The Number 108

Most sacred numbers are small. 108 is the great exception, and it belongs above all to the religions born in India. Its most familiar form is a string of beads. The Hindu japa mala has 108 beads, with one larger “guru bead” that is not counted; the person praying moves one bead through the fingers with each repetition of a mantra or divine name, and turns back at the guru bead rather than crossing it. One full round is therefore 108 prayers. Smaller malas of 54 or 27 beads simply divide the number.

Hindu tradition has given 108 to many other things. The Muktika Upanishad, a late text, lists 108 Upanishads as the complete collection of these philosophical scriptures, although scholars count only a dozen or so as the early, principal ones. Litanies called ashtottara shatanamavali, “the hundred and eight names”, praise gods such as Vishnu, Shiva and Lakshmi. In South India, Vaishnava devotees speak of 108 Divya Desams, holy places of Vishnu sung by the Alvar poet-saints, of which tradition places 106 on earth and two in heaven. The ancient treatise on drama and dance, the Natya Shastra, describes 108 karanas, basic units of movement, and the great Shiva temple at Chidambaram, home of Shiva as Lord of the Dance, shows them carved in stone on its gateway towers. Pilgrims, dancers and priests alike thus met the number in their own spheres.

Buddhism carried the beads and the number across Asia. Buddhist texts speak of 108 afflictions, the desires and confusions that tie beings to suffering. Schools counted them in different ways, for example by multiplying the six senses by three kinds of feeling, by attachment or its absence and by past, present and future. Tibetan, Chinese and Japanese rosaries usually keep 108 beads or a fraction of it.

The best-loved Buddhist use of the number is in Japan. On New Year’s Eve, temples across the country ring their great bronze bells 108 times in the rite of Joya no Kane, “the bell of the night of removal”. Each deep stroke is said to clear away one of the 108 worldly desires, so that the new year begins pure. Crowds queue in the cold to take a turn at the beam, and the ringing is broadcast on national television. Many temples strike most of the bells before midnight and the last after it, though customs vary.

Jainism gives 108 a careful explanation of its own. The Navkar Mantra, the most important Jain prayer, honours five kinds of supreme beings: the Arihants, enlightened teachers still in the body; the Siddhas, liberated souls; the Acharyas, heads of the monastic order; the Upadhyayas, teachers; and all monks and nuns. Jain texts assign them 12, 8, 36, 25 and 27 virtues respectively, which add up to 108. A Jain rosary thus becomes a summary of the qualities a believer hopes to reach.

In Sikhism the number plays a smaller part. Sikh scripture stresses simran, the remembrance of God’s name, as an inner discipline rather than a counted ritual, and Guru Nanak criticised outward show in religion. Still, some Sikhs use a string of 108 beads or knots when repeating Waheguru, a sign of how widely the number was shared across northern Indian devotion.

China arrived at 108 by a different route. Chinese star lore, closely tied to Daoist cosmology, grouped the stars around the Big Dipper into 36 Heavenly Spirits and 72 Earthly Fiends. The great Ming-dynasty novel Water Margin opens with these 108 star spirits escaping into the world and being reborn as a band of outlaws, which made the number famous in East Asian popular culture.

Why 108? Indian writers gave answers rooted in their astronomy and astrology. There are 12 signs of the zodiac and 9 planetary deities, and 12 × 9 = 108. There are also 27 lunar mansions, the nakshatras, each divided into four quarters, and 27 × 4 = 108. Mathematicians have since noted that 108 equals 1 × 2² × 3³ and that its digits add to nine. These features made the number satisfying, though none can be shown to be the original reason.

In recent decades another explanation has become popular: that ancient sages built 108 into their religion because it measures the heavens. The claim is that the distance from the Earth to the Sun is about 108 times the Sun’s diameter, the distance to the Moon about 108 times the Moon’s, and the Sun’s diameter about 108 times the Earth’s. The first figure is fairly close, at about 107 on average. The second varies from roughly 104 to 117 as the Moon’s orbit changes, and the third is nearer 109. More importantly, no ancient Indian text makes this connection, and the astronomers of the time had no means to measure these distances. The coincidence is real but loose, and it was discovered by modern readers looking for meaning in a number they already admired.

The longer history is more telling. 108 began as a convenient, richly divisible total in Indian ritual and astrology, was fixed in the shape of the rosary, and travelled with Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism wherever they went. Today it lives on in yoga studios that hold 108 sun salutations and in the New Year bells of Japan.