Indian numbering system
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India has an ancient numbering system using a unique grouping of 2 decimal places, rather than the commonplace 3 decimal places. Although crore and lakh are in widespread use today in Indian English, higher denominations are relatively unheard of, though arab and kharab are sometimes used in Hindi. General usage of higher denominations today are recursive eg. 2 lakh crores (2 followed by 12 zeros). The old Indian system referred to a billion as the old British billion; equivalent to a million million.
The table below follows the widespread usage of billion being a thousand million.
| Term | Figure | No of zeros | In words (short scale) |
|---|---|---|---|
| lakh (lac) | 1,00,000 | 5 | Hundred Thousand |
| crore | 1,00,00,000 | 7 | Ten million |
| arab | 1,00,00,00,000 | 9 | 1 billion |
| kharab | 1,00,00,00,00,000 | 11 | 100 billion |
| neel | 1,00,00,00,00,00,000 | 13 | 10 trillion |
| padam | 1,00,00,00,00,00,00,000 | 15 | 1 quadrillion |
| shankh | 1,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,000 | 17 | 100 quadrillion |
| maha-shankh | 1,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,000 | 19 | 10 quintillion |
Categories: Lists | India