History of large numbers

There area also analogous lists of Sanskrit names for fractional numbers, that is, powers of one tenth.

The Mahayana Lalitavistara Sutra is notable for giving a very extensive such list, with terms going up to 10421.

The context is an account of a contest including writing, arithmetic, wrestling and archery, in which the Buddha was pitted against the great mathematician Arjuna and showed off his numerical skills by citing the names of the powers of ten up to 1 'tallakshana', which equals 1053, but then going on to explain that this is just one of a series of counting systems that can be expanded geometrically.

The Avataṃsaka Sūtra, a text associated with the Lokottaravāda school of Buddhism, has an even more extensive list of names for numbers, and it goes beyond listing mere powers of ten introducing concatenation of exponentiation, the largest number mentioned being nirabhilapya nirabhilapya parivarta (Bukeshuo bukeshuo zhuan 不可說不可說轉), corresponding to

[2][3] though chapter 30 (the Asamkyeyas) in Thomas Cleary's translation of it we find the definition of the number "untold" as exactly 1010*2122, expanded in the 2nd verses to 104*5*2121 and continuing a similar expansion indeterminately.

The Jain mathematical text Surya Prajnapti (c. 4th–3rd century BCE) classifies all numbers into three sets: enumerable, innumerable, and infinite.

Much later, but still in antiquity, the Hellenistic mathematician Diophantus (3rd century) used a similar notation to represent large numbers.

The Romans, who were less interested in theoretical issues, expressed 1,000,000 as decies centena milia, that is, 'ten hundred thousand'; it was only in the 13th century that the (originally French) word 'million' was introduced.