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BUDDHA: Recites From Memory The Hindu Large Numbers Up To Infinity! This is really a Love Story. The Indians had a passion for large numbers. Today, in Indian currency, we hear of 1 Lak (or 10 Thousand) or 1 Crore (or 10 Million) as big numbers, but they proceed to Infinity. The Lalitavistara Sutra (a Mahayana Buddhist work from around C1000BC)) recounts a contest including writing, arithmetic, wrestling and archery, competing for the hand of the most beautiful woman Gupa, in which the Buddha was pitted against the great mathematician Arjuna and showed off his numerical skills by citing the names of the powers of ten up to 1 'tallakshana', which equals 10^53. The last number at which he arrived at was 10^421, that is, a 1 followed by 421 zeros. This is really a Love Story. The name for ancient India is Bharat, so this is called the Bharatiya Number System: Here are some of the Powers of 10: - Lakṣá (लक्ष) —10^5 or Ten Thousand = 10,000 - Kōṭi or crore (कोटि) —10^7 or Ten Million = 10,000,000 - Ayuta (अयुत) —10^9 or 1 Billion = 1,000,000,000 - Ninnahuta (निन्नाहुता) —10^35 - Bindu (बिंदु or बिन्दु) —10^49 - Atata (अटाटा) —10^84 - Pundarika (पुन्डरीक) —10^112 - Dhva-jagran-isha-mani (ध्वजाग्रनिशमनी) —10^421 - Bodhisattva (बोधिसत्व or बोधिसत्त) — has 38 Digits in its raised Power: 10^37218383881977644441306597687849648128 We are now approaching the Infinities! This chart, cited by Buddha from pure memory, and thus winning the hand of Gupa, is phenomenal, when we compare this to our ancestors in Europe several thousands of years ago who only had words like “Myriad” to capture the essence of vague large numbers. 3 or 4 decades ago, the biggest number we knew was 1 Googol which was 1^100 or 1 followed by 100 zeroes. You may ask why even bother with the naming of these large numbers, these preposterous Hindu infinities! It is because we are recognizing that the ancient Jaina Mathematicians and Cosmologists were giants of metaphysical thinking in their days, that they could recite such a litany of number-names, suggests that their Minds were vast, their intelligence perhaps magical and incantatory. Perhaps the meanings of the Sanskrit names was poetry in itself, that gave deeper meanings into the Mystery of Ordered Structure and the subsequent Creation of the Decimal Place Value System that we use today that has led to high Technology. It was only in the 13th century that the (originally French) word “million” was introduced. This Jaina tradition acknowledges and includes the upper-limits of human comprehension while on its quest to deciphering the true nature of God. Jain 108
