Indian numbering system

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The traditional, ancient Indian numbering system, used today in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh,Nepal and Myanmar (Burma), is based on a unique grouping of 2 decimal places, rather than the 3 decimal places commonplace in the West (China and Japan, for instance, use 4). The terms crore and lakh are in widespread use today in Indian English.

This system of measurement also introduces separators into numbers in a different place than that which is common outside India. For example, 30 million (3 crore) would be written as 3,00,00,000, with commas at the thousand, lakh, and crore levels, instead of 30,000,000.

The table below follows the short scale usage of billion being a thousand million. In India, following British usage, the long scale was used, with one billion equivalent to a million million.

Term Figure Power
notation
Western system (short scale)
एक (Ek) 1 100 1 (One)
दस (Das) 10 101 10 (Ten)
सौ (Sau) 100 102 100 (Hundred)
सहस्त्र (Sahastr) / हजार (Hazaar) 1,000 103 1,000 (One thousand)
लाख (Lakh) 1,00,000 105 100,000 (One hundred thousand)
करोड़ (Crore) 1,00,00,000 107 10,000,000 (Ten million)
अरब (Arawb) 1,00,00,00,000 109 1,000,000,000 (One billion)
खरब (Kharawb) 1,00,00,00,00,000 1011 100,000,000,000 (One hundred billion)
नील (Neel) 1,00,00,00,00,00,000 1013 10,000,000,000,000 (Ten trillion)
पद्म (Padma) 1,00,00,00,00,00,00,000 1015 1,000,000,000,000,000 (One quadrillion)
शंख (Shankh) 1,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,000 1017 100,000,000,000,000,000 (One hundred quadrillion)
महाशंख (Mahashankh) 1,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,000 1019 10,000,000,000,000,000,000 (Ten quintillion)

The higher numbers listed above arawb are not commonly used, though padma and kharawb are sometimes used in Hindi. Neel, Padma, Shankh are more commonly found in old sections of Indian Mathematics.

Instead of saying the higher numbers, it is more common to use lakh and crore repeatedly or in combination, saying 1 lakh crore for 1012 or one trillion.

In Mumbai (Bombay), khokha is underworld slang for a crore and peti is slang for a lakh.

The term crore (کرور (Korur) in Persian) was also used in Iran until recent decades, but with the meaning of 500,000.

Lakh has entered the Swahili language as "laki" and is in common use.

is obviously originates from india

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