Mystery 04
The Sanskrit Page
A page of Sanskrit verses my father left. Addressed to a son.
शून्यं वेदशशीनेत्रसोमबाणनगग्रहेन्दवः । नन्दनन्दाङ्गशून्याग्नित्रिग्रहषट्षडद्रिभिः ॥ १ ॥ वर्षं रेखांशकञ्चैव अक्षांशं मध्यविग्रहात् । जानीह्यात्मानमवतारम् अत्र स्थाने हि कुरु स्थितिम् ॥ २ ॥ कुरु लोकहितं पुत्र पूर्णशक्त्या सदादरात् । ज्ञानं विकिर लोकेऽस्मिन् मोदस्व च जगत्त्रये ॥ ३ ॥ मा फलं काङ्क्ष लोकेऽस्मिन् निष्कामः सर्वदा भव । दाता त्वमसि लोकेऽस्मिन् ग्रहीता न कदाचन ॥ ४ ॥ भ्रान्तौ जन्मनि सम्प्राप्ते स्मर चेदं सदा शुभम् ॥ ५ ॥
Reproduced from Volume 1, Chapter 10
Read one way, it’s devotional.
On the surface, the verse addresses a son directly — work for the welfare of the world, spread knowledge, seek no reward, remember this always as auspicious when confusion about your birth arises.
Read the other way, using a centuries-old Sanskrit convention called Bhūta Saṃkhyā, it’s also a sequence of digits.
Words that are also numbers
For over a thousand years, Sanskrit poets and astronomers used certain words as stand-ins for digits — by long convention, not by any code invented for this book. A few examples:
| Word | Why | Value |
|---|---|---|
| शून्य (śūnya) | empty, void | 0 |
| चन्द्र / इन्दु / सोम (moon) | there is one moon | 1 |
| नेत्र (eye) | a person has two | 2 |
| अग्नि (fire) | three sacred fires | 3 |
| वेद (Veda) | four Vedas | 4 |
| बाण (arrow) | five arrows of Kāma | 5 |
| अङ्ग / षड् (limb) | six limbs | 6 |
| अद्रि / नग (mountain) | seven traditional mountains | 7 |
One more convention worth knowing: these sequences are traditionally read in reverse positional order — the word given first represents the lowest place value, not the highest (अङ्कानां वामतो गतिः, “the digits proceed toward the left”).
Coincidence or code?
The verse contains a numerical layer once you know how to read it. Decoding it points toward a striking coincidence — a location that lines up with the region my father always said I was born in, while my own elder brother remembers my birth somewhere else entirely.
That is not proof of anything. I’m not printing the resulting numbers here. Volume 1 walks through the entire decode step by step — every word, every assumption, every alternative reading — and is explicit, the whole way through, about what’s established and what isn’t.
Watch me work through it in Volume 1 →Want to try the last step yourself?
One piece of the arithmetic is deliberately left for the reader. There is an open puzzle, free to enter, and the first solver is named on this site.
The Last Step →