Nigoda
The lowest form of life drawn to its own arithmetic: a body too small to see, infinite souls in it, seventeen lives in a breath, the whole universe full of them — and one body holding more souls than have ever been liberated.
At the foot of every ladder the atlas draws stands nigoda: the common body, in which infinite souls are born together, breathe together and die together, seventeen times and a fraction in a single breath. The subtle kind fill every space-point of the loka; the gross kind live in roots and bulbs and moss, the anantakāya a Jain layperson learns to leave off the plate. Four of the 563 kinds of living being, holding infinitely more souls than the other 559. The Gommaṭasāra gives the nesting — loka, skandha, aṇḍara, āvāsa, pulavi, body — with its own map beside it, and one comparison: the souls in a single body are infinite times all the siddhas there have ever been. And the ledger: every six months and eight samayas, 608 souls are liberated and 608 leave the heap that has never once been anything else, to take their place. The atlas draws the nest, the 563, the breath, and the ledger. Follows the Śvetāmbara reckoning throughout.
All of it is also walkable as an interactive atlas of nested maps.
Nigoda 8
- Bādara nigoda बादर निगोद · अनन्तकाय
The gross - Nigoda निगोद
The smallest body, the most souls - One body, every siddha एक निगोद शरीर · सर्व सिद्ध
Gommaṭasāra 196 - Seventeen lives in a breath एक श्वास में सत्रह भव
The shortest life, lived over and over - Sūkṣma nigoda सूक्ष्म निगोद
The subtle - The 563 kinds ५६३ जीवभेद
Every kind of living being - The nesting स्कन्ध · अण्डर · आवास · पुलवि
Loka to body - The two heaps अव्यवहार राशि · व्यवहार राशि
The ledger