Rudraksha beads are the seeds Shiv's devotees wear and use for japa. This page reports what the Rudrakshajabala Upanishad itself says: where the beads came from, how to choose and wear them, and which deity it assigns to each number of faces. It reports the text's own claims and makes none of its own.
The Upanishad and its setting
The Rudrakshajabala Upanishad is a short text in about fifty verses. A secondary source lists it under the Sama Veda, which the translation read here does not state. It opens with the sage Bhusunda asking Kalagni Rudra how the rudrakshas arose and what wearing them does. Later the sage Sanatkumara, and a group that includes Nidagha, Jadabharata, Dattatreya, Katyayana, Bharadvaja, Kapila, Vasishtha and Pippalada, come to ask for the rules of wearing them.
Where the beads came from
Kalagni Rudra gives the origin in the first person. When he closed his eyes to destroy the Tripura, or for a thousand divine years in another verse, drops of water fell from them to the ground and became the rudraksha trees, for the benefit of devotees. Later he adds that Sadashiva, at the time of dissolution, closes the eye of destruction after finishing his work, and the beads come from that eye. The text derives the name from this: Rudra's eye, Rudra-aksha.
Choosing a bead
The text ranks size: the best bead is as large as an amla fruit, a middling one the size of a jujube, and the smallest the size of a gram. A good bead is well shaped, sound and firm, and has its natural thorns (the small projections on the surface). It tells the wearer to reject six kinds: beads that are worm-eaten, wounded, broken, without thorns, diseased or badly shaped. A bead with a natural hole is the best, and one drilled by hand is second. The text also says a bead that leaves a golden line when rubbed on a touchstone is the best. This is the Upanishad's own test and this site has not checked it.
The four classes of bead
The Upanishad says the trees arose in four classes at Shiva's command, matching the four classes of society: white for brahmana, red for kshatriya, yellowish for vaishya and black for shudra, and it says each class should wear the colour of its own. This is the text's own social framing. It is reported here as part of what the Upanishad says, not as a rule this site endorses.
How many to wear, and where
The verses give counts for different parts of the body: one in the tuft of hair, three hundred on the head, thirty-six for the neck, sixteen for each arm, twelve for each wrist, five hundred on the shoulders, and a garland of one hundred and eight in the manner of the sacred thread. It says three hundred beads is the lowest practice, five hundred ordinary and a thousand the best. It names mantras for the placements: Ishana for the crown, Tatpurusha for the shoulders, Aghora for the neck and heart, and the Panchabrahman mantras for a garland of five or seven beads at the sense organs. Beads should be strung on silk thread. The text says they may be worn always, even while sleeping or eating.
Faces and presiding deities, per the text
One face: the Supreme Reality. Two: Ardhanarishvara. Three: the three sacred fires. Four: Brahma. Five: the five Brahmans (Sadyojata to Ishana). Six: Kartikeya, and some authorities say Vinayaka. Seven: the Saptamatrikas. Eight: the Ashtamatrikas, and the text adds that it pleases the eight Vasus and Ganga. Nine: the nine Shaktis. Ten: Yama. Eleven: the eleven Rudras. Twelve: Mahavishnu and the twelve Adityas. Thirteen: Kamadeva. Fourteen: said to arise from Rudra's eyes. For each the text states an effect of wearing it, such as pleasing the deity, and those effects are the Upanishad's own claims.
What the text says about merit
The Upanishad makes strong claims about what the beads and the text do. It says merely saying the word equals the gift of ten cows, seeing or touching them doubles that, and wearing them in various places brings the merit of thousands or crores of cow gifts. It says that studying the Upanishad itself destroys sin and, at the end, brings sayujya with Shiva and no return to the world. This page reports these as the text's claims. It does not say they are true, and it does not say any bead has any effect.
Conduct, as the text states it
The wearer should avoid liquor, meat, onion and a few other listed foods (the translation names the village boar). The text says that wearing the bead on eclipse days, solstices, the start of each solar month and on new and full moons removes all sin. For a single bead the Upanishad uses the name Mrityutaraka, 'crosser of death', says it should be received from a guru, and says the guru should be given a cow in return.
Where this differs from popular lists
Popular face-and-deity tables, and the planet and benefit lists attached to them, mostly do not come from this Upanishad. Many come from sellers. This site does not publish them and makes no claim that any bead produces any result. An earlier version of this page, built from a summary on another website, got the eight-face and ten-face entries wrong. It said the ten-faced bead belongs to 'ten Yamas', where the Upanishad says Yama, and it dropped the Ashtamatrikas and Ganga for the eight-faced bead. Those errors are corrected above.
The Shiva Purana on rudraksha
The Vidyeshvara Samhita has two chapters on rudraksha, its names and greatness, which are on this site in full.
Read the source chapters
Source note
Read from R.A. Sastri's English translation of the Rudrakshajabala Upanishad as published on shaivam.org, a local copy of which this project holds. All wording on this page is a paraphrase, and the translation's verse numbers are not reproduced. The translation is a 20th century rendering; the Sanskrit original was not consulted, so the verse order and some terms (for example the list of forbidden foods) should be checked against a critical edition.