B L Razdan
You may have wondered what the significance of the number 108 is in the Sanatan lore like doing 108 Sun Salutations (Surya Namaskar) at the time of the spring equinox, or owning mala with 108 beads. The number is considered to be so auspicious that 108 is the number for emergency services in India.
The ancient Vedic sages were mathematicians, who devised our number system. The number 108 is known as a “Harshad number.” It is an integer divisible by the sum of its digits. 1+0+8 =9. 108 is divisible by 9. The word Harshad is translated as “joy giver”. Thus, it is understandable how the Vedic sages felt that the number 108 represented the whole of existence in our universe.
According to the Surya Siddhanta, the text written by Indian astronomers and the oldest book on astronomy known to exist, the number 108 explains the connection between the sun, the moon, and the earth inasmuch as the average distance of the Sun and the Moon to Earth being 108 times their respective diameters. Such phenomena have given rise to many examples of both ritual and spiritual significance. Again, the sun is 400 times bigger than moon yet both the sun and the moon look of the same size from the earth. During Lunar eclipse especially, the moon completely covers up the Sun even though the moon is very small as compared to sun. It’s all because of this special number 108.
The Panchalingam temple of South India has a Shiva Lingam having 5 facets where each facet has an angle of 108 degrees. The Brihadeesvara temple of Thanjavur in Tamil Nadu is 216 feet tall which is in the ratio 108:2. In fact, most of the temples are designed in the ratio of 108. There are 12 months or 12 Zodiac signs and there are 9 planets. And when you multiply 12 by 9 it comes to number 108. Just like 108, number 12 and 9 are also very special numbers. In Geometry when you add all the angles of a figure and then add the digits, it comes to 9. In time and measurement systems, number 12 is widely used. There are 12 hours in clock, 24 hours (12*2) in a day, 12 inches in a foot etc.
Peethas (or Pithas) are sacred sites considered to be the seats of the goddess Sati, associated with different parts of the Sati’s body which fell at different parts of the ancient Bharatvarsh. These sacred sites are scattered throughout India, all located near water bodies, which are believed to be infused with the energy of the goddess. These 108 Peethas are important pilgrimage sites for the members of the Shakti sects of Hinduism.
There are 108 Upanishads that form a part of the Shruti literature comprising the Vedic Sanskrit texts of Hindu teachings and ideals. These Upanishadic texts are considered to be of divine origin adding to the significance of this sacred number.
Even the Sanskrit Alphabet or Varnamala comprises of 54 letters. Each letter in the alphabet has both a masculine (Shiva) and feminine (Shakti) energy. The sum total of these divine energies comes to 108.
The number’s significance is open to interpretation, says Shiva Rea, a lifelong student of Tantra, Ayurveda, bhakti, Hatha Yoga, Kalaripayat Odissi dance, and yogic arts and a leading teacher of prana vinyasa flow and yoga trance dance, who teaches all over the world. Rae notes that renowned mathematicians of Vedic culture viewed 108 as a number of the wholeness of existence.
Mathematicians have also noted that the number 108 has an elegant divisibility and geometry, producing endless patterns. It also is the hyper-factorial of 3 since it is of the form, an abundant number, a semiperfect number and a tetranacci number and in Euclidean space, the interior angles of a regular pentagon measure 108 degrees each. The sum of the parts may offer more clues to why the number 108 is sacred. Both 9 and 12 have been said to have spiritual significance in many traditions. 9 times 12 is 108.
In the Yogis system, number 108 refers to Spiritual Completion. In human body there are 72000 Nadis meeting at 114 different junctions known as Chakras, of which one can work on 108 chakras. By practicing chanting, breathwork or Asana in rounds of this sacred number 108, one could align oneself with the rhythm of the creation, and ultimately bring an end to one’s cycle of birth and death.
A healthy human being takes about 15 breaths per minute. For those involved in sadhana, it could be only 12. 15 breaths per minute or 900 breaths per hour and 21,600 per day. 216 multiplied by 2 becomes 432 again. If you take the circumference of the earth – there is something called a nautical mile which is the real mile in the sense that it has something to do with the way the planet is. The other units of measurement were created for ease of calculation.
Back to one cycle of axial procession – 25,920 divided by 60 (which is also the number of heart beats per minute if you are healthy) – comes to 432. Four hundred thirtytwo is a number that comes up in various cultures – the Norse culture, the ancient Jewish culture, the Egyptian culture, the Mesopotamian culture, and very much in the Indian culture here. Why 432? If you are in good health and in good condition, your heart beats about 60 times per minute, which is 3600 per hour, and 3600 x 24 equals 86,400 heartbeats per day. If you divide 864 by 2, again you have 432 or 4*108.
What is interesting though is that Leonardo Fibonacci (real name Leonardo of Pisa) did not actually discover the sequence. Instead, ancient Sanskrit texts that used the Hindu-Arabic numeral system first mention it, and those predate Leonardo of Pisa by centuries. To fully understand the significance of the number 108, it is necessary to understand the numerical science of decimal parity.
In many ancient cultures (e.g., Egypt and India) decimal parity was used as a way to understand the truth of numbers.
Using decimal parity we can break numbers down into single digits. Let’s take the following example: the decimal parity equivalent of the number 377 is 3 + 7 + 7 = 17 and 1 + 7 = 8. So the decimal parity equivalent of 377 is 8. The first 24 numbers of the Fibonacci Sequence are: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610, 987, 1597, 2584, 4181, 6765, 10946, 17711, 28657.
If we apply decimal parity to the Fibonacci sequence we find that there is a repeating series of 24 digits as seen here: (0), 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 4, 3, 7, 1, 8, 9, 8, 8, 7, 6, 4, 1, 5, 6, 2, 8, 1. If we add these 24 digits up, we get the number 108. 0 + 1 + 1 + 2 + 3 + 5 + 8 + 4 + 3 + 7 + 1 + 8 + 9 + 8 + 8 + 7 + 6 + 4 + 1 + 5 + 6 + 2 + 8 + 1 = 108. What’s amazing is that the 1.08 constant growth rate the nautilus uses to build its spiral shell involves the same pattern which repeats every 24 numbers in the Fibonacci sequence.
The Mahamrityujaya mantra is chanted 108 times to worship Lord Shiva and so is every mantra chanted 108 times with the help of beads in a rosary or karmala for reasons of auspiciousness. When we practice using this sacred number, we become more aligned and in touch with the universe around us. We bow in gratitude to the ancient masters who discovered its holiness.
In conclusion, the sacredness of 108 began thousands of years ago. It is apparent that 108 is not just a natural number, but also a scientific number which is the basis of life, wholeness of existence. In spiritual terms, 108 stands for: 1 for God, the universe or your own highest truth, 0 stands for emptiness and humility in spiritual practices, and 8 stands for infinity and timelessness.
(The author is formerly of the Indian Revenue Service, retired as Director General of Income Tax (Investigation), Chandigarh.)
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