Thank you, Nityanand. Yes, the long ī is required by the metre (upajāti: khābdhīrakebhyaḥ smarasiṃhaśāstrāt). I hadn't considered īra 'wind'. To represent 0, I suppose it would have to be equated somehow with 'sky', which seems unlikely. But could 'wind' be equated with 'direction' (of the compass)? It is in some languages, but I've never come across it in Sanskrit. If it were, it could mean 10. But perhaps that's wishful thinking.

Martin


Den 2016-02-08 kl. 05:19, skrev Nityanand Misra:


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.