Astronomical considerations may also have however played a part: 108 happens to be the distance between the sun and the earth in terms of the sun’s distance, as the indologist and scientist Subhash Kak pointed out. Although this statement may sound too sophisticated for the protohistoric age, in reality it takes no more than a stick to verify it (fig 9.7) : view the standing stick at a distance equal to 108 times its length and you will see it exactly as large as the sun or moon (in mathematical language: it apparent height will be the exact apparent diameter of the sun or the moon).

Such an observation would have been well within the Harappans’ competence: the Finish scholar Erkka Maula, studying small drilled holes on ring stones found at Mohenjo-dari, demonstrated that their contemporaries in Egypt and Mesopotamia, the Harappans devoted considerable attention to tracking the sun’s path through the year -- the only way to plan the next sowing or, perhaps prepare for a festival coinciding with the spring equinox.

Whatever the exact origin of number 108 may be (and it is sacred in many traditions from Japan to ancient Greece to northern Europe), its long tradition in classical Hinduism (108 Upanishads, dance postures, rosary beads….) does seen to have Harappan roots. ~Page 209