I find the numbers in Pali quite confusing. It reminds me a lot of the
numbers in Bengali in which the terms crore and lakh are widely used.
It made it almost always totally impossible to discuss about numbers
with people. I would count in thousands or millions, they in crores
and lakhs and everyone would get very confused! Is there a reason
behind the fact that we use different numeral bases ? Are there other
countries (China ?) that like India use crores and lakhs ?
This leads me to the following sentence of Exercise 21:
11.Pubbe Saavatthinagare manussaana.m satta ko.tiyo vasi.msu.
[in] east / [in] city of Saavatthi / [of] people / 7 / crores / lived
Seven crores of people lived in the eastern part of Saavatthi.
If my calculations are correct this makes 70,000,000 (70 million)
people which seems really exaggerated to me!
Anyway I suppose it is not essential to master the numbers perfectly
well in order to understand the suttas but I am suprised by the
complexity of that topic. Even learning the cardinals from 1 to 100 is
not that straightforward! It seems to me that it is simpler in
European languages or is this just an illusion?
With metta,
Florent
PS: By the way would the number of this post in Pali be
Nava sahassa.m nava sata.m ekuunasata.m?