Given the traditional blessings associated with disseminating mantras – improving the world as well as garnering immense quantities of puṇya for the devotee – it should not be surprising that mechanical means of increasing the repetitions and scale of broadcasting them were invented and that devotees set up rows of hundreds of mantra wheels located around stūpas, so that devotees can spin each of them during circumambulations.

Inside the wheels are placed tightly-wrapped mantras on paper, wound and secured to fill the interior space, leaving a hollow hub. In the recent past, artisans created these rolls of paper making the mantras with wood-blocks that were inked and repeatedly stamped thousands of times; today, computer printers in some ateliers reproduce the mantras that are wound into the same hollow-centered sphere.