जै · The Jain Encyclopedia
Section · 9 ladders

The Multitudes

अल्पबहुत्व

Every class of living being ranked by how many there are, from fewest to most, in the Prajñāpanā's own words for each step - and the one countable rung, humans, with the commentators' twenty-nine-digit maximum.

Alpabahutva, the little and the many, is a whole pada of the Prajñāpanā, and it never gives a count. It gives an order, fewest to most, and for each step one of four words: a little more, countably many times more, innumerably many times more, infinitely many times more. Five of its ladders are drawn on one field banded into the atlas's three magnitudes: the five destinies, by senses, by body, by gender, the seven hells. Humans are the fewest things alive and the only countable rung; the commentators give their maximum as the number with ninety-six halvings, 2^96 − 1, printed in full and checked by arithmetic. Plants, with the nigoda among them, are the top of every ladder they stand on. Follows the Śvetāmbara reckoning throughout.

All of it is also walkable as an interactive atlas of nested maps.

The fewest 2

The ladders 7

समयं गोयम! मा पमायए

Do not be heedless, Gautama, for even a single samaya.

Uttarādhyayana Sūtra 10