The four śalākā pits

Take a pit one lakh yojana wide, the width of Jambūdvīpa, and a thousand yojana deep. Fill it with mustard seeds, heaped. Now drop one seed on each continent and each ocean of Madhya Loka in turn, working outward, until the pit is empty. Where the last seed falls, dig a new pit of that size and fill it again. That growing pit is the anavasthita, the unsettled one.

Each time an anavasthita empties, drop one seed into the second pit, the śalākā, the tally. When the śalākā fills, drop one seed into the pratiśalākā. When that fills, one seed into the mahāśalākā. Continue until the mahāśalākā is full and can take no more.

Now count every seed in all four pits together with every seed scattered across the continents and oceans. Subtract one. That number is utkṛṣṭa saṃkhyāta, the greatest numerable number, and adding one to it gives the least of the innumerable.

It is worth noticing what this construction is for. It does not produce a figure anyone will write down. It produces a boundary, defined precisely enough that the categories above it can be ordered and reasoned about. The Anuyogadvāra Sūtra is not being poetic here; it is building a definition.