The text has an incomplete colophon, which states it was completed in a village named Patalika near Kanchi (Tamil Nadu) in the 22nd year of Simhavarman's rule in Banarastra.
The colophon includes astronomical observations along with a samvat date and year which together confirm the text was published by Rishi Simhasuri on 25 August 458 CE.
It has been claimed by the Digambara tradition of Jainism to be a Sanskrit translation of an older Prakrit-language text Loyavibhaga by Muni Sarvanandi.
That system of expressing numbers with positional decimal arithmetic was accepted and must have been in wide use in India by mid 5th-century to appear as it does in the Lokavibhaga text.
[11] The published edition of the surviving Lokvibhaga manuscript is a palm leaf copy of the original Sanskrit text, likely from 11th or 12th century.