The ladder of strength

The chain is stated as multiples, each rung a count of the rung below: 12 men make a bull, 10 bulls a horse, 12 horses a buffalo, 15 buffaloes an elephant, 500 elephants one maned lion, 2,000 lions one aṣṭāpada. Then it leaves the animals: 10,00,000 aṣṭāpada make one Baladeva, two Baladevas one Vāsudeva, two Vāsudevas one Cakravartin, 1,00,000 Cakravartins one Nāgarāja, and 1,00,00,000 Nāgarājas one Indra.

An Indra therefore stands at about 10²⁸ — a twenty-nine-digit number of strong men. And the last step is not a multiple at all: the strength of innumerable Indras is said to be less than that of a Tīrthaṅkara's little finger. No figure is given, so this atlas gives none.

The ladder is the same shape as the units of time: a scale that climbs by fixed multiples until measurement gives out, and then hands over to description. There the texts stop counting at śīrṣaprahelikā; here they stop at a finger.

It does not rank everyone. The chain names the Baladeva, the Vāsudeva and the Cakravartin and no other śalākā-puruṣa. The Prativāsudeva — who holds three khaṇḍas exactly as the Vāsudeva does — is given no rung, and none is invented here. Thirty of the sixty-three are on this ladder; the twenty-four Tīrthaṅkaras are above its top by construction, and the nine Prativāsudevas are simply absent from it.

On the provenance. This chain is given consistently wherever it appears, and its arithmetic is checked here. But the primary passage stating it has not been located for this atlas — so it is recorded as the traditional comparison, marked, rather than presented as sūtra.