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There are a number of variation to this story. I first heard of it applied to the invention of chess. In math it is known as the Wheat Chessboard problem. same idea only the grain is wheat , some versions rice, and the 64th square yields 18,446,744,073,709,551,615 (eighteen quintillion, four hundred forty-six quadrillion, seven hundred forty-four trillion, seventy-three billion, seven hundred nine million, five hundred fifty-one thousand, six hundred and fifteen, over 1.4 trillion metric tons.
Note that this story also comes from India.

Source Wiki:

Part of the case made for it, is that the supplied by the Arabic name for the square of the chessboard, (بيت, "beit"), 'house'. [...] For this has doubtless a historical connection with its Indian designation koṣṭhāgāra, 'store-house', 'granary' .
Lastly is is known that the Indians had a fascination with these kinds of large number math problems.

Over the years it has been fun being aware of how often things like this have many origins stories. I dare say most of the famous quotes we all use have multiple original speakers, and several variations in the wording. Rather like an application of success having many parents.

Parenthetically your version tends to beg the first half problem, where in this kind of progression is manageable, while the second half becomes out of scale. The total in wheat is many time the total wheat production of the planet.

In no version that I have read or seen is there any mention of how long it takes to count out that much grain. For example, one person counting 1 grain per second without stopping needs something over 11 days, again, without stopping just to get to 1 million.
Assuming the raja had 100 people counting grain at that rate and none of them taking any breaks, that's over 5 million grains per counter, or over 2 months jut to count that one number. working backwards from the final number, means a lot of days, months<?> before the grains are counted out and maybe time enough for the next crop to come in and lift the famine w/o math.

Phrodrick wrote: "There are a number of variation to this story. I first heard of it applied to the invention of chess. In math it is known as the Wheat Chessboard problem. same idea only the grain is wheat , some v..."

PHrodrick. Thanks for the background on some of the stories from this origin. I didn't even really think of the time it would take to count it. I bet they used weight. They probably know a ton equals so many grains on average and they just weigh it out. It's the only way possible.

Quintillion. Wow. It's not often I hear that. Those are some big astronomical numbers. I suppose we count stars in those numbers, or grains of sand.

count by weight would speed things up, but it entertains me to think of bigwigs as being very literal.

Right before the panic of knowing that they are in debt way over their means.

Phrodrick wrote: "count by weight would speed things up, but it entertains me to think of bigwigs as being very literal.

Right before the panic of knowing that they are in debt way over their means."

Phrodrick, that is a funny picture. They were literal and precise, I'm sure.

Wonderful review. I love this book and read it to my class. They love it too.