Friday, May 1, 2020

Chakra Vyugam and Asymmetric Encryption

#RandomThoughts

The Chakra Vyugam is a military formation used to surround enemies, depicted in the Hindu epic Mahabharata (Wikipedia)

I personally like this Vyugam. I searched a lot to find out, how it actually works. But couldn't find any article. Everywhere people are explaining what this formation is all about. No one explains how it actually works.
May be it is not explained in Mahabharata itself. I am not sure.

According to the epic, only 3 people know how to destroy this formation. How to go inside the formation and come out of it. The three great warriors: Bheeshmar, Dronar and Arjunan.

Abhimanyu (Son of Arjuna) knows how to go inside the formation but he doesn't know how to come out of it. I was thinking, how does a person know to go inside but doesn't know to come out of it?

Then I started comparing this Vyugam with Asymmetric encryption, where we use one key to encrypt the data and another key to decrypt. Then I was quite confident, this kind of formation is definitely possible.

At this point I am beginning to think Asymmetric encryption is similar to the concept of Chakra Vyugam. One kind of technique to go inside the formation and another kind of technique to come out of the formation.

So if we directly compare, the Chakra Vyugam itself the Asymmetric algorithm.
The public key used to encrypt the data is the technique to go inside the formation.
The private key used to decrypt the data is the technique to come out of the formation.

If we encrypt the data without knowing the private key, then there is no way to decrypt it. The data is lost forever. Same way, without knowing the technique to come out of the formation, Abhimanu went inside the formation and the great warrior lost his life.

Give me your thoughts in comments. Thanks.

Thanks to my friends, for correcting some mistakes :)

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