On 7 February 2016 at 15:45, Martin Gansten <martin.gansten@pbhome.se> wrote:

In the astrological work Tājikamuktāvali by Tuka (1.41) there is a compound khābdhīrakebhyaḥ which, from the context, has to mean 'from forty and ten, [respectively]'. This is supported by the explicatory numerals inserted by several mss: khābdhī 40 rakebhyaḥ 10, etc; but I haven't found anything like iraka/īraka in any dictionary or list of bhūtasaṃkhyā numerals. (Some mss emend to -īkhakebhyaḥ, which doesn't really help.) If anyone has come across this way of expressing the value 10 elsewhere, I'd be grateful for a reference, and even more so for an explanation of the word.

Is the five-syllable word part of a verse, e.g. begins with the 13th syllable of a śārdūlavikrīḍita? Wondering if there is a possibility of it being khābdhikhakebhyaḥ, with the short vowel: Is the emendation with -ikhakebhyaḥ by any chance? If so then the reading khābdhikhakebhyaḥ makes perfect sense as ka in Sanskrit means Brahman, standing for the number one. Then kha-ka would mean zero-one or the number ten.

The forms khābdhīrakebhyaḥ / khābdhīkhakebhyaḥ with the long vowels still need an explanation. With khābdhīrakebhyaḥ, one option is to assume ira/īra as somehow standing for zero, but this is also problematic as īra means the wind: īrayati iti īraḥ.