A legend very popular in the Middle Ages has been conjectured to be the source of the word “rosary” as applied to a chaplet of beads for counting prayers. This legend tells of a pious youth, who on each and every day wove a garland of roses for the statue of the Virgin in the parish church. His religious zeal soon induced him to become a monk, and as the restrictions and duties of monastic life forced him to discontinue his floral offerings, he was much troubled in conscience, and was only relieved when the abbot told him that by reciting 150 aves at the close of each day, he would please the Virgin as much as by the gift of flowers. The prayers were faithfully said and they eventually became the occasion of a miracle. One evening, as the young monk was traversing a dense forest, it suddenly occurred to him that he had forgotten to recite his aves. He knelt down quickly and began to pray; all at once he saw a radiant and beautiful figure standing before him, and he immediately recognized in it the Blessed Virgin. Graciously she bent over him and drew from his lips one rose after the other, until fifty roses of supernatural beauty lay upon the ground. Of these she then made a garland and placed it upon the head of her faithful servant.[530] The first literary allusion to rosaries in India is in a Jain treatise written about the beginning of our era. The Prakrit name here employed, _ganettiya_, is equivalent to the sanscrit _ganayitrika_, or “counter,” and it is enumerated among the ten utensils of a Brahman ascetic. The other nine are the tridanda-stick, the water jar, the Bramanical thread, the earthen vessel named karotikâ, the bundle of straw used as a seat, the clout, the six-knotted wood, the hook, and the finger-ring. It is said that no mention of rosaries has been found in Indian Buddhist literature.[531] A splendid ecclesiastical ornament is described in the inventory of the royal treasures in the Château de Fontainebleau made in 1560, on the accession of Charles IX. This was of gold and composed of a crucifix with the figures of the Virgin Mary and St. John. It was “enriched with 41 sapphires, 3 pointed diamonds and 12 balas-rubies,” which served to mark the nails in the cross. The weight of the gold was 25 marks 5 ounces, and the value of the entire object, gold and precious stones, is given as 2720 écus, or about $6120. The intrinsic value of the gold alone would be about $4240.[532]