Chedanaka
The commentators do not write the human maximum as digits. They say it is the number with ninety-six cuttings - halve it ninety-six times and you reach one - which is how a tradition without place-value written large says two to the ninety-sixth.
A chedanaka is one halving. A number's chedanakas are how many times it can be cut in half; the number with ninety-six is 2^96, and the human maximum is given as that number less one, so that it has exactly ninety-six and not ninety-seven. The view lays the ninety-six out as a staircase, each tread a doubling, and the top tread is the twenty-nine digits.
The same device measures other things in the texts: the ranks of the innumerable are built by repeated squaring and cutting rather than by writing digits, which is why the atlas can say how those ranks relate without ever printing a figure for one.
Measurements and counts
| One chedanaka | one halving |
|---|---|
| Ninety-six of them | 2^96 |
| The human maximum | 2^96 − 1 |
| Why less one | so that it has exactly ninety-six cuttings |