A gomūtrikā of your own: type the verse into the cow-trail

← All bandha forms · The classical gomūtrikā (Māgha 19.46)

teaching composition This is not a classical specimen but a new teaching gomūtrikā by samskrtam.ru, built from first-year vocabulary: two short sentences of 8 aksharas each, arranged by the classical cow-trail rule — the even-position syllables of both lines coincide, so the zigzag starting on top reads out line one, and the zigzag starting below reads out line two.

A✱B✦ C✱D✦ — A ✱ B ✦ — C ✱ D ✦
An abstract scheme on a different example: the shaded cells ✱ and ✦ (even positions) are identical in both rows. The solid zigzag from the top cell passes A-✱-B-✦ — the very syllables of the whole top row; the dashed zigzag from the bottom cell collects C-✱-D-✦ — the bottom row.

Type the two sentences into the grid (the word order already matches the answer):

Line 1: “The herdsman goes to the forest” — forest (accusative) + “goes” + “herdsman”.
Line 2: “The cook gives wealth” — wealth (accusative) + “gives” + “cook”.

Vocabulary and hints

Vocabulary: vana “forest”, dhana “wealth”, gacchati “goes” (√gam), yacchati “gives” (√yam), pālakaḥ “herdsman, guardian”, pācakaḥ “cook”. Hints: the neuter accusative is vanam / dhanam, and a final m before a consonant becomes anusvāra (vanaṃ gacchati); one cell holds one akshara, so gacchati takes three cells: ga-ccha-ti. You can type plain ASCII without diacritics (nam is credited as naṃ) or Devanagari — the input splits into syllables and advances to the next cell by itself. Note: the shared even syllables (naṃ, ccha, pā, kaḥ) belong to different words — no lexeme repeats.

Once every cell is correct, tap the reading paths on the left and watch both zigzags reproduce the lines “for free” — the very mechanism by which Māgha built verse 19.46 of the Śiśupālavadha.

Source and verification