thirty-three gods ［三十三天］ ( sanjūsan-ten): Also, thirty-three heavenly gods. The gods said to live on a plateau at the top of Mount Sumeru. Shakra rules from his palace in the center, and the other thirty-two gods live on four peaks, eight gods to a peak, at each of the plateau’s four corners. The abode of these thirty-three gods is the heaven called Trāyastrimsha in Sanskrit ( Tōri-ten), rendered as the Heaven of the Thirty-three Gods in China. The beings in this heaven are said to live one thousand years, though each day of life in that heaven is equal to a hundred years in the human world. Their life span in human terms is therefore about 36.5 million years.