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Origin 1908 to 1965

One hundred and eight is 2 x 2 x 3 x 3 x 3, which is one to the first power times two squared times three cubed. It is the most widely used sacred count in the dharmic traditions. A mala carries a hundred and eight beads; the Muktika canon lists a hundred and eight Upanishads; Sri Vaishnavism counts a hundred and eight Divya Desams, of which a hundred and six are earthly and two celestial; and the Anguttara Nikaya derives a hundred and eight cravings as thirty-six taken over past, present and future. The often-repeated claim that the number encodes the sun's distance divided by its diameter is roughly right at about 107.5, fails badly for the moon at 110.6, and is not the historical source of the practice. In digit-reduction numerology it reduces to 9.

Facts
Origins
Origin Period
1908 to 1965 1
Origin Period
500 BCE to 300 CE 2
Origin Period
The arithmological reading of the first numbers, one as source, two as division, four as justice, seven as virgin, ten as completion, reaches us through Platonic and Neopythagorean writers of the centuries after Plato. Burkert's finding is that it cannot be traced to Pythagoras himself, whose activity was religious rather than mathematical: the doctrines were credited backwards to him. 2Tradition: Pythagorean and Neopythagorean number lore
Origin Period
The system that gives a number a personality, and a person a number, was assembled in the United States in the first half of the twentieth century out of New Thought material. Balliett's The Philosophy of Numbers appeared in 1908; the chart positions, pinnacles and cycles were added by her successors over the next fifty years. 1Tradition: Modern name numerology (Mrs. L. Dow Balliett and her successors)
Place of Origin
The Greek world, and above all the Greek cities of southern Italy where the Pythagorean societies were established; the arithmological literature itself is later and largely eastern Mediterranean. 2Tradition: Pythagorean and Neopythagorean number lore
Place of Origin
The United States, and specifically the New Thought circuit of the north-eastern seaboard; Balliett worked from Atlantic City. 1Tradition: Modern name numerology (Mrs. L. Dow Balliett and her successors)
Attributed Author / Compiler
Attributed by the tradition to Pythagoras. Burkert's study is the standard demonstration that the number-doctrines carrying his name are the work of later hands, and that almost nothing in them can be shown to go back to the sixth century BCE. The attribution is recorded because it is what the tradition says, not because it holds. 2Tradition: Pythagorean and Neopythagorean number lore
Attributed Author / Compiler
Mrs. L. Dow Balliett, who published the first version of the modern system in 1908 and to whom Dudley devotes a chapter. What later authors added, the pinnacles, the challenges, the cycles, the personal year, is theirs, and this atlas's own numerology-position entries cite four different authors between 1908 and 1965 for what is presented as one system. 1Tradition: Modern name numerology (Mrs. L. Dow Balliett and her successors)
Origin of the Name
Pythagorean numerology is a twentieth-century label. The system it names has no demonstrable descent from Pythagoras, from the Pythagorean societies, or from the ancient arithmological literature; the letter-value chart it rests on was drawn up in the United States after 1900. The name borrows a pedigree, the oldest move in the subject. 1Tradition: Modern name numerology (Mrs. L. Dow Balliett and her successors)
Status
Standing as a Comparative Category
Largely abandoned as a comparative category 1
Contested Use
Contested or Appropriated Modern Use
Numerology has been sold since Balliett as a basis for decisions: which name to take, which date to marry on, which house number to buy. Dudley's survey of what numerologists sell is the standard critical account and its finding is blunt, numbers have power over minds, not over events. These entries record what the tradition says, not advice. 1
Modern Numerology
Reduction in the Modern System
The modern system reduces every number above nine by adding its digits: 1 + 0 + 8 = 9. Whatever the system says of 108 it therefore says of 9, because it holds no separate doctrine for the higher numbers. The stated exceptions are 11, 22 and 33, which it leaves unreduced and calls master numbers. 1Tradition: Modern name numerology (Mrs. L. Dow Balliett and her successors)
Attestation
Meaning in the Attesting Source
One hundred and eight is the standard bead count of the rosary used for recitation in Hindu and Buddhist practice. Schimmel's survey collects the many arithmetical justifications offered for the figure, and notes that they are explanations supplied after the count was already in use. 3Tradition: Comparative number symbolism
Learn More
Where a Hundred and Eight Is Actually Used

A hundred and eight is the most widely used sacred count in the dharmic traditions, and unlike many such numbers its uses are numerous, specific and independently attested.

The mala, the prayer bead string of Hindu and Buddhist practice, carries a hundred and eight beads plus a larger head bead, and a full recitation is one circuit. Half-malas of fifty-four and wrist malas of twenty-seven divide it. The Japanese juzu follows the same count, and at the New Year the temple bell is struck a hundred and eight times.

The Muktika Upanishad canonises a list of a hundred and eight Upanishads, with the Muktika itself as the hundred and eighth. The constituent texts span an enormous period, and the anthology is late; the canon of a hundred and eight is a later act of collection rather than a Vedic figure.

Sri Vaishnavism counts a hundred and eight Divya Desams, the temples praised in the Nalayira Divya Prabandham of the Alvar poets, composed between roughly the fifth and ninth centuries. Of these, a hundred and six are terrestrial, a hundred and five in India and one in Nepal, and two are celestial, the ocean of milk and Vaikuntha itself. Pilgrims who complete the earthly hundred and six have completed the circuit as far as it can be walked.

Other uses include a hundred and eight names of a deity in the ashtottara shatanamavali form, a hundred and eight steps at various temples, a hundred and eight Shiva temples in particular regional lists, and a hundred and eight marma points in Ayurvedic and martial traditions. The breadth is real, and it is why the number carries the weight it does.

A Hundred and Eight Defilements

The Buddhist hundred and eight is usually explained with a formula: six senses, times three valences of pleasant, unpleasant and neutral, times two of internal and external, times three of past, present and future. That formula is a later reconstruction and it is not the canonical derivation.

The Pali canon supplies one directly. The Tanha Sutta at Anguttara Nikaya 4.199 sets out eighteen craving-verbalisations dependent on what is internal and eighteen dependent on what is external, giving thirty-six, and then takes those thirty-six over past, present and future to give a hundred and eight. The text does the arithmetic explicitly. Anyone citing the hundred and eight defilements has a canonical source to cite, and it is worth citing rather than the popular formula.

Related enumerations appear across Buddhist traditions, and the number is put to liturgical use: a hundred and eight prostrations are a standard practice in Korean Seon, and the joya no kane, the striking of the temple bell a hundred and eight times on New Year's Eve in Japan, is explicitly understood as dispelling the hundred and eight afflictions.

The arithmetic of the number itself is elegant and genuine. A hundred and eight is 2 x 2 x 3 x 3 x 3, which can be written as one to the first power times two squared times three cubed, an unusually tidy factorisation that has been noticed for a long time. It is also divisible by 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 9, 12, 18, 27, 36 and 54, which is why it subdivides so conveniently for practice: a hundred and eight, fifty-four, thirty-six, twenty-seven, and nine are all workable rounds.

The Astronomical Claim, Checked

The most repeated modern explanation for a hundred and eight is astronomical: that the distance from the earth to the sun is a hundred and eight times the sun's diameter, that the distance to the moon is a hundred and eight times the moon's diameter, and that the ancient traditions encoded this. The claim can be checked, and it should be.

The sun: mean distance 149,597,870 km divided by diameter 1,392,000 km gives 107.5. Because the orbit is elliptical the figure ranges from about 105.7 at perihelion to 109.3 at aphelion. A hundred and eight sits inside that range and is a fair round figure. This part of the claim is essentially true.

The moon: mean distance 384,400 km divided by diameter 3,474.8 km gives 110.6, ranging from about 104.6 at perigee to 116.7 at apogee. The correct round figure is a hundred and eleven, not a hundred and eight, and the mean is off by more than two per cent. This part of the claim is false, and it is repeated as often as the true part.

The historical claim is the weaker one. No Indian astronomical text states either ratio as the reason for the number, and Subhash Kak, who did most to popularise the astronomical framing, concedes that the old Indian manuals do not contain it. The derivations actually offered within the traditions are calendrical and astrological, twenty-seven nakshatras times four quarters, or twelve signs times nine planets, and even those are more often repeated than sourced.

The honest position is that the solar ratio is a genuine near-coincidence, that the lunar one is wrong, and that neither is why anyone counts a hundred and eight beads.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

Japa (Mantra Recitation), Disciplines

One hundred and eight is the standard bead count of the rosary used for recitation in Hindu and Buddhist practice.

Source The Mystery of NumbersAnnemarie Schimmel

Disciplines That Use This

Numerology, Disciplines

The modern numerological system assigns this number a meaning, which is why the atlas records it as a subject in its own right, though this does not endorse what the discipline says about it. This link shows only that the discipline works with this particular number; the readings of the number itself belong to whichever tradition holds them.

Source Numerology: Or, What Pythagoras WroughtUnderwood Dudley
Sources
1. Numerology: Or, What Pythagoras Wrought
Underwood Dudley, Mathematical Association of America (Spectrum series), 1997View the Source
2. Weisheit und Wissenschaft: Studien zu Pythagoras, Philolaos und Platon (Lore and Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism)
Walter Burkert, Harvard University Press, 1962View the Source
3. The Mystery of Numbers
Annemarie Schimmel, Oxford University Press, 1993View the Source
Encyclopedia of Hinduism
Denise Cush, Catherine Robinson and Michael York (eds.), Routledge, 2008s.v. mala (the 108 beads)View the Source
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