The Three Ciphers
The mystical treasures of Govardhanpur were long forgotten by the 20th Century.
In the late 1700s, Veer Mahavir, a tantric and a so called Mahavir Jain's disciple from Rajasthan had set up his shop under the big span of a local tamarind tree.
His daily routine was to spread his wisdom to (read as "con") the people of Bansur, in the Alwar district.
He had an array of old collectibles, acids, so called medicines, replica of precious stones, shells and dices to predict (again read as "con") people's near and distant future.
When the knowledge of his thievery was enlightened upon the locals, he quickly escaped town to re-grow his notorious popularity elsewhere.
12 villages in the Alwar district had a small time allocated in the panchayat to oversee ongoing investigations in finding Veer Mahavir.
In one of his quests of enlightening (robbing) people, he stumbled upon the village of Bhangarh. A once famous dynasty was now seeing the grave soon, due to a famine earlier in the century.
The small population helped Veer as he did not plan on staying here for long either.
Madho Singh, the only goat farmer in the village and Veer's first customer, wanted to know whether he should leave town too, like many of his neighbours. Easy money for Veer.
They soon started conversing about the huge fort providing them shade. The fort was famous for being a vault for a huge amount of gold. The gold was gifted to Chatra Singh in the 1500s by the Mughals when Akbar was on throne, although its precise location was well hidden by Chatra Singh.
He soon died along with his secret.
Many attempts in finding the treasure went in vain, yet, Veer wanted to give it a shot. Madho accompanied him.
The enormous luck Veer had till now in not getting caught just doubled in the fort. When he was inspecting what was once the Kings wardrobe, "Ekva Raigi", a mixture of two unknown acids, dropped on the old walls.
The effect of ekva raigi (known today as aqua regia) on Gold helped him figure out that the gold was fused in the stone bricks behind the wardrobe.
The two of them managed to get out all the bricks back to Madho's hut. They planned to take it to Govardhapur, the closest town with a goldsmith and dreamt of making a fortune.
They could go around the Aravali range by road which would take them a month or they could take the forest route which was at least 14 days faster with an added risk. They chose the latter.
Two days into their journey, they were paused by the khilahari clan, known for their inexplicable way of killing humans by ripping apart their jaws, in order to make them a little richer. The distorted skull was kept with them as memorabilia.
Veer managed to hide in the thick forest of the Aravalli Range when he had gone a little away for a nature's call.
The stone bricks did not attract the khilaharis, although, this did not stop them from ripping Madho's face apart just to keep the goats to themselves.
Veer, seeing this, wanted no more of this journey, but the gold kept him going. He decided to take the longer route.
Back in Bhangarh, he found his way to what was left of Madho's hut and decided to rest for a couple of days there. People of the village grew suspicious of the stranger. They had also found out about Madho's fate and his successful quest in finding the gold, although they did not know he had help.
They added both up and found out about the gold Veer was hiding, before which, Veer did what he does best and scooted town.
He had to go another 35 Farsangs to reach Govardhanpur after two days of tiring travel, which was approximately 135 kms in modern day measurements.
His body started to wear day by day, and pushing a cart weighing over 12 Maunds did not help either. He was pushing approximately 110 crores of modern day Indian currency. Into his 11th day, he decided to hide about 4 Maunds of bricks noting down its accurate location, to lower his burden.
He unloaded another 4 maunds the subsequent day, eventually hiding all the treasures in three different locations, as he was unable to bear its weight.
He walked the remaining way with only food supplies. Upon reaching Govardhanpur, he discretely mentioned to Man Singh, an old friend, who was also in the same "business" as Veer, about his findings and its current locations. Veer couldn't live long enough to drown himself in riches as the journey took his life. On his 5th day in bed, he breathed his last.
Man Singh, unlike Veer, had developed a decent reputation and was known to be honest, returning charged amount if his solution did not work.
He was the only living person to know the whereabouts of the location of a potential settled future.
An immediate call from the then reigning Rajput, Rana Ratan Singh, for his services made him leave town and delay his pursuit of lifelong luxury. He had passed a secret box to his son and asked him to open it upon an event where he does not return for a decade. The box contained 3 notes to help find the treasure.
Man Singh, was caught up in the capital for longer than expected and eventually died in the middle of an on-going rebel of Rana Ratan Singh vs the British Rule.
His son, having lost interest in the contents of the box, passed it on to HIS son.
Paramveer Singh, grandson of Man Singh, was a famous writer of the late 18th century. He gained popularity with his folk songs which inspired the rebels against the British Rule. In his possession, he had three notes that could make him richer than every member of his society. At his age of 63, he had figured out what was in the second note. All three were complex ciphers and how Man Singh came up with them were a mystery in itself.
The second cipher was a direct conversion of numbers to characters of Jain Agamas. It mentioned the existence of huge amounts of treasure, somewhere between Govardhanpur and Bansur, with its deprecated value and the fact that it was hidden in three different locations. A detailed description of how Veer Mahavir stumbled upon the treasure and passed on the locations to Man Singh was encrypted.
It also stated that the first note contained the three locations and the last one had all the people it should be distributed amongst.
Paramveer, after four years of struggle, decided to outsource the task of deciphering it to the scholars of the town and made the news of the treasure public. He sold pamphlets with detailed description of the ciphers along with the contents of it. Soon, the news spread around the state and Paramveer's pamphlets were selling, like the export of opium, in abundance. Every household in town wanted a copy.
Few tried their luck in traversing the distance between Govardhanpur and Bansur, to find the treasure.
20 years later, after continuous failed attempts by numerous enthusiasts, saw the demise of Paramveer Singh, by then the Britishers had taken the three notes with them to solve it with their resources.
The ciphers were forgotten by the 1930s. Early 50s saw the rise of machines and computers, and a beautiful piece of enhancement in technology, the turnip machine.
The notes were copied countless times over and post the Second World War, a copy fell in the hands of a certain computer scientist, Adam Turnip who created the turnip machine. Due to the Agamas scriptures of the notes, a little tweak in the machine helped to partially solve the first note, which read post translation
"The pamphlets made me a lot of money even if the gold did not".
Paramveer, the genius, had pulled off the biggest con in Human history by making people believe in his story of hidden treasures for almost a decade, creating high friction for more than 50+ years.
He used the common knowledge of the gold inherited by Chatra Singh to create a superficial story of its discovery by a certain Veer Mahavir, which made him moderately wealthier leaving his mark on endless history books.
The false treasures take away the mystery from the story of Paramveer's notes, but his advanced encryption techniques, which were solved only a century later, adds much more to it.
If Veer, a fictional character, was a Con, Param-Veer, his creator was certainly the best Con.
Note - Param translates to The Best.
The third note is yet to be decrypted, and is believed to be a collection of random characters.