rudraksha

plural rudrakshas

1. The dried seed of a large evergreen broad-leaved tree, Elaeocarpus ganitrus, which is traditionally used as prayer beads in Hinduism.

   One of my favorite photographs shows a Hindu sadhu right out of central casting – naked body, long matted hair and beard, ash-smeared forehead, rudraksha-mala around his neck, the works – chatting away on a mobile phone.

   2012, Shashi Tharoor, Connecting to the Future

   1 more example

   But the room […]contained many tokens of her family and forebears—among them such relics as her dead father's wooden clogs, a necklace of rudraksha beads left to her by her mother, and faded imprints of her grandparents' feet, taken on their funeral pyres.

   2008, Amitav Ghosh, Sea of Poppies, Penguin, published 2015, page 9