The Multitudes
Which kind of living being is there most of, and which least? The Prajñāpanā answers class by class, in one direction only - from fewest to most - and with only four words for each step: a little more, countably many times more, innumerably many times more, infinitely many times more. Humans are the fewest things alive. Plants are the most.
Alpabahutva, "the little and the many", is a whole pada of the Prajñāpanā, the third, and it never gives a count. It gives an order, and for each rung of the order one of four relations to the rung below. That is enough to place every class in one of the three magnitudes the samaya chapter defines: the countable, the innumerable, the infinite. The view draws five of its ladders on one banded field, and says on the field what it cannot do, which is draw them to scale.
Read the first ladder and the shape of the universe's population is in it: humans fewest, hell-beings innumerably more, gods innumerably more than those, the siddhas infinitely more than the gods - every soul ever liberated - and the animals and plants infinitely more than the siddhas, because the Nigoda are among them. The other ladders cut the same population by senses, by body, by gender, and hell by hell.
The Digambara Gommaṭasāra Jīvakāṇḍa has its own alpabahutva, with the same shape and different detail in places; the atlas prints the Prajñāpanā's and names the other where it differs.
Measurements and counts
| Source | Prajñāpanā 3 · bahuvaktavyatā-pada |
|---|---|
| Direction | fewest to most, always |
| The steps | viśeṣādhika · saṃkhyāta-guṇa · asaṃkhyāta-guṇa · ananta-guṇa |
| Fewest of all | humans |
| Most of all | plants - the nigoda among them |
| Ladders drawn | 5 |