འཕགས་པ་ཆས་ཐམས་ཅད་ཀྱ་རང་བཞན་མཉམ་པ་ཉད་རྣམ་པར་སྤྲས་པ་ཏང་ང་འཛན་གྱ་རྒྱལ་པ་ཞས་བྱ་བ་ཐག་པ་ཆན་པའ་མད notes.9

notes.9

9. This number depends on whether niyuta is taken to mean “one million,” as in Classical Sanskrit, or “a hundred thousand million,” as is found in BHS. The Tibetan has chosen the latter meaning, translating it as khrag khrig. Therefore the resulting number in Tibetan is “ten million [times] a hundred thousand million times eighty,” i.e., eighty million million million (eighty quintillion in the American or short scale system) (bye ba khrag khrig phrag brgyad bcu, apparently translating koṭiniyutena aśityā). The translation of the commentary by Mañjuśrīkīrti, however, has khrag khrig phrag brgyad bcu: “a hundred thousand million times eighty,” which would be eight million million, i.e., eight trillion. The Vaidya Sanskrit edition has niyuta­śata­sahasrena aśītyā which would be literally “a hundred thousand million [times] a hundred [times] a thousand times eighty,” which comes to eight hundred thousand million million, i.e., eight hundred thousand trillion. However if niyuta is taken as only one million, this would be eight million million, i.e., eight trillion, which would agree with the resulting number in Mañjuśrīkīrti’s commentary. The Dutt edition of the Gilgit manuscript has aśityā ca bodhisattva-niyutaiḥ and accordingly the translation of Gómez et al. is “eighty million,” where niyuta has presumably been given the value of one million. The Chinese simply transliterates as na-yo-ta. The Chinese tradition gives numerous, widely differing explanations of what this number means.