597
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
M. C. Tobias, J. G. Morrison, On the Nature of Ecological Paradox,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64526-7_63
Chapter 63
The Ecological Summons of Jain
Mathematical Calculations
63.1 The Mathematics of Non-violence
The history of religions is rich in numeric calculations—613 mitzvot or commandments attributed in the Torah in the third century CE; 40,000 horsemen and another
40,000 footmen as described in the Book of Samuel (10.18); 100,000 songs of the
eleventh-century Tibetan Buddhist saint, Milarepa; the number four as a most harmonious pillar of the Sioux Indian cosmology, but also a harbinger of death in the
New Testament’s Book of Revelation, and so on (Fig. 63.1).
It is widely believed that Mahavira himself was a trained mathematician. Jain
mathematical insights have gone far beyond arithmetical processes, similes, the
endless ritual numerology, or even the symbolic power of cosmological details and
beliefs which share commonality among countless spiritual traditions. The secondcentury BCE Jain treatise known as Sthananga-Sutra,
1
developed ten major precedents for understanding various types of equations, permutations, combinations,
and the proper place and calculations for virtually every object posited within the
Jain metaphysical pantheon of six eternal substances. In addition, the sutra conceived of multiple versions of the infinite, including transfinite numbers.
Mahavira’s pre-Socratic contemporary, Pythagoras, considered numbers to be
sacred in as much as they were the tools by which harmony could be described. For
Pythagoreans, a soul’s journey after the corporeal body’s demise would take 3000
human years to complete its full cycle, an odyssey that encompassed the equivalency of Karmic incarnations in, and echoes of one species after another. The journey in the afterlife was mathematically calculated, an ecological saga that was
pivotal to the Parmenides dialogue by Plato which focused upon the great conversation between the one and the many as the central bifurcation point for all philosophical speculation.
1 Kornelius Krümpelmann, “The Sthanangasutra – An Encyclopaedic Text of the Svetambara
Canon,” International Journal of Jaina Studies (IJJS), 2 (2), September 2006.
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
M. C. Tobias, J. G. Morrison, On the Nature of Ecological Paradox,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64526-7_63
Chapter 63
The Ecological Summons of Jain
Mathematical Calculations
63.1 The Mathematics of Non-violence
The history of religions is rich in numeric calculations—613 mitzvot or commandments attributed in the Torah in the third century CE; 40,000 horsemen and another
40,000 footmen as described in the Book of Samuel (10.18); 100,000 songs of the
eleventh-century Tibetan Buddhist saint, Milarepa; the number four as a most harmonious pillar of the Sioux Indian cosmology, but also a harbinger of death in the
New Testament’s Book of Revelation, and so on (Fig. 63.1).
It is widely believed that Mahavira himself was a trained mathematician. Jain
mathematical insights have gone far beyond arithmetical processes, similes, the
endless ritual numerology, or even the symbolic power of cosmological details and
beliefs which share commonality among countless spiritual traditions. The secondcentury BCE Jain treatise known as Sthananga-Sutra,
1
developed ten major precedents for understanding various types of equations, permutations, combinations,
and the proper place and calculations for virtually every object posited within the
Jain metaphysical pantheon of six eternal substances. In addition, the sutra conceived of multiple versions of the infinite, including transfinite numbers.
Mahavira’s pre-Socratic contemporary, Pythagoras, considered numbers to be
sacred in as much as they were the tools by which harmony could be described. For
Pythagoreans, a soul’s journey after the corporeal body’s demise would take 3000
human years to complete its full cycle, an odyssey that encompassed the equivalency of Karmic incarnations in, and echoes of one species after another. The journey in the afterlife was mathematically calculated, an ecological saga that was
pivotal to the Parmenides dialogue by Plato which focused upon the great conversation between the one and the many as the central bifurcation point for all philosophical speculation.
1 Kornelius Krümpelmann, “The Sthanangasutra – An Encyclopaedic Text of the Svetambara
Canon,” International Journal of Jaina Studies (IJJS), 2 (2), September 2006.