The units of time

It begins with the Samaya, the smallest possible moment, and climbs by fixed multiples: Āvalikā, breath, Stoka, Lava, Muhūrta, day, year. So far everything is countable and familiar.

Then it leaves ordinary experience. A Pūrva is 70,560,000,000,000 years, and it is only the second of twenty-eight named units that each multiply by 84 lakh. The last of them, śīrṣaprahelikā, is a number of 194 digits.

And that is where counting stops. Beyond śīrṣaprahelikā the texts change method entirely and define time by analogy instead: the Palyopama, measured by emptying a pit of hair, and the Sāgaropama above it. Every span in Jain cosmology that actually matters, every lifespan in the heavens and hells, every spoke of the wheel of time, is measured in these uncountable units rather than in years.

Two things are worth holding on to while reading the ladder. The shortest life a being can have is about one twenty-third of a second, so a soul can be born and die seventeen times in a single breath. And one pūrva is roughly five thousand times the present age of the universe, with thirteen larger named units still above it.