Rudrata's knight's move verse

Rudrata’s Knight’s move Verse

Rudrata’s Kavyalankara 5^th Chapter 15^th verse which reads as follows is a knight’s move verse.

सेना लीलीलीना नाली लीनाना नानालीलीली ।

नालीनालीले नालीना लीलीली नानानानाली ॥ १५ ॥

 Namisadhu the commentator, after explaining the meaning of the verse, gives a cryptic mnemonic verse in his commentary which reads as follows:

कशझेनागभटाय तथखेवेञराघबे ।

षजेथाढेपचेमेठे दोणसछलडेफङे ॥

He further says, “Write this verse over “सेनाली---“ verse serially each letter over  its corresponding letter. Then following the alphabetical order of the letters in the mnemonic verse you can get the knight’s move verse.”

The cryptic verse of Namisadhu has no meaning and contains each of the Sanskrit consonants from क to स once and only once. (There is apparently an error in the mnemonic verse, which has occurred while printing or copying manuscript. It reads थ instead of ध and that leads to double occurrence of थ and missing of ध.) Vowels attached to  the consonants are just there to suit the anushtup metre and have no value or meaning.

Following Namisadhu’s explanation I have placed the corrected mnemonic verse over Rudrata’s verse in a Table. For clarity, Rudrata’s verse is in Roman script, while Namisadhu’s mnemonic is in Devanagari script.  Alphabetical serial number of the letter is also given.

क-1	श-30	झे-9	ना-20	ग-3	भ-24	टा-11	य-26
se	naa	lii	lii	lii	naa	naa	lii
त-16	ध-19	खे-2	वे-29	ञ-10	रा-27	घ-4	बे-२३
lii	naa	naa	naa	naa	lii	lii	lii
ष-31	जे-8	था-17	ढे-14	प-21	चे-6	मे-25	ठे-12
naa	lii	naa	lii	le	naa	lii	naa
दो-18	ण-15	स-32	छ-7	ल-28	डे-13	फ-22	ङे-5
lii	lii	lii	naa	naa	naa	naa	lii

If we follow the alphabetical order it clearly gives the knight’s move. Rudrata has simplified the complexity of the puzzle by adopting only  4 syllables and this also leads to the interesting result of knight’s move verse being the same as the original verse.

__ __ __