Theos-Talk Archives (October 2000 Message tt00030)

The celestial chariots and such have a long history in the great
epics 
of India. I came across a fascinating article on the subject and 
decided to share part of it. If there is interest I will share the 
remainder.

The following is an excerpt from Dr. Gopalakrishna's article:

In the Vedic literature of India, there are many descriptions of 
flying
machines that are generally called vimanas. These fall into two 
categories:
(l) manmade craft that resemble airplanes and fly with the aid of 
birdlike
wings, and (2) unstreamlined structures that fly in a mysterious 
manner and
are generally not made by human beings. The machines in category (l) 
are
described mainly in medieval, secular Sanskrit works dealing with
architecture, automata, military siege engines, and other mechanical
contrivances. Those in category (2) are described in ancient works 
such as
the Rg Veda, the Maha-bha-rata, the Rama-yana, and the Pura-nas. In
addition, there is one book entitled Vaima-nika-sa-stra that was 
dictated
in trance during this century and purports to be a transcription of an
ancient work preserved in the akashic record. This document gives an
elaborate description of vimanas of both categories.

In this chapter, I will survey some of the available literature on 
vimanas,
beginning with the texts dating from late antiquity and the medieval
period. The latter material is described in some detail by V.
Raghavan 
in
an article entitled "Yantras or Mechanical Contrivances in Ancient 
India."
I will begin by discussing the Indian lore regarding machines in 
general
and then turn to flying machines.

Machines in Ancient and Medieval India

In Sanskrit, a machine is called a yantra. The word yantra is defined 
in
the Samarangana-sutradhara of King Bhoja to be a device that
"controls 
and
directs, according to a plan, the motions of things that act each 
according
to its own nature." There are many varieties of yantras. A simple 
example
would be the taila-yantra, a wheel that is pulled by oxen around a 
circular
track to crush seeds and extract their oil. Other examples are 
military
machines of the kind described in the Arthasastra of Kautilya,
written 
in
the 3rd century B.C. These include the sarvato-bhadra, a rotating 
wheel
that hurls stones, the sara-yantra, an arrow-throwing machine, the
udghatima, a machine that demolishes walls using iron bars, and many 
more. 



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