Lucky Numbers in Indian Culture: 108, 9 and 7

Q: What is the luckiest number in Indian culture?

108, though auspicious is the better word for it. It is the count of one full round of japa, and every tradition that uses it explains the total in its own way.

In Indian number culture the auspicious numbers are 108, 9 and 7, and the one people handle carefully is 8. None of them work the way Chinese lucky numbers work. There is no pun underneath. Sanskrit hands you a count rather than a homophone for prosperity. A japa mala carries 108 beads, the Muktikā canon lists 108 Upanishads, the Sri Vaishnava tradition reveres 108 Divya Desams, and a Hindu wedding is finished at the seventh step. These numbers are auspicious because of what has been counted with them.

The arithmetic most often given for 108 is astrological: nine grahas multiplied by twelve rāśis. Other traditions reach the same total by a different route. Buddhist teaching counts 108 kleshas, the afflictions a practitioner works to end, and Tibetan malas keep the bead count for that reason. Jain and Sikh practice use malas of 108 as well. Nine is fixed by the navagraha, the nine celestial bodies of Hindu astrology, each with its own day, colour and shrine. Seven is fixed by the saptapadi, the seven steps a couple takes together around the fire.

How much of this is conviction depends entirely on who you ask. A priest fixing a wedding muhurta is working from a calculation. A family sealing a gift envelope at ₹101 is following a custom whose reason most people can state and few would defend as physics. Urban India then stacks a second set of habits on top: hotels skipping the thirteenth floor for foreign guests, buyers hunting a registration number that adds to a favourable digit. Plenty of Indians observe all of it and believe none of it, which is a perfectly normal way to live inside a tradition.

Lucky: 108, 9, 7
Avoided: 8
Where: India, Nepal and the South Asian diaspora
Language: Sanskrit and the modern Indian languages
Mechanism: १०८ ek sau āṭh ≈ 9 grahas × 12 rāśis
Sourced claims: 5 on this page

The wordplay behind it

What each number sounds like, stands for, or resolves to. This table is the whole explanation in one place.

Number	Written	Read as	Echoes	Meaning
108	१०८	ek sau āṭh	9 grahas × 12 rāśis	one full round of japa	Lucky
9	९	nau	नवग्रह navagraha	the nine celestial bodies	Lucky
7	७	sāt	सप्तपदी saptapadī	the seven steps that complete a marriage	Lucky
1	१	ek	१०१ shagun	the rupee that keeps a gift unrounded	Lucky
8	८	āṭh	शनि Śani	Saturn, the strict graha	Avoided
13	१३	terah	त्रयोदशी trayodaśī	the thirteenth lunar day, when Dhanteras falls	Both

The lucky numbers: 108, 9, 7

One at a time, with the mechanism and one place it actually shows up.

108

108 — one full round of the mala

A japa mala has 108 beads plus a larger guru bead that is not counted, so one circuit of the string is 108 repetitions of a mantra. Shorter malas of 54 or 27 divide the same round. What the count means is explained differently by everyone who uses it. Astrology multiplies nine grahas by twelve rāśis. The Muktikā canon fixes the number of Upanishads at 108. Sri Vaishnava tradition reveres 108 Divya Desams, the temples of Vishnu praised by the twelve Alvars, and Buddhist teaching counts 108 kleshas to be extinguished. The number came first. The explanations came afterwards.

9 — the count of the grahas

Nine is the number of the navagraha, the nine moving bodies of Hindu astrology: Surya, Chandra, Mangala, Budha, Brihaspati, Shukra, Shani, and the two lunar nodes Rahu and Ketu. Most Hindu temples set aside a navagraha mandapa where all nine are installed in a prescribed arrangement, Surya at the centre and the other eight around him. Navaratri means nine nights, and each night honours a different form of Durga before Vijayadashami on the tenth day. Nine also keeps its shape in arithmetic, since the digits of any multiple of nine reduce back to nine, which Indian numerologists make a great deal of.

7 — the step that completes a marriage

The saptapadi is the seven steps a bride and groom take together, or the seven circuits they make around the sacred fire, each step carrying its own vow: nourishment, strength, prosperity, happiness, children, long life, companionship. It is the point at which the ceremony finishes. Under the Hindu Marriage Act of 1955 a marriage solemnised with saptapadi becomes complete and binding when the seventh step is taken, which puts a ritual count directly into Indian statute. Seven recurs in the same family of texts, in the Saptarishi, the seven sages.

The numbers to avoid: 8

Same treatment. Where an avoidance has a documented cost, it is named.

8 — Shani's number, handled with care

Eight belongs to Shani, the graha identified with Saturn, whose day is Saturday and whose associated numbers are 8, 17 and 26. Shani is not a villain in Hindu thought. He is the strict one, the graha who audits your karma and delivers the consequence, so his periods are read as slow, heavy and instructive rather than simply bad. That reputation is why Indian numerologists treat an eight in a date or a phone number as a number to manage rather than to celebrate. Shani temples such as Shani Shingnapur in Maharashtra draw large Saturday crowds.

Where you actually meet it

Cash gifts at Indian weddings almost never come in round numbers. The envelope holds ₹101, ₹501 or ₹1,001, often with a one-rupee coin taped to the front. The stated reason is that one is indivisible, so the blessing is indivisible, and that a total ending in zero closes an account while a total ending in one leaves it open and implies the two of you will meet again. Some families describe the extra rupee as seed money, meant to be invested or given away rather than spent. The custom crosses religion inside India and travels intact with the diaspora.

108 is dialled as well as counted. Since August 2005 it has been India's free emergency number, run across most states under public-private contracts by operators including GVK EMRI and Ziqitza. Temple bells are rung 108 times. Pilgrims climb flights of 108 steps. Studios well outside India schedule 108 sun salutations at the solstice on the strength of the same figure.

Thirteen behaves differently here than in Europe. Trayodashi, the thirteenth lunar day, is auspicious rather than avoided. Dhanteras falls on the trayodashi of the dark fortnight before Diwali and is the heaviest gold and silver buying day of the Indian year. Where you do find a missing thirteenth floor is in five-star hotels and corporate towers built for an international market, which imported the omission along with the architecture. The Hindu lunisolar calendar never had a problem with the number.

Checkable claims

Each of these is a documented fact rather than a general impression, with the source named.

Under section 7 of India's Hindu Marriage Act, 1955, a marriage solemnised with the saptapadi becomes complete and binding when the seventh step is taken.

Hindu Marriage Act, 1955, section 7

The Muktikā canon fixes the number of Upanishads at 108, and the Sri Vaishnava tradition counts 108 Divya Desams, the temples of Vishnu praised by the twelve Alvars.

Muktikā Upanishad canon; the Divya Prabandham

108 has been India's toll-free emergency ambulance number since August 2005, when the Emergency Management and Research Institute began operating with thirty ambulances in Andhra Pradesh.

Emergency Management and Research Institute (EMRI), Andhra Pradesh

Navaratri means nine nights in Sanskrit, from nava and rātri, and each night honours a different form of Durga before Vijayadashami on the tenth day.

Sanskrit nava (nine) and rātri (night); Navaratri observance

Dhanteras falls on trayodashi, the thirteenth lunar day of the dark fortnight before Diwali, and is treated as one of the most auspicious days of the year on which to buy gold or silver.

Hindu lunisolar calendar; Dhanteras observance

What it changes

None of this changes what a coin does when you flip it. A mala with 108 beads is a counting tool, and it earns its keep by holding your attention on the mantra instead of the tally, whether or not the total means anything. The seven steps bind a marriage because a community and a statute say they do. Numbers here mark what people have decided to keep track of. That is reason enough to know them.

That is the line this site holds everywhere: a tradition is worth knowing, and no number has ever moved a probability. If you want a set of numbers to play with anyway, the daily generator makes one from your birth date and tells you exactly how.

Indian lucky numbers — frequently asked

108, though auspicious is the better word for it. It is the count of one full round of japa, and every tradition that uses it explains the total in its own way.

Because one is indivisible, and a total ending in zero reads as a closed account. The extra rupee is meant to keep the exchange open, and it is often handed over as a coin taped to the envelope rather than as a note.

Roughly, never exactly. The Sun's mean distance from Earth is about 107.5 times its own diameter, the Sun is about 109 times the width of Earth, and the Moon's mean distance is about 110 times the Moon's diameter, sliding between 104 and 117 across its orbit. The figures cluster near 108 without landing on it, and they are a later rationalisation of a number already in use.

Not in the Hindu calendar. Trayodashi, the thirteenth lunar day, carries Dhanteras. The missing thirteenth floor you occasionally meet in Indian hotels arrived with Western architecture.

It is Shani's number, and Shani has a reputation for hard lessons rather than for catastrophe. Indian numerologists tend to read 8 as demanding. That is a long way from the flat avoidance of 4 in Chinese-speaking places, and no Indian building skips its eighth floor.

The other traditions

Same questions, different language and different answers.

ChineseLucky 6 8 9 · avoid 4 GermanLucky 3 4 7 · avoid 13 ItalianLucky 3 7 13 · avoid 17 JapaneseLucky 3 7 8 · avoid 4 9 JewishLucky 18 7 13 · avoid 2 KoreanLucky 3 7 · avoid 4 RussianLucky 3 7 · avoid 2 13 ThaiLucky 9 5 · avoid 6 4 WesternLucky 7 3 12 · avoid 13

More ways in

Unlucky numbers13, 4, 17, 666 and 39, and the documented history of each.Open →Chinese zodiacTwelve animals, their lucky numbers, and the lunar new year rule.Open →NumerologyThe western system: one number from a birth date or a name.Open →

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