Highest Sageness -12

 

The Mahabharat
In one episode, for example, the Vrishnis, a tribe whose warriors include the hero Krishna, are beset by the forces of a leader named Salva.

"The cruel Salva had come mounted on the Saubha chariot that can go anywhere, and from it he killed many valiant Vrishni youths and evilly devastated all city parks." 
The Saubha is at once Salva's city, flagship, and battle headquarters. In it, he can fly wherever he chooses. Fortunately, the Vrishni heroes are similarly well equipped, and at one point have Salva at their mercy. The hero Pradyumna is about to finish him off with a special weapon, when the highest gods stop him "Not a man in battle is safe from this arrow," they say, and declare that Salva will fall to Krishna.
Krishna took to the sky in pursuit of Salva, but his Saubha clung to the sky at a leagues length... He threw at me rockets, missiles, spears, spikes, battleaxes, three-bladed javelins, flame-throwers, without pausing... The sky... seemed to hold a hundred suns, a hundred moons... and a hundred myriad stars. Neither day nor night could be made out, or the points of a compass.
Krishna, however, wards off Salva's attack with what sounds like antiballistic missiles; I warded them off as they loomed towards me
With my swift-striking shafts, as they flashed through the sky, And I cut them into two or three pieces with mine --
There was a great din in the sky above.
However, the Saubha becomes invisible. Krishna then loads a special weapon, perhaps an ancient version of a smart bomb? I quickly laid on an arrow, which killed by seeking out sound, to kill them... All the Danavas [Salva's troops] who had been screeching lay dead, killed by the blazing sun like arrows that were triggered by sound.
However, the Sauba itself escaped the attack. Krishna fires his "favorite fire weapon" at it, a discus shaped like the "haloed sun". The discus breaks the Saubha in two, and the city falls from the sky, killing Salva. This is the end of the Mahabharata.
One of the most intriguing thing about it is that the use of Pradyumna's special arrow, from which "not a man in battle is safe", was outlawed by the gods. What sort of weapon could this be? Another chapter, describing the use of the Agneya weapon by the hero Adwattan. When the weapon, a "blazing missile of smokeless fire" is unleashed;
" Dense arrows of flame, like a great shower, issued forth upon creation, encompassing the enemy... A thick gloom swiftly settled upon the Pandava hosts. All points of the compass were lost in darkness. Fierce winds began to blow. Clouds roared upward, showering dust and gravel.
Birds coaked madly... the very elements seemed disturbed. The sun seemed to waver in the heavens. The earth shook, scorched by the terrible violent heat of this weapon. Elephants burst into flame and ran to and fro in a frenzy... over a vast area, other animals crumpled to the ground and died. From all points of the compass the arrows of flame rained continuously and fiercely."
And if that sounded like a firestorm, then a similar weapon fired by Gurkha sounds like nothing less than a nuclear blast complete with radioactive fallout;

Gurkha, flying in his swift and powerful Vimana, hurled against the three cities of the Vrishnis and Andhakas a single projectile charged with all the power of the universe. An incandescent column of smoke and fire, as brilliant as ten thousand suns, rose in all its splendor. It was the unknown weapon, the iron thunderbolt, a gigantic messenger of death which reduced to ashes the entire race of Vrishnis and Andhakas.

The corpses were so burnt they were no longer recognizable. Hair and nails fell out. Pottery broke without cause... Foodstuffs were poisoned. To escape, the warriors threw themselves in streams to wash themselves and their equipment.
The Indian Vimana - http://www.realshades.com/mystic/mysteries/myst-vimana-01.html
Fly the Friendly skies in Air India Vimanas (excerpts)
By David Hatcher Childress

Nearly every Hindu and Buddhist in the world  - hundreds of millions of people has heard of the ancient flying machines referred to in the Ramayana and other texts as vimanas. Vimanas are mentioned even today in standard Indian literature and media reports. An article called “Flight Path” by the Indian journalist Mukul Sharma appeared in the major newspaper The Times of India on April 8, 1999 which talked about vimanas and ancient warfare: 
According to some interpretations of surviving texts, India’s future it seems happened way back in the past. Take the case of the Yantra Sarvasva, said to have been written by the sage Maharshi Bhardwaj.  
This consists of as many as 40 sections of which one, the Vaimanika Prakarana dealing with aeronautics, has 8 chapters, a hundred topics and 500 sutras.  
In it Bhardwaj describes vimana, or aerial aircrafts, as being of three classes: 

1.     those that travel from place to place;

2.     those that travel from one country to another;

3.     those that travel between planets. 

Of special concern among these were the military planes whose functions were delineated in some very considerable detail and which read today like something clean out of science fiction. For instance, they had to be: 
Impregnable, unbreakable, non-combustible and indestructible capable of coming to a dead stop in the twinkling of an eye; invisible to enemies; capable of listening to the conversations and sounds in hostile planes; technically proficient to see and record things, persons, incidents and situations going on inside enemy planes; know at every stage the direction of the movement of other aircraft in the vicinity; capable of rendering the enemy crew into a state of suspended animation, intellectual torpor or complete loss of consciousness; capable of destruction; manned by pilots and co-travelers who could adapt in accordance with the climate in which they moved; temperature regulated inside; constructed of very light and heat absorbing metals; provided with mechanisms that could enlarge or reduce images and enhance or diminish sounds. 
Notwithstanding the fact that such contraption would resemble a cross between an American state-of-the-art Stealth Fighter and a flying saucer, does it mean that air and space travel was well known to ancient Indians and aeroplanes flourished in India when the rest of the world was just learning the rudiments of agriculture?  Aerial battles and chases are common in ancient Hindu literature.  
What did these airships look like? The ancient Mahabharata speaks of a vimana as “an aerial chariot with the sides of iron and clad with wings.” The Ramayana describes a vimana as a double-deck, circular (cylindrical) aircraft with portholes and a dome. It flew with the “ speed of the wind”, and gave forth a “melodious sound”
The ancient Indians themselves wrote entire flight manuals on the care and control of various types of vimanas. The Samara Sutradhara is a scientific treatises dealing with every possible facet of air travel in a vimana. There are 230 stanzas dealing with construction, take-off, cruising for thousands of miles, normal and forced landings, and even possible collusions with birds! 
Would these texts exist (they do) without there being something to actually write about? Traditional historians and archaeologists simply ignore such writings as the imaginative ramblings of a bunch of stoned, ancient writers. 
Says Andrew Tomas, " The Samara Sutradhara, which is a factual type of record, treats air travel from every angle…If this is the science fiction of antiquity, then it is the best that has ever been written.”
In 1875, the Vaimanika Shastra, a fourth century BC text written by Maharshi Bhardwaj, was discovered in a temple in India. The book dealt with the operation of ancient vimanas and included information on steering, precautions for long flights, protection of the airships from storms and lightning, and how to switch the drive to solar energy, or some other “free energy” source, possibly some sort of “gravity drive.” Vimanas were said to take off vertically or dirigible. Bharadwaj the Wise refers to no less than 70 authorities and 10 experts of air travel in antiquity. These sources are now lost.
Vimanas were kept in Vimana Griha, or hanger, were said to be propelled by a yellowish-white-liquid, and were used for various purposes. Airships were present all over the world. The plain of Nazca in Peru is very famous for appearing from the high altitude to be a rather elaborate, if confusing airfield. Some researchers have theorized that this was some sort of Atlantean outpost.  It is worth nothing that Rama Empire had its outposts: Easter Island, almost diametrically opposite to Mohenjo-daro on the globe, astonishingly developed its own written language, an obscure script lost to the present inhabitants, but found on tablets and other carvings. This odd script is found in only one other place in the world: Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa. 
Aerial Warfare in Ancient India
The ancient Indian epics go into considerable detail about aerial warfare over 10,000 years ago. So much detail that a famous Oxford professor included a chapter on the subject in a book on ancient warfare!
According to the Sanskrit scholar V.R.Ramachandran Dikshitar, the Oxford Professor who wrote “War in Ancient India in 1944, “ No question can be more interesting in the present circumstances of the world than India’s contribution to the science of aeronautics. There are numerous illustrations in our vast Puranic and epic literature to show how well and wonderfully the ancient Indians conquered the air. To glibly characterized everything found in this literature as imaginary and summarily dismiss it as unreal has been the practice of both Western and Eastern scholars until very recently. The very idea indeed was ridiculed and people went so far as to assert that it was physically impossible for man to use flying machines. But today what with balloons, aeroplanes and other flying machines, a great change has come over our ideas on the subject.”
Says Dr. Dikshitar, “ …the flying vimana of Rama or Ravana was set down as but a dream of the mythographer till aeroplanes and zeppelins of the present century saw the light of day. The mohanastra or the “arrow of unconsciousness” of old was until very recently a creature of legend till we heard the other day of bombs discharging Poisonous gases.  We owe much to the energetic scientists and researchers who plod persistently and carry their torches deep down into the caves and excavations of old and dig out valid testimonials pointing to the misty antiquity of the wonderful creations of humanity.”
Dikshitar mentions that in Vedic literature, in one of the Brahmanas, occurs the concept of a ship that sails heavenwards. “The ship is the Agniliotra of which the Ahavaniya and Garhapatya fires represent the two sides bound heavenward, and the steersman is the Agnihotrin who offers milk to the three Agnis. Again, in the still earlier Rg Veda Samhita we read that the Asvins conveyed the rescued Bhujya safely by means of winged ships. The latter may refer to the aerial navigation in the earliest times.”
Commenting on the famous vimana text the Vimanika Shastra, he says:
“ In the recently published Samarangana Sutradhara of Bhoja, a whole chapter of about 230 stanzas is devoted to the principles of construction underlying the various flying machines and other engines used for military and other purposes. The various advantages of using machines, especially flying ones, are given elaborately. Special mention is made for their attacking visible as well as invisible objects, of their use at one’s will and pleasure, of their uninterrupted movements, of their strength and durability, in short of their capability to do in the air all that is done on earth. After enumerating and explaining a number of other advantages, the author concludes that even impossible things could be effected through them. Three movements are usually ascribed to these machines, ascending, cruising, thousands of miles in the atmosphere  and lastly descending. It is said that in an aerial car one can mount to the Surya-mandala, travel throughout the regions of air above the sea and the earth. These cars are said to move so fast as to make a noise that could be heard faintly from the ground. Still some writers have expressed a doubt and asked “Was that true?” But the evidence in its favor is overwhelming.
(source: Technology of the Gods: The Incredible Sciences of the Ancients  p 147 - 209). For more refer to chapter on Sacred Angkor
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Has the World Ended Before?
Charles Berlitz (1914 - 2003) author of several books, including The Bermuda Triangle, was the grandson of the founder of the world-famous Berlitz schools, wrote:
"If atomic warfare were actually used in the distant past and not just imagined, there must still exist some indications of a civilization advanced enough to develop or even to know about atomic power. One does find in some of the ancient writings of India some descriptions of advanced scientific thinking which seemed anachronistic to the age from which they come.
The Jyotish (400 B. C) echoes the modern concept of the earth's place in the universe, the law of gravity, the kinetic nature of energy, and the theory of cosmic rays and also deals, in specialized but unmistakable vocabulary, with the theory of atomic rays. And what was thousands of years before the medieval theologians of Europe argued about the number of angels that could fit on the head of a pin. Indian philosophers of the Vaisesika school were discussing atomic theory, speculating about heat being the cause of molecular change, and calculating the period of time taken by an atom to traverse its own space. Readers of the Buddhist pali sutra and commentaries, who studied them before modern times, were frequently mystified by reference to the "tying together" of minute component parts of matter; although nowadays it is easy for a model reader to recognize an understandable description of molecular composition."
(source: Doomsday 1999 - By Charles Berlitz p. 123-124).

Flying machines in old Indian Sanskrit texts

By Professor Dr. Dileep Kumar Kanjilal gave a brilliant lecture with this title to the Sixth Congress of the Ancient Astronaut Society in Munich in 1979. Kanjilal is a professor at the Calcutta Sanskrit College and therefore a leading scholar in Sanskrit.

(source: Pathways To The Gods: The Stones of Kiribati - By Erich Von Daniken p. 179-187). 

But if we follow the history of idolatry in India we come across two important works, the Kausitaki and the Satapatha Brahmana, dating from before 500 B.C. and telling us about images of the gods. Text and illustration show forcefully that the gods were originally corporeal beings. But how, and this question must be faced, did these gods reach the earth through the atmosphere? 

The Yujurveda quite clearly tells of a flying machine, which was used by the Asvins (two heavenly twins). The Vimana is simply a synonym for flying machine. It occurs in the Yajurveda, the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the Bhagavata Purana, as well as in classical Indian literature.

At least 20 passages in the Rigveda (1028 hymns to the gods) refer exclusively to the flying vehicle of the Asvins. This flying machine is represented as three-storeyed, triangular and three –wheeled. It could carry at least three passengers. According to tradition the machine was made of gold, silver and iron, and had two wings. With this flying machine the Asvins saved King Bhujyu who was in distress at sea.  

Every scholar knows the Vaimanika Shastra, a collection of sketches the core of which is attributed to Bharatvaj the Wise around the 4^th century B.C. The writings in the Vaimanika Shastra were rediscovered in 1875. The text deals with the size and the most important parts of the various flying machines. We learn how they steered, what special precautions had to be taken on long flights, how the machines could be protected against violent storms and lightning, how to make a forced landing and even how to switch the drive to solar energy to make the fuel go further. Bharatvaj refers to no fewer than 70 authorities and ten experts of Indian air travel in antiquity! 

The description of these machines in old Indian texts are amazingly precise. The difficulty we are faced with today is basically that the texts mention various metals and alloys which we cannot translate. We do not know what our ancestors understood by them. In the Amarangasutradhara five flying machines were originally built for the gods Brahma, Vishnu, Yama, Kuvera and Indra. Later there were some additions. Four main types of flying Vimanas are described: Rukma, Sundara, Tripura and Sakuna. The Rukma were conical in shape and dyed gold, whereas the Sundata were like rockets and had a silver sheen. The Tripura were three-storeyed and the Sakuna looked like birds. There were 113 subdivisions of these four main types that differed only in minor details. The position and functioning of the solar energy collectors are described in the Vaimanika Shastra. It says that eight tubes had to be made of special glass absorbing the sun’s ray. A whole series of details are listed, some of which we do not understand. The Amaranganasutradhara even explains the drive, the controls and the fuel for the flying machine. It says that quicksilver and ‘Rasa’ were used. Unfortunately we do not yet know what “Rasa’ was. Ten sections deal with uncannily topical themes such as pilot training, flight paths, the individual parts of flying machines, as well as clothing for pilots and passengers, and the food recommended for long flights. There was much technical detail: the metals used, heat-absorbing metals and their melting point, the propulsion units and various types of flying machines. The information about metals used in construction name three sorts, somala, soundaalika and mourthwika. If they were mixed in the right proportions, the result was 16 kinds of heat-absorbing metals with names like ushnambhara, ushnapaa, raajaamlatrit, etc. which cannot be translated into English. The texts also explained how to clean metals, the acids such as lemon or apple to be used and the correct mixture, the right oils to work with and the correct temperature for them. Seven types of engine are described with the special functions for which they are suited and the altitudes at which they work best. The catalogue is not short of data about the size of the machines, which had storeys, nor of their suitability for various purposes.

This text is recommended to all who doubt the existence of flying machines in antiquity. The mindless cry that there were no such things would have to fall silent in shame. 

The ruined sites of Parhaspur have been the scene of ‘divine’ air battles? Pyramids reminiscent of the Mayan pyramids in the Central American jungles in the center of Parhaspur.

In 1979 a book by David W. Davenport, an Englishman born in India, was published in Italy. Its title was 2000 AC Diztruzione Atomica, Atomic Destruction 2000. BC. Davenport claimed to have proof that Mohenjo Daro, one of the oldest cities in the history of human civilization, had been destroyed by an atomic bomb. Davenport shows that the ruined site known as the place of death by archaeologists was not formed by gradual decay. 

Originally Mohenjo Daro, which is more than 5000 years old, lay on two islands in the Indus. Within a radius of 1.5 km Davenport demonstrates three different degrees of devastation which spread from the center outwards. Enormous heat unleashed total destruction at the center. Thousands of lumps, christened ‘black stones’ by archaeologists, turned out to be fragments of clay vessels which had melted into each other in the extreme heat. The possibility of a volcanic eruption is excluded because there is no hardened lava or volcanic ash in or near Mohenjo Daro. Davenport assumed that the brief intensive heat reached 2000 degree C. It made the ceramic vessels melt.  

He further says that in the suburbs of Mohenjo Daro skeletons of people lying flat on the ground, often hand in hand were found, as if the living had been suddenly overcome by an unexpected catastrophe.  

In spite of the interdisciplinary possibilities, archaeology works solely by traditional methods in Mohenjo Daro. They ought to use the former, for it would produce results. If flying machines and a nuclear explosion as the cause of the ruins are excluded out of hand, there can be no research by enlarged teams with physicists, chemists, metallurgists, etc. As the iron curtain so often falls on sites that are important in the history of mankind, I cannot help feeling that surprising facts endangering existing ways of thinking might and should be discovered. A nuclear explosion 5000 years ago does not fit into the scenario?

Chariots of The Gods
Erich Von Daniken author of the International Bestseller book, Chariots of The Gods, writes:
" For example, how did the chronicler of the Mahabharata know that a weapon capable of punishing a country with a twelve years' drought could exist? And powerful enough to kill the unborn in their mothers womb? This ancient Indian epic, the Mahabharata, is more comprehensive than the Bible, and even at a conservative estimate its original core is at least 5,000 years old. It is well worth reading this epic in the light of the present day knowledge.
We shall not be surprised when we learn in the Ramayana that Vimanas, i.e. flying machines, navigated at great heights with the aid of quicksilver and a great propulsive wind. the Vimanas could cover vast, distances and could travel forward, upward and downward. Enviably maneuverable space vehicles!.
This quotation comes from the translation by N. Dutt in 1891: "At Rama's behest the magnificent chariot rose up to a mountain of cloud with a tremendous din.." We cannot help noticing that not only is a flying object mentioned again but also that the chronicler talks of a tremendous din.
Here is another passage from the Mahabharata: "Bhisma flew with his Vimana on an enormous ray which was as brilliant as the sun and made a noise like the thunder of a storm." ( C.Roy 1899).
Even imagination needs something to start off. How can the chronicler give descriptions that presuppose at least some idea of rockets and the knowledge that such a vehicle can ride on a ray and cause a terrifying thunder?
Certain numerical data in the Mahabharata are so precise that one gets the impression that the author was writing from first-hand knowledge. Full of repulsion, he describes a weapon that could kill all warriors who wore metal on their bodies. If the warriors learned about the effect of this weapon in time, they tore off all the metal equipment they were wearing, jumped into a river, and washed everything they were wearing, and everything they had come in contact with very thoroughly. Not without reason, as the author explains, for the weapons made the hair and nails fall out. Everything living, he bemoaned, became pale and weak.
The Mahabharata says: "Time is the seed of the Universe."
In the Samarangana Sutradhara whole chapters are devoted to describing airships whose tails spout fire and quicksilver.
A passage from the Mahabharata is bound to make us think:
"It was as if the elements had been unleashed. The sun spun round. Scorched by the incandescent heat of the weapon, the world reeled in fever. Elephants were set on fire by the heat and ran to and fro in a frenzy to seek protection from the terrible violence. The water boiled, the animals died, the enemy was mown down and the raging of the blaze made the trees collapse in rows as in a forest fire. The elephants made a fearful trumpeting and sank dead to the ground over a vast area. Horses and war chariots were burnt up and the scene looked like the aftermath of a conflagration. Thousands of chariots were destroyed, then deep silence descended on the sea. The winds, began to blow and the earth grew bright. It was a terrible sight to see. The corpses of the fallen were mutilated by the terrible heat so that they no longer looked like human beings. Never before have we seen such a ghastly weapon and never before have we heard of such a weapon. (C. Roy 1889).
(source: Chariots of The Gods - By Erich Von Daniken p. 56 - 60). For more on Mahabharata, refer to chapter on Hindu Scriputres, War in Ancient India and Yantras).

Vymaanika Shaastra  Aeronautics of Maharshi Bharadwaaja - By G. R. Josyer (excerpts)
Rahasyagnyodhikaaree - Sutra 2.
"The pilot is one who knows the secrets"
Bodhaanada: Scientists say that there are 32 secrets of the working of the Vimaana. A pilot should acquaint himself thoroughly with them before he can be deemed competent to handle the aeroplane. He must know the structure of the aeroplane, know the means of its take off and ascent to the sky, know how to drive it and how to halt it when necessary, how to maneuver it and make it perform spectacular feats in the sky without crashing. Those secrets are given in "Rahashya Lahari" and other works by Lalla and other masters, are are described thus:
"The pilot should have had training in maantrica and taantrica, kritaka and antaraalaka, goodha or hidden, drishya and adrishya or seen and unseen, paroksha and aparoksha, contraction and expansion, changing shape, look frightening, look pleasing, become luminous or enveloped in darkness, deluge or pralaya, vimukha, taara, stun by thunderstorm din, jump, move zig-zag like serpent, chaapala, face all sides, hear distant sounds, take pictures, know enemy maneuver, know direction of enemy approach, stabdhaka or paralyse, and karshana or exercise magnetic pull. 
These 32 secrets the pilot should learn from competent preceptors and only such a person is fit to be entrusted with an aeroplane, and not others. 
Some of these secrets are:
1. Goodha: As explained in 'Vaayutatva-Prakarana', by harnessing the powers, Yaasaa, Viyaasaa, Prayaasaa in the 8th atmospheric layer covering the earth, to attract the dark content of the solar ray, and use it to hide the Vimana from the enemy.
2. Drishya: By collision of the electric power and wind power in the atmosphere, a glow is created, whose reflection is to be caught in the Vishwa-Kriya-drapana or mirror at the front of the Vimana, and by its manipulation produce a Maaya-Vimana or camouflaged Vimana.
3. Vimukha: As mentioned in "Rig-hridaya", by projecting the force of Kubera, Vimukha and Vyshawaanara poison powder through the third tube of the roudree mirror and turning the switch of the air mechanism, produce wholesale insensibility and coma. 
4. Roopaakarshana: By means of the photographic yantra in the Vimana to obtain a television view of things inside an enemy's plane.
5. Stabdhak: By projecting apasmaara poison fume smoke through the tube on the north side on the Vimana, and discharging it with stambhana yantra, people in enemy planes will be made unconscious.
6. Chaapla: On sighting an enemy plane, by turning the switch in the force center in the middle section of the Vimana, a 4087 revolutions an hour atmospheric wave speed will be generated, and shake up the enemy plane.
7. Parashabda Graahaka: As explained in the "Sowdaaminee Kalaa: or science of electronics, by means of the sound capturing yantra in the Vimana, to hear the talks and sound in enemy planes flying in the sky.
****
According to Shownaka, the regions of the sky are 5, named, Rekhaapathaha, Mandala, Kakshaya, shakti and Kendra. In these 5 atmospheric regions, ther are 5,19,800 air ways traversed by Vimanas of the Seven Lokas or worlds, known as Bhooloka, Bhuvarloka, Suvarloka, Maholoka, Janoloka, Tapoloka and Satyaloka. Dhundinaatha and "Valalmeeki Ganita" state that Rekha has 7,03,00,800 air routes. Mandala has 20,08,00200 air routes, Kakshya has 2,09,00,300 air routes, Shakti has 10,01,300 air routes, and Kendra has 30,08,200 air routes.
It discusses what kind of food to eat, clothing to wear, metals for vimanas, purification of metals, deals with mirrors and lenses which are required to be installed in the vimaanas, mechanical contrivances or yantras and protecting and different types of vimaanas. 
(source: Vymaanika Shaastra  Aeronautics of Maharshi Bharadwaaja - By G. R. Josyer International Academy of Sanskrit Research 1973).  Also Refer to Vymanika Shashtra - Aeronautical Society of India.

Stealth bomber from shastra

A glass-like material based on technology found in an ancient Sanskrit text that could ultimately be used in a stealth bomber (the material cannot be detected by radar) has been developed by a research scholar of Benaras Hindu University.
Prof M A Lakshmithathachar, Director of the Academy of Sanskrit Research in Melkote, near Mandya, told Deccan Herald that tests conducted with the material showed radars could not detect it. “The unique material cannot be traced by radar and so a plane coated with it cannot be detected using radar,” he said.
The academy had been commissioned by the Aeronautical Research Development Board, New Delhi, to take up a one-year study, ‘Non-conventional approach to Aeronautics,’ on the basis of an old text, Vaimanika Shastra, authored by Bharadwaj.
Though the period to which Bharadwaj belonged to is not very clear, Prof Lakshmithathachar noted, the manuscripts might be more 1,000 years old.

The project aims at deciphering the Bharadwaj’s concepts in aviation.

However, Prof Lakshmithathachar was quick to add that a collaborative effort from scholars of Sanskrit, physics, mathematics and aeronautics is needed to understand Bharadwaj’s shastra.
The country’s interest in aviation can be traced back over 2,000 years to the mythological era and the epic Ramayana tells of a supersonic-type plane, the Pushpak Vimana, which could fly at the speed of thought.  
“The shastra has interesting information on vimanas (airplanes), different types of metals and alloys, a spectrometer and even flying gear,” the professor said. The shastra also outlines the metallurgical method to prepare an alloy very light and strong which could withstand high pressure.
He said Prof Dongre of BHU had brought out a research paper Amshubondhini after studying Vaimanika Shastra and developed the material. “There have been sporadic efforts to develop aeronautics in the country’s history. There has never been a holistic approach to it. Vaimanika Shastra throws up many interesting details that can benefit Indian aviation programme,” the director added.
Prof Lakshmithathachar rubbished the tendency among certain scholars to discount such ancient Sanskrit texts and said, “Why would our scholars want to cheat future generations? Unless it was important, nothing was written in the old days. The fact that there exists manuscripts indicates the significance.”
The academy has also embarked on other projects including ‘Indian concept of Cosmology’ with Indian Space Research Organisation, ‘Iron & Steel in Ancient India — A Historical Perspective’ with the Steel Authority of India Limited, and ‘Tools & Technology of Ancient India.’ 
(source: Stealth bomber from shastra - deccan herald November 2, 02).    For more refer to chapters on Sanskrit and War in Ancient India.  Also Refer to Vymanika Shashtra - Aeronautical Society of India.
Ancient nuclear blasts - By Alexander Pechersky

The great ancient Indian epic, the Mahabharata, contains numerous legends about the powerful force of a mysterious weapon.
The archaeological expedition, which carried out excavations near the Indian settlement of Mohenjo-Daro in the beginning of the 1900s, uncovered the ruins of a big ancient town. The town belonged to one of the most developed civilizations in the world. The ancient civilization existed for two or three thousand years. However, scientists were a lot more interested in the death of the town, rather than in its prosperity. Researchers tried to explain the reason of the town's destruction with various theories. However, scientists did not find any indications of a monstrous flood, skeletons were not numerous, there were no fragments of weapons, or anything else that could testify either to a natural disaster or a war. Archaeologists were perplexed: according to their analysis the catastrophe in the town had occurred very unexpectedly and it did not last long.
Scientists Davneport and Vincenti put forward an amazing theory. They stated the ancient town had been ruined with a nuclear blast. They found big stratums of clay and green glass. Apparently, archaeologists supposed, high temperature melted clay and sand and they hardened immediately afterwards. Similar stratums of green glass can also found in Nevada deserts after every nuclear explosion.
A hundred years have passed since the excavations in Mohenjo-Daro. The modern analysis showed, the fragments of the ancient town had been melted with extremely high temperature - not less than 1,500 degrees centigrade. Researchers also found the strictly outlined epicenter, where all houses were leveled. Destructions lessened towards the outskirts. Dozens of skeletons were found in the area of Mohenjo-Daro - their radioactivity exceeded the norm almost 50 times.
The great ancient Indian epic, the Mahabharata, contains numerous legends about the powerful force of a mysterious weapon. One of the chapters tells of a shell, which sparkled like fire, but had no smoke. "When the shell hit the ground, the darkness covered the sky, twisters and storms leveled the towns. A horrible blast burnt thousands of animals and people to ashes. Peasants, townspeople and warriors dived in the river to wash away the poisonous dust."   
***
Modern people divide the day into 24 hours, the hour - into 60 minutes, the minute - into 60 seconds. Ancient Hindus divided the day in 60 periods, lasting 24 minutes each, and so on and so forth. The shortest time period of ancient Hindus made up one-three-hundred-millionth of a second.
(source: Ancient nuclear blasts and levitating stones of Shivapur - By Alexander Pechersky - pravda.ru.com). For more refer to chapter on Aryan Invasion Theory and Advanced Concepts and Hindu Cosmology.  Also Refer to Vymanika Shashtra - Aeronautical Society of India.
Did Man Reach The Moon Thousands Of Years Ago? - By John Winston
Indications of the reality of ancient space travel do come from widely separated parts of the world. Written and oral tradition is widespread - and, it seems, reliable.

There is a tendency in scientific circles nowadays to regard ancient documents and even mythology and folklore - as sources of history. Anthony Roberts expresses it this way: "Legends are like time-capsules that preserve their contents through ages of ignorance."  In regard to some of the chronicles cited hereafter, internal evidence will carry its own proofs of authenticity.   My first source is an old manuscript described by James Churchward, the English scholar who wrote decades before people spoke of artificial satellites and spaceships.   

1 - INDIA: Vehicles that could revolve around the earth (i.e., satellites): "Their fuel is drawn from the air in a very simple and cheap way. The motor is something like a modern turbine: it works from one chamber to another and does not stop or stall unless switched off. If nothing happens it continues to function. The ship in which it is built could revolve as long as it liked around Earth, only falling when the parts of which it is made were burnt up.  

2 - INDIA: Philosophers and scientists who orbited the earth "below the moon and above the clouds" are spoken of in the ancient Surya Siddhanta.

Giant satellites made of shiny metal and turning about an axis are described in detail in ancient Sanskrit texts, right down to their dimensions and interiors, as well as smaller craft that fly between them and the earth.
The Mahabharata describes "two storey sky chariots with many windows, ejecting red flame, that race up into the sky until they look like comets . . . to the regions of both the sun and the stars."

Other references speak of:  

* Pushan sailing in golden ships across the ocean of the sky  

* Garuda (a celestial bird) carrying Lord Vishnu in cosmic journeys  

* Aerial flights "through the region of the sky firmament which is above the region of the winds"   

* The Ancients of Space Dimensions.

(source:  Did Man Reach The Moon Thousands Of Years Ago? - By John Winston - rense.com). For more refer to chapter on Hindu Scriptures and Advanced Concepts and Hindu Cosmology.  Also Refer to Vymanika Shashtra - Aeronautical Society of India.

High-Tech Vedic Culture  

Like it or not, the Vedic cosmological treatises are loaded with references to aircraft and devastating weapons. There is no way to ignore the plain fact. Yet, most Indology experts have managed to do just that. How do you overlook or trivialize these innumerable descriptions? It is impossible to escape them unless your mind is already made up to reject them. Discard them you must, because mainstream academia will not consider that humans in remote antiquity could have been advanced – not to mention expert – in a technology far more subtle than the crudities we are proud of today. Remember, even a simple concept like intelligent life on other planets still raises eyebrows at the academy.  

Vedic technology does not resemble our world of nuts and bolts, or even microchips. Mystic power, especially manifest as sonic vibration plays a major role. The right sound – vibrated as a mantra, can launch terrible weapons, directly kill, summon beings from other realms, or even create exotic aircraft. 

Air Vimana 

Aircraft in the Vedic literature are generally referred to as Vimanas. Especially throughout the Mahabharata, Bhagavata Purana, and the Ramayana, these flying devices appear.  

The Vimanas described in the Vedas are generally of four types: 

• Single or two-passenger aircraft;
• Huge airships for interplanetary pleasure trips;
• Huge military aircraft for warfare;
• Self-sufficient flying cities (‘space stations”) for indefinite stay in space.

The third canto of the Bhagavata Purana presents a lengthy account of the yogi Kardama Muni’s aeronautical adventures. With his mystic power, he produced an aerial-mansion type of vimana and took his wife Devahut on a pleasure tour of the universe. His airship was virtually a flying palace, replete with every possible luxury. 

“He traveled in that way through the various planets, as the air passes uncontrolled in every direction. Coursing through the air in that great and splendid aerial mansion, which could fly at his will, he surpassed even the demigods.”  (Shrimad Bhagavatam 3.21.41).  

The Vedic epic of Ramayan provides details of a majestic aerial mansion vimana.   

Hanuman saw in the middle of that residential quarter the great aerial-mansion vehicle called Pushpaka-vimana, decorated with pearls and diamonds, and featured with artistic windows made of refined gold.

"None could gauge its power nor effect its destruction….it was poised in the atmosphere without support. It had the capacity to go anywhere. It stood in the sky like a milestone in the path of the sun. It could fly in any direction that one wanted. It had chambers of remarkable beauty…Knowing the intentions of the master, it could go anywhere at high speed.” 

In both the Mahabharata and the Bhagavata Purana, we get an account of a huge military aircraft belonging to a hostile enemy named Shalva. The parallels with modern UFO reports are inescapable.  Here is a summary of the Vedic version: 

“It was a very big machine, almost like a big city, and it could fly so high and at such a great speed that it was almost impossible to see; so there was no question of attacking it. It appeared to be almost covered in darkness, yet the pilot could fly it anywhere and everywhere. Having acquired such a wonderful airplane, Shalva flew it to the city of Dwaraka, because his main purpose in obtaining the airplane was to attack the city of the Yadus, toward whom he maintained a constant feeling of animosity. 

The airplane occupied by Shalva was very mysterious. It was so extraordinary that sometimes many airplanes would appear to be in the sky, and sometimes there were apparently none. Sometimes the plane was visible and sometimes not visible, and the warriors of the Yadu dynasty were puzzled about the whereabouts of the peculiar airplane. Sometimes they would see the airplane on the ground, sometimes flying in the sky, sometimes resting on the peak of a hill, and sometimes floating on the water. The wonderful airplane flew in the sky like a whirling firebrand – it was not steady even for a moment.” 

Page after page of modern UFO reports put forward the same characteristics: glowing luminescence, logic-defying movements, as well as sudden appearances and disappearances.  

Sanskritist J. A. B. Van Buitenen also saw relevant parallels in Shalva account. Renowned in academia for his scholarly notated rendition of the Mahabharata, van Buitenen comments on the eventual destruction of Shalva’s aircraft and its personnel by Krishna: 

“Here we have an account of a hero who took these visiting astronauts for what they were: intruders and enemies. The aerial city is nothing but an armed camp….no doubt a spaceship. The name of the demons is also revealing: they were Nivatakavacas, “clad in airtight armor,” which can hardly be anything but spacesuits.”  

The Mahabharata also challenges us with the exploits of self-sufficient cities stationed in outer space. Depending on no other planet or physical locale for support, these space stations, as we can call them, cruised in space indefinitely. Arjuna, the hero of the Mahabharata, attacked a space station named Hiranyapura, peopled by dangerous entities of the malefic Daitya races. 

Eluding Arjuna’s pursuit, the space city abandoned its position in outer space and took shelter of Earth. Resembling the reported behavior of modern UFO, the besieged flying city attempted to escape underwater. It also fled underground. Arjuna was able to follow the Daitya space station wherever it tried to escape on Earth. Then, as the city took off for outer space again, he blasted it – breaking it apart. When debris and bodies fell to the Earth, the Mahabharata describes that Arjuna landed to make sure no survivors were hiding amidst the wreckage. 

(source: Searching for Vedic India – By Devamrita Swami  p. 473 - 480).

***

Disdain and Fantasies? Claim Indologists
Eurocentrism at its best 

A L Basham in his book, The Wonder that Was India: “ The arms of ancient India were not appreciably different from those of early civilizations. Efforts have been made by some scholars, not all of them Indian, to show that firearms and even flying machines were known, but this is certainly not the case. The one clear reference to firearms occurs in Sukra, which is late medieval, and the passage in question is probably an interpolation of Mughal times. The mysterious and magical weapons of the Epics, slaying hundreds at a blow and dealing fire and death all around them, must be the product of the poet’s imagination. “  

(source: The Wonder that Was India - By A L Basham p. 132 - 133).  

Dare we admit that the ancient Vedic people regarded flight as an ordinary part of their life? To an open mind, the many references would seem to justify that conclusion.

Mysteries from Forgotten Worlds

Charles Berlitz (1914 - 2003)  grandson of the man who founded the famous Berlitz language schools and author of several books has written:

"There is, however, another semi-historical indication of catastrophic destruction initiated and caused by man or gods acting like men, which is recorded in the Mahabharata, sometimes called the Illiad of ancient India (but over eight times as long as Homer) and therefore more comprehensive and also explicit in detail. The Mahabharata is essentially a huge compendium of religious teachings, customs, history and legends concerning the gods and heroes of ancient India. The Hindu classic preserves bits of information from an older world that are not only picturesque but sometimes rather alarming. 

When western students first began to study and comment on the Mahabharata during the period of British rule in India, certain detailed references to ancient air ships (Vimanas) including even how to construct them and how they were powered, mater of fact descriptions of controlled fire power in warfare, rockets, and even the “arrow of unconsciousness” (mohanastra) which rendered armies helpless.

Early scholars customarily considered these references, decades before the invention of airplanes or poison gas, as poetic hyperbole and were accustomed in the words of V Ramachandra Dikshitar, “…to glibly characterize everything in this literature as imagination and summarily dismiss it as unreal…”  

Students of the Victorian era would, of course, have little understanding or feeling of coincidence in descriptions of “two story sky chariots with many windows” blazing with red flames  “that race up into the sky until they look like comets,” or ships that “soared into the air to the regions of both the sun and the stars.”  

Some of these descriptions may have been enigmatical to scholars of the last century who read and translated them but they are not especially mysterious or hard to understand to almost anyone alive today or who may still be alive in an uncertain future. The following excerpts from the Mahabharata and the Ramanyana are startlingly familiar to us in spite of the thousands of intervening years, telling of: 

"A single projectile charged with all the power of the Universe. An incandescent column of smoke and flame, as bright as ten thousand Suns, arose in all its splendor… "

…it was unknown weapon, an iron thunderbolt, a gigantic messenger of death which reduced to ashes the entire race of the Vrishnis and the Andhakas. 

…The corpses were so burned as to be unrecognizable. Their hair and nails fell out; pottery broke without any apparent cause, and the birds turned white. After a few hours, all foodstuff were infected. 

And especially the following: 

…to escape from this fire the soldiers threw themselves in streams to wash themselves and all their equipment…. 

The destruction of the enemy army by the “iron thunderbolt” (certainly a more logical name than the “Fat Man” dropped on Nagasaki) is described in the following excerpt from the Samsaptaka-Badha Parva of the Drona Parva in an effective and poetic manner: 

….The Vayu (the presiding deity of that mighty weapon) bore away crowds of Samsaptakas with steeds and elephants and cars and weapons, as if these were dry leaves of trees…Borne away by the wind O King, they looked highly beautiful like flying birds…flying away from trees….” 

And again, in the Naryamastra Mokshana Parva (Drona Parva), reference is made to the “Agneya Weapon” incapable of being resisted by the very gods. 

Meteors flashed down from the firmament…A thick gloom suddenly shrouded the host. All points of the compass were enveloped by that darkness…Inauspicious winds began to blow…the sun seemed to turn round, the universe, scorched with heat, seemed to be in a fever. The elephants and other creatures of the land, scorched by the energy of that weapon, ran in flight….The very waters being heated, the creatures residing in that element began to burn..hostile warriors fell down like trees burnt down in a raging fire- huge elephants burnt by that weapon, fell down on the earth…uttering fierce cries …others (s) scorched by the fire ran hither and thither, as in the midst of a forest conflagration, the steeds…and the cars (chariots) also burnt by the energy of that weapon looked…like the tops of trees burnt in a forest fire…” 

The after effects to the earth, one might infer, noted by some ecologist of prehistory: 

…winds dry and strong and showering gravel blew from every side…Birds began to wheel making circles…The horizon on every side seemed to be covered with fog. Meteors – showering blazing coals fell on the earth from the sky…The Sun’ disk…seemed to be always covered with dust…Fierce circles of light were seen every day around both the sun and the moon…A little while after the Kuru king, Yudhishshira heard of the wholesale carnage of the Vrishnis in consequence of the iron bolt…(Mausala Parva). 

Even a prayer to the Creator has come down to us, imploring divine intercession to stop the effects of the “final” weapon: 

“….O illustrious one – let the threefold universe – the future, the Past and the Present exist. From thy wrath a substance like fire has sprung into existence; even now blistering hills, trees and rivers and all kinds of herbs and grass in the mobile and immobile universe is being reduced to ashes! (Abhimanyu Badha Parva). 

A most unusual excerpt from the Mausala Parva contains an oddly modern reminder relative to limitation, destruction and disposal of deadly missiles: 

“…an iron bolt through which all the individuals in the race of the Vrishnis and Andhakas became consumed into ashes…a fierce iron bolt that looked like a gigantic messenger of death…In great distress of mind the King caused that iron bolt to be reduced into fine powder. Men were employed, O King, to cast that powder into the sea…”  

Scientific marvels or prophecies were simply noted and recorded as they found them, without any attempt at corroboration or thought that they might be re-examined in the light of actually having occurred by future generations.

Historical deja vu?

An early Hindu works, the Surya Siddhanta, describes the earth as a planet with overtones of relativity: 

“…Everywhere on the sphere men think their own place to be on top. But since it is a sphere in the void, why should there be an above and an underneath?”  

Ancient records in India show a familiarity with most parts of the world, even including such exotic and distant places as Ireland. 

Some of the Vedic and Buddhist texts of ancient India, moreover, contain descriptions of linkages of particles of entity, which we can now understand in terms of the atomic theory and molecular interrelation although before access or re-access to this knowledge these passages sounded like pure mystification. 

The Indian writer and yogi, Paramahansa Yogananda (1893 -1952) pointed out in 1945 (Year 1 of the Atomic Era) that a system of Hindu Philosophy, the Vaisesika, is derived from the Sanskrit word visesas, which can be translated as “atomic individuality.” According to preserved records in Sanskrit, an Indian named Aulukya, in the 8^th century B.C was expounding, in his own words, what clearly seems to be such unexpectedly modern scientific theory as the atomic nature of  matter, the spatial expanses between atoms in their own systems, the relativity of time and space, the theory of cosmic rays, the kinetic nature of all energy, the law of gravitation as inherent in “earth” atoms, heat being the cause of molecular change.

(source: Mysteries from forgotten worlds – Charles Berlitz   p. 46  - 212 - 216).

Soaring Through Ancient Skies  

The writing of ancient India are perhaps the richest in tales of aviation. The Mahabharata, an epic tells of an "aerial chariot", with the sides of iron and clad with wings,"  

The Hindu Samara Sutradhara, a 11^th century AD collection of texts dating back to antiquity holds a wealth of information on flight, treating many aspects of aircraft design and even advising on the proper clothing and diet for pilots.

 "The aircraft which can go by its own force like a bird is called a Vimana," runs one passage. "The body must be strong and durable and built of light wood, shaped like a bird in flight with wings outstretched. Within it must be placed the mercury engine, with its heating apparatus made of iron underneath."  

The text goes on to describe "the energy latent in mercury" at some length; unfortunately, though, it offers little information on how that energy was utilized.  

The Ramayana, the great Indian epic describes a double decked circular aircraft with portholes and a dome – a configuration reminiscent of 20 ^th century flying saucer reports. Fueled by a strange yellowish white liquid, the craft was said to travel at the "speed of wind" attain heights that made the ocean look like "a small pool of water" and stop and hover motionless in the sky.  

(source: Feats and Wisdom of the Ancients  - Time Life Books  p.29).

Space Heroes of Old India  

The Ramayana telling in magic imagery the quest of Rama for his stolen wife Sita, has thrilled the people of India for thousands of years; generations of wandering story-tellers have recited its 24,000 verses to marveling audiences captivated by this brilliant panorama of the fantastic past, the passions of heroic love, tragedies of dark revenge, aerial battles between Gods and Demons waged with nuclear bombs; the glory of noble deeds; the thrilling poetry of life, the philosophy of destiny and death.  

Some descriptions of the war:  

In his wonderful translation of the ‘Ramayana’ Romesh Chunder Dutt describes Rama’s father, King Dasartatha, as ‘sprung of ancient Solar Race’, a descendant of Kings of the Sun, Spacebeings, who ruled India ..  

Ravan speeding on his chariot and Rama on the heavenly car fought an epic duel in long and wild fury, the winds were hushed in voiceless terror and the livid sun turned pale. Rama dueled with Ravana in celestial cars fighting in the sky and destroyed him with annihilating missiles to win back Sita. After rescuing Sita, Rama took her home by aerial car, an enormous, beautifully painted two-storied car, furnished with windows adorned with flags and colors, and several apartments for passengers and crew; the vehicle emitted a melodious sound heard on the ground.  

The happy pair, reunited flew from Sri Lanka across India over the Ganges , home to Ayodhya, as Rama gave a colorful description of the historic landscape of hills and rivers gliding swiftly below.  

‘Sailing o’er the cloudless ether Rama’s Pushpa chariot came
And ten thousand jocund voices shouted Rama’s joyous name.
Silver swans by Rama’s bidding soft descended from the air
And on earth the chariot lighted – car of flowers divinely fair.’   

(Note: To marveling mortals spaceships gleaming in the sun shine would resemble silver swans).  

The Drona Parva p. 171, rejoices that when Rama ruled his kingdom, the Rishis, Gods and men, all lived together on the Earth; the world became extremely beautiful. Rama (and presumably his descendants) reigned in his kingdom for eleven thousand years. In this Golden Age Celestials from other planets trod our Earth as mentioned in the Egyptian and Greek texts. 

(Note: Abduction of Sita by Ravana in the Epic of Ramayana. This wonderful epic of the ‘Ramayana’ the inspiration of the world’s great classic literature, intrigues us most today by its frequent allusions to aerial vehicles and annihilating bombs, which we consider to be inventions of our own 20^th century impossible in the far past. Students of Sanskrit literature soon revise their preconceived ideas and find that the heroes of Ancient India were apparently equipped with aircraft and missiles more sophisticated than those we boast today. 

This wonderful epic of the ‘Ramayana’ the inspiration of the world’s great classic literature, intrigues us most today by its frequent allusions to aerial vehicles and annihilating bombs, which we consider to be inventions of our own 20^th century impossible in the far past. Students of Sanskrit literature soon revise their preconceived ideas and find that the heroes of Ancient India were apparently equipped with aircraft and missiles more sophisticated than those we boast today.  

The 31^st chapter of the Samaranganasutradhara, ascribed to King Bhojadira in the 11^th century, contains descriptions of remarkable flying ships such as the elephant-machine, wooden-bird-machine traveling in the sky, wooden-vimana-machine flying in the air, door-keeper-machine, soldier-machine, etc. denoting different type of craft for different purposes. The poet had persons not initiated in art of building machines will cause trouble. Surely the understatement of the century!  

Ramachandra Dikshitar (1896 - 1953) in his fascinating War in Ancient India translates the Samar as saying that these flying machines could attack visible and invisible objects, ascending, cruising thousands of miles in different directions in the atmosphere, even mounting to the solar and stellar regions. ‘The aerial cars are made of light wood looking like a great bird with a durable and well-formed body having mercury inside and fire at the bottom. It has two resplendent wings and is propelled by air. It flies in the atmospheric regions for a great distance and carries several persons in it. The inside construction resembles heaven created by Brahma himself. Iron, copper, lead and other metals are also used for these machines. Despite their apparent simplicity the Samar stresses that these vimanas were costly to make and were the exclusive privilege of the aristocrats, who fought celestial duels. Today we associate such craft with Spacemen.  

The Mahabharata

The most fascinating tales of war in the air waged with fantastic weapons transcending our own science-fiction-today are narrated in the ‘Mahabharata’, a wonderful poem of 200,000 lines, eight times as long as the ‘Iliad’ and ‘Odyssey’ combined, a veritable world in literature. This epic concerning the great Bharata War in Northern India fought about 1400 BC paints in glorious color a great and noble civilization, where kings and priests, princes and philosophers, warriors and fair women, mingled in a brilliant society, perhaps the most glittering period in all history. The brilliant characterization of the noble prince Arjuna, his peerless bride, Draupadi, the God, Krishna, the host of Celestials and warrior-knights, transcend the bucolic creations of Homer and the colorful pageant is studded with human personages, whose fallings from sublimity to despair are revealed with an insight unsurpassed by genius in our Western world. Transmuting the martial adventures and exquisite passions brood the sublime teachings of the Bhagavad Gita with their incalculable influence on the Greek philosophers and the great Thinkers of the West. We today are more intrigued by the aerial craft and wonder weapons suggesting some secret science inspired by Beings from Space.  

The discourse between the hero, Arjuna and the Lord Krishna, as the warrior hesitates to fight his own kinsfolk form the lofty Bhagavad Gita, The Song of the Lord, where in Krishna reveals the meaning of the universe, the wisdom of Brahman and the duty of men expounding the religion of the Hindus.  

The battle between Arjuna and the giant Rakshasas soared from the plains of India to the skies. The Samsaptakabadha Parva p. 58, describes Arjuna and Krishna borne in a car,  

“….exceedingly resplendent like a celestial car, O king, in the battle between the Gods and the Asuras in the days of old, it displayed a circular, forward, backward and diverse other kinds of motion….The Son of Pandu blew his prodigious conch call, Devadotta. And then he shot the weapon called Tashtva, that is capable of slaying large bodies of foes together.”  

References in the ‘Mahabharata’ to fantastic weapons no longer evoke ridicule but becomes of intense interest to our 20^th century minds haunted by nuclear bombs. The Bhisma Parva, p. 44, describing the conflict between Arjuna and Bhisma states the enemy invoked a celestial weapon resembling fire in effulgence and energy, Chandra Roy in his masterly translation notes, “The Brahma-danda, meaning Brahma’s Rod, is infinitely more powerful than even Indra’s bolt. The latter can strike only once, but the former can smite whole countries and entire races from generation to generation.”  For thousands of years scholars assumed this to be a figment of the Poet’s imagination; we at once are struck by the ominous resemblance to our hydrogen-bomb, whose radiations mutate generations unborn.   

Arjuna and his contemporaries appeared to possess an arsenal of diverse, sophisticated nuclear weapons, equal to, perhaps surpassing, the missiles of the Americans and Russians today. The Badha Parva, p. 97, mentions the Vaishnava weapon conferring invisibility, able to destroy all the Gods in all the worlds. The Drona Parva, p. 283, refers to an annihilating mace or missile.   

‘Encompassed by them (bowmen), O Bharata, Bhisma smiting the while and uttering a leonine roar, took up and hurled at them with great force a fierce mace of destruction of hostile ranks. That mace of adamantine strength, hurled like Indra’s thunder by Indra himself, crushed, O King, thy soldiers in battle. And it seemed to fill, O King, the whole Earth with a loud noise. And blazing forth in splendor, that fierce mace of impetuous course and endowed with lightning flashes coursing towards them, thy warriors fled away uttering frightful cries. And at the unbelievable found, O Sire, of that fierce mace, many men fell down where they stood, and many car-warriors also fell down from their cars.’  

Atomic warfare with defenders vainly launching anti-missiles to counter nuclear rockets startles us by its uncanny resemblance to future wars, when our Earth’s capital may be blasted with bombs of anti-matter launched from space-satellites. The Drona Parva, p. 592, describes:  

Selective missiles like the Narayana weapons, called ‘scorcher of foes’ were probably utilized against troops on the battlefield. The ultimate weapon was the Agneya, reminiscent of the Atlantean mash-mak, said to utilize some sidereal force, mercifully undiscovered by us today. The Drona Parva, p. 677, holds us spell bound.  

‘The valiant Ashwathaman, then staying resolutely on his car touched water and invoked the Agneya weapon, incapable of being resisted by the very Gods. Aiming at all his visible and invisible foes, the preceptor’s son, that Slayer of hostile heroes, inspired with mantras a blazing shaft of the effulgence of a smokeless fire and let it off on all sides, filled with rage. Dense showers of arrows then issued from it in the welkin. Endued with fiery flames those arrows compassed Partha on all sides. Meteors flashed down from the firmament. A thick gloom suddenly shrouded the Pandava host. All points of the compass also were enveloped by that darkness. Rakshashas and Vicochas crowding together uttered fierce cries. Inauspicious winds began to blow. The Sun himself no longer gave any heat. Ravens fiercely croaked on all sides. Clouds roared in the welkin, showering blood. Birds and beasts and kine and Munis of high vows and souls under complete control became exceedingly uneasy. The very elements seemed to be perturbed. The Sun seemed to turn round. The universe scorched with heats seemed to be in a fever. The elephants and other creatures of the land scorched by the energy of that weapon, ran in fright, breathing heavily and desirous of protection against that terrible force. The very water being heated, the creatures residing in that element, O Bharata, became exceedingly uneasy and seemed to burn. From all points of the compass, cardinal and subsidiary, from the firmament and the very Earth, showers of sharp and fierce arrows fell and issued with the impetuosity of Garuda on the wind. Struck and burnt by those shafts of Ashothaman that were all endued with the impetuosity of the thunder, the hostile warriors fell down like trees burnt down by a raging fire.  

Huge elephants burnt by that weapon, fell down on the Earth all around, uttering fierce cries loud as those of the clouds. Other huge elephants, scorched by that fire, ran hither and thither, roared aloud in fear, as if in the midst of a forest conflagration. The steeds, O King, and the cars also burnt by the energy of that weapon, looked, O Sire, like the tops of trees burnt in a forest fire. Thousands of cars fell down on all sides. Indeed, O Bharata, it seemed that the divine Lord Agni burnt the (Pandava) host in that battle like Somvarta fire destroying everything at the end of the Yuga. (Celestial fire destroying civilization at the end of a world age).  

Could this marvelous description of a nuclear-like blast related by that Indian thousands of years ago be surpassed by our scientific reporters today? Such gripping narrative in homely words reminds us of the eye-witness accounts of the people of Hiroshima . This tale is stamped with the hall marks of truth; it can be no aery-fairy science-fiction, long ago in our world’s tortured history this frightful catastrophe must have happened. Such fantastic warfare must have baffled historian Romesh Chunder Dutt as he translated the Drona Parva in those leisurely days of 1888, when battles were won by cavalry charges and heroes waving banners; today we understand too well the titanic horrors of atomic war. Conventional history denies any high technology to the peoples of antiquity who are believed to have lived in a static culture for thousands of years in agricultural communities waiting for James Watt to wake up one day and invent the steam-engine. Man has suffered other Hiroshimas long ago; humanity always learns enough to make the same sorry mistakes.  

The ‘Ramayana’ and the ‘Mahabharta’ written so many millennia ago show that our remote ancestors were not barbarians but lived and loved in a gay and glittering culture with a spiritual insight into cosmic mysteries transcending our own. Perhaps in that distant past we discern our future. In a few decades our Earth may be graced again by Spacemen, the Gods of Old India.  

While our Western civilization is based on the Greeco-Judaic cultures, it is seldom realized that the Greeks and the Jews derived many of their fundamental concepts from old India especially after the invasion of Alexander in 327 BC.  Kannada and the Gnani Yogis speculated on the atom five hundred years before Democritus, Aryabhatta in the 6^th century BC taught the rotation of the Earth, the scientific principles of medicine, botany and chemistry were established as early as 1300 BC in India while Indian astronomy dates from remote Antiquity.  

The Creation in Genesis seems a primitive version of the profound teaching of the Days and Nights of Brahman; the tale of Noah an echo of Vaivasvata warned by Lord Vishnu to build a ship for the coming Flood; the Jewish Kabbala and various events in the Bible can be traced to Hindu scriptures written many centuries earlier.  

To minds conditioned by two thousand years of Christianity, the lives and teachings of Krishna and Buddha throw so much doubt on the historicity of Jesus, that we dare to wonder if the whole Christian Legend is but a plagiarism of Hinduism and Buddhism. Such apparent blasphemy outrages all our feelings, to doubt the reality of Jesus seems mortal sin, yet if we honestly study the teachings of Krishna, Hellenized to Chrestus hence Christ, and compare the fundamental dogma of Virgin Birth, Miracles, Ritual death on a tree or cross, Immortality, we find ourselves speculating whether Jesus was a myth based on the earlier historical Krishna.  Many scholars believe that Old India was the source not only of civilization, the arts and sciences, but also of all the great religions of Antiquity. 

(source: Gods and spacemen in the ancient east - By W Raymond Drake p. 1 – 65).

Today we tend to belittle the past and boast our age as the highest peak in human cultures, despite its sadly apparent short-comings; the common man in the West certainly lives more princely than many a King centuries ago and enjoys marvels of genius which would have amazed the old magicians, yet the literature of Eastern peoples show that the Ancients sometimes surpassed us in the very things of which we are proud of. The Indian lyricize of spaceships faster than light and missiles more violent than H-bombs; their Sanskrit texts describe aircraft apparently with radar and cameras; the wonderful ‘Mahabahrata’ rivals the ‘Ilad’ and the ‘Odyssey’, the ‘Aeneid,’ the plays of Shakespeare and most of our modern fiction all combined. The religions and philosophies of the East distilled a sublimity of thought scarce attained in the West; the wonderful Indian system of Yoga, the Gnani Yoga of Wisdom, Raja Yoga of Mind, Hatha Yoga of Body, Bhakti Yoga of Love, Karma Yoga of Work, developed a discipline millennia ago blending mysticism with daily life, showing Man’s relation to the Universe incarnating ever upwards to perfection to Union with God; this supreme and beneficent teaching now exerting widening influence in our Western world must surely have sprung from civilizations long vanished…”  

(source: Gods and spacemen in the ancient east - By W Raymond Drake p. 226).

Have We Shattered the Atom Before?—Signs of a Former Nuclear Age  

In ancient India the texts of the Karna Parva recounts the story of “the War of the Gods and Asuras” waged by the great ruler Sankara Mahadeva against his enemies, the Daityas and Danavas. The ruler went forth in his “radiant celestial vehicle” and attacked the triple-city of Tripura, totally destroying it with his “god-given weapon” and sending “all the rebellious races burning to the bottom of the Western Ocean .” The texts in Chapter XXXIV of the Karna Parva say that:

“The illustrious deity sped forth, and his shaft which represented the might of the whole universe penetrated the triple city. Loud wails of woe were heard from all those within as they began to fall. Thus was the triple city burnt and thus were the Asuras burned and the Danavas exterminated by the gods.”

Two other ancient treatises from India , the Drona Bhisheka (Chapter XI) and the Harivamsa (Chapter LVI), offer descriptions of other major destructions from the same war in which whole cities were “consumed in an all-encompassing inferno“ and “plunged into the water depths.” These accounts conclude with the defeat of a peoples called the Avantis—very close to Plato’s Atlantis.

In the Hindu epic poems of the Mahabharata and Ramayana are even more detailed descriptions of an age thousands of years ago when great god-kings rode about in their Vimanas or flying craft and waged war by launching powerful weapons at their enemies.

The descriptions given of these weapons in the ancient verses—their force, the characteristics of their destruction and the after-affects—sound disturbingly modern. The texts describe:

*The thunderbolt of Indra was endowed with the force of thousand-eyed Indra’s thunder.
*The bolt of death measured three cubits by six. It was the unknown weapon, the iron thunderbolt of Indra, the messenger of death.
*The projectile was charged with all the power of the Universe.
*The Agneya weapon was capable of being resisted by none of the very gods themselves.
*The Brahma-danda or Brahma’s rod was even more powerful.
*Though it struck only once, it smote whole countries and entire races from generation to generation.
*Adwattan let loose the blazing missile of smokeless fire.
*The missile burst with the power of thunder.
*The flying missile ruined whole cities filled with forts.
*The three cities of the Vrishnis and Andhakas were destroyed together in one instant.
*An incandescent column of smoke and fire as brilliant as ten thousand suns rose in all its splendor.
*Clouds roared upward showering dust and gravel.
*Dense arrows of flame like a great shower issued forth upon creation, encompassing the enemy on all sides.
*The sky blazed and the ten points of the horizon filled with smoke.
*Meteors flashed down from the sky.
*Fierce winds began to blow, and the very elements seemed disturbed.
*The sun appeared to waver in the heavens.
*The earth and all its mountains and seas and forests began to tremble.
*The wind blew as a fierce storm and the earth glowed.
*No one saw the fire—it was unseen. Yet it consumed everything.
*As rain poured down it was dried in mid-air by the heat.
*Birds croaked madly, and beasts shuddered from the destruction.
*Animals crumpled to the ground, their heads broken, and they died over a vast region.
*Elephants burst into flame, running to and fro in frenzy seeking protection.
*The waters of rivers and lakes boiled and the creatures residing therein perished.
*Thousands of war vehicles fell down on either side.
*Whole armies collapsed like trees in a forest burnt where they stood as in a raging fire.
*Corpses were so burnt they were no longer recognizable.
*The gaze of the Kapilla weapon was powerful enough to burn fifty thousand men to ashes.
*The thunderbolt reduced to ashes the entire race of Vrishnis and Ankhakas.
*To escape the breath of death the warriors leapt into rivers to wash themselves and bury their armor.
*Hair and nails fell out.
*Unborn children were killed in the womb.
*Birds were born with white feathers, red feet and in the shape of turtles.
*Pottery broke without cause.
*All foods became poisoned and inedible.
*The land was afflicted by drought thereafter for ten long years.

There are too many details here that are frighteningly similar to an eye-witness account of a nuclear explosion—the brightness of the blast, the column of rising smoke and fire, the fallout, intense heat and shock waves, the appearance of the victims and the effects of radiation poisoning. More than half a century ago these ancient descriptions were considered mere fantasy—but with the advent of the Nuclear Age in 1945, suddenly the texts from ancient India take on a whole new meaning.

There are remains that strongly suggest that nuclear wars were indeed waged in the distant past. According to the Mahabharata, the Great Bharata War in which flying Vimanas and fiery weapons were used, involved prehistoric inhabitants along the upper Ganges River of northern India . Precisely in the region, between the Ganges and the mountains of Rajmahal, are numerous charred ruins which have yet to be explored or excavated.

Observations made in the nineteenth century indicated that the ruins were not burnt by ordinary fire. In many instances they appeared as huge masses fused together with deeply pitted surfaces—described as being like tin struck by a stream of molten steel.

Some scholars are of the opinion that the horrific war which brought about the fall of the prehistoric Rama Empire in India was once fought in the region of what is now Kashmir . Just outside of Srinigar are the massive ruins of a temple complex called Parshaspur, whose multi-ton stone blocks are scattered over a wide area. The configuration of the blocks is suggestive of a tremendous explosion having once destroyed the site. It is not without karmic significance that today the two modern southern Asian nuclear powers— India and Pakistan —are bitter rivals, and one of the elements of their contention is the disputed region of Kashmir .

Have We Shattered the Atom Before?—Signs of a Former Nuclear Age?

Today we tend to belittle the past and boast our age as the highest peak in human cultures.

Whole cities were “consumed in an all-encompassing inferno“ - says The Mahabharata.

Farther to the south among the dense forests of the Deccan are more such ruins which may be of earlier origin, pointing back to a war antedating that the Mahabharata, and which encompassed a far greater area. The walls are glazed, corroded and split by a tremendous heat. Within several of the buildings that remain standing even the stone furnishings have been vitrified. That is, the surfaces of the rock have been melted and re-crystallized.

No natural burning flame or volcanic eruption could have produced a heat intense enough to cause this phenomena. Only a strong radiated heat could have done this damage. In this same region as this second group of ruins, Russian researcher Alexander Gorbovsky reported in 1966 the discovery of a human skeleton with radiation fifty times above normal levels.

In January, 1992 a news report was published concerning the discovery of a three-square mile area of radioactive ash in Rajasthan, located ten miles west of Jodhpur . The development of a housing project in this area had to be abandoned because of the high incidents of recurring cancer and birth defects.

A nuclear power plant recently built in the region was thought to be the culprit, but a five-member scientific team, headed by project foreman Lee Hundley, dispatched to study the mystery found a very different source. They eventually unearthed the charred remains of buildings thought to be at least eight to twelve millennia old which were once inhabited by perhaps as many as half a million people.  

The prehistoric city had all the appearance—and the tell-tale radioactive residue—of having been destroyed by a nuclear weapon the scientists estimated was about the same size as that which destroyed Hiroshima in 1945.

Archaeologist Francis Taylor, in a follow-up to this initial discovery, found historical wall engravings and texts in a nearby temple which depicted the local people as praying to be spared from the “great light” that was coming to destroy their city. The inscriptions appeared to have been copied from older sources going back several thousands of years. Taylor was quoted as saying:

“It’s so mind-boggling to imagine that some civilization had nuclear technology before we did. The radioactive ash adds credibility to the ancient Indian records that describe atomic warfare.”

In order to protect the local population, the ash and ruins were carefully covered over to barricade against the remaining radiation, and today only a length of thick concrete highway running through the area is all that can be seen.

It may be more than coincidental that at the time the mysterious city was destroyed in Rajasthan circa twelve thousand years ago, there was also an increase in traces of copper, tin and lead in ice cores from around the world—indicative of huge amounts of pollutants suddenly being thrown into the upper atmosphere and circulated around the globe—as well as a dramatic increase in uranium concentrations in coral growths from 1.5 parts per million to over 4 parts per million. Paleo-climatologists have never been able to explain these increases as a natural occurrence.

(source: Have We Shattered the Atom Before?—Signs of a Former Nuclear Age).

Note: Another curious sign of an ancient nuclear war in India is a giant crater near Mumbai (formerly Bombay). The nearly circular 2,154-metre-diameter Lonar crater, located 400 kilometres northeast of Mumbai and dated at less than 50,000 years old, could be related to nuclear warfare of antiquity. No trace of any meteoric material, etc., has been found at the site or in the vicinity, and this is the world’s only known “impact” crater in basalt. Indications of great shock (from a pressure exceeding 600,000 atmospheres) and intense, abrupt heat (indicated by basalt glass spherules) can be ascertained from the site.

(source: Best Evidence).

According to the Evidence – By Erich von Daniken 

The 'Ramayana' telling in magic imagery the quest of Rama for his stolen wife, Sita, has thrilled the people of India, for thousands of years; generations of wandering story-tellers have recited its 24,000 verses to marveling audiences captivated by this brilliant panorama of the fantastic past, the passions of heroic love, tragedies of dark revenge, aerial battles between Gods and demons waged with nuclear bombs; the glory of noble deeds; the thrilling poetry of life, the philosophy of destiny and death.
This wonderful epic of the 'Ramayana,' the inspiration of the world's great classic literature, intrigues us most today by its frequent allusions to aerial vehicles and annihilating bombs, which we consider to be inventions of own twentieth century impossible in the far past. Students of Sanskrit literature soon revise their preconceived ideas and find that the heroes of Ancient India were apparently equipped with aircraft and missiles more sophisticated than those we boast today. The thirty-first chapter of the Samasranganasutradhara, ascribed to King Bhojadira in the 11th century, contains descriptions of remarkable flying ships such as the elephant-machine, wooden-bird-machine traveling in the sky, wooden-vimana-machine flying in the air, door-keeper-machine, soldier-machine, etc. denoting different types of craft for different purposes.
"In the Indian national epic the Mahabharata, dating from the pre-Christian past, one of the 80,000 couplets gives philosophical expression to the immensity of time.
'God embraces space and time.
Time is the seed of the universe.'
The most fascinating tales of war in the air waged with fantastic weapons transcending our own scientific-fiction today are narrated in the 'Mahabharata', a wonderful poem of 200,000 lines, eight times as long as the 'Iliad' and 'Odyssey' combined, a veritable world in literature. Transmuting the martial adventures and exquisite passions brood the sublime teachings of the Bhagavad Gita with their incalculable influence on the Greek philosophers and the great Thinkers of the West. We today are more intrigued by the aerial craft and wonder weapons suggesting some secret science inspired by Beings from Space.  
The discourse between the hero, Arjuna, and the Lord Krishna, as the warrior hesitates to fight his own kinsfolk form the lofty Bhagavad Gita, The Song of the Lord, wherein Krishna, reveals the meaning of the universe, the wisdom of Brahman, and the duty of men, expounding the religion of the Hindus.
"Heroes soared to the skies in celestial cars and fought aerial duels blasting their rivals with explosive darts or annihilated armies with nuclear bombs. These enchanting stories of old India, more fascinating than our own science fiction, told of a warm colorful land of culture, its society sparkling with bejeweled splendor, where princes and poets, saints and scoundrels, mystics and magicians, lived with an exhilaration unequalled until the glittering Renaissance awoke the genius of Italy to life; in those exotic kingdoms beyond the Himalayas the Spacemen felt at home in a sophistication they could never find amid the stark austerity of the Peloponnese or the proud intolerance of Palestine. The Sanskrit tales glow with a humanism and humor distilled in bewitching poetry, depicting a genial, cultured society ages old, surely inspired by some wondrous, resplendent civilization from the stars."

(source: Chariots of the Gods  - By Erich von Daniken  p. 1 - 50

One of the foremost experts on ancient Indian tradition is Professor Dileep Kumar Kanyilal of the Sanskrit University , Calcutta . On 12^th August 1975, I visited this amiable scholar in his college for a conversation.

He said:  

“ India is a very old country with an extraordinary rich Sanskrit tradition. In my opinion, the flying cars, which are often called Vimanas, actually were flying machines of some kind. When examining the many interpretations available today, we must not forget that for 2000 years all these descriptions have always been looked at with old eyes, so to speak. Now that we know that flying machines exist, the whole problem needs tackling from a new angle. It is no longer any use clinging to the traditional approach. Every perception that is bound to its time undergoes a transformation. Undoubtedly something factual is hidden behind the descriptions of flying cars; they have a different meaning from the one previously attributed to them. 

“ India is a very old country with an extraordinary rich Sanskrit tradition. In my opinion, the flying cars, which are often called Vimanas, actually were flying machines of some kind."

In the original version of the Mahabharata you could read that Arjuna sees some flying cars which have crashed and are out of action. Other flying cars stand on the ground, yet others are already in the air. These clear observation of flying cars and cars that can no longer fly prove that the original authors of the report knew exactly what they were talking about.  

In the Sanskrit texts – many marriages take place between the gods and they also beget children. Copulation between gods and men also exists. The offspring of these unions inherited the knowledge and the weapons of their fathers. There is a passage in the Ramayana (next to the Mahabharata, the second great Indian epic) which tells how the deserts originated, namely as a result of destruction by terrible weapons of the gods. You can find descriptions of such weapons in the Mahabharata.  

In the Mahabharata – Musala Parva book 8:  

“The unknown weapon is radiant lightning, a devastating messenger of death, which turned all the relation of Vrishni and Andhaka to ashes. Their calcined bodies were unrecognizable. Those who escaped lost their hair and nails. Crockery broke without cause; birds turned white. In a very short time food was poisonous. The lightning subsided and became fine ash.”   

A report from Hiroshima or Nagasaki ?  

The first atom bomb fell on Hiroshima on 6^th August 1945. It claimed 260,000 human lives and the number of wounded was legion. Three days later Nagasaki was annihilated by atom bombs. There were 150,000 dead. We are haunted by images that rob us of sleep; people shriveled up to the size of children’s dolls by the incandescent heat; invalids without hair or skin who perished in field hospitals; trees and fields which were nothing but ashes. We must never forget it.  

The catastrophe described in the Mahabharata took place unknown millennia ago:  

“It was as if the elements had been unleashed. The sun spun around in circles. Scorched by the fearful heat of the weapon, the world reeled. Elephants were burnt by the incandescent heat and ran wildly to and fro….Water boiled; animals died…The raging fire made the trees topple like ninepins as if in a forest fire….Horses and chariots burnt up; it looked like the aftermath of a conflagration. Thousands of chariots were destroyed, then deep silence descended…It was a ghastly sight to see. The corpses of the fallen were so mutilated by the frightful heat that they no longer looked like human beings. Never before have we seen such an awful weapon, and never before have we heard of such a weapon.”  

“The heavens cried out, the earth bellowed an answer, lightning flashed forth, fire flamed upwards, it rained down death. The brightness vanished, the fire was extinguished. Everyone who was struck by the lightning was turned to ashes.”   

We must not be cowards as to dismiss such traditions as pointless myths and acclaim the authors’ poetic imaginations. The large number of similar accounts in ancient scriptures turns a suspicion into certainty: the ‘gods’ used A or H weapons from unknown flying objects. No, No, revered experts, you must accept it in the end. The stories of the chroniclers were not the products of their macabre imagination. What they handed down was once the stuff of experience, ghastly reality.   

The Ramayana’s 24,000 sholkas are also a treasure trove to pointers to the gods’ space traveling activities. There is a detailed description of a wonderful car which immediately suggests the idea of a spaceship. The car rises into the air with a whole family on board. Curiously enough, this craft is described as a flying pyramid which takes off vertically. When this flying pyramid rose from the ground, it naturally made a tremendous noise. That, too, one can read in the Sanskrit texts.  

If the Ramayana mentions what is clearly a flying apparatus, which made the mountains tremble, rose up amid thunder, burnt trees, meadows and the tops of houses, Professor Ludwig comments as follows: “there can be absolutely no doubt that this only meant a tropical storm.” O sancta simplicatas!   

There is a German, but not literal, translation of the Ramayana by Professor Hermann Jacobi (1850 - 1937).  The content is reproduced chapter by chapter, line by line. If the Professor comes up against complicated passages (4) which he finds meaningless because they talk about flying objects, he simply ignores them and in his arrogance remakars, “Senseless babble” or ‘this passage can safely be omitted, it contains nothing but fantastic ravings.’   

In Zurich Central Library I found countless volumes about Indian literature, Indian mysticism, Indian mythology and yard-long commentaries on the Mahabharata, the Ramayana and the Vedas, but very few direct translations.

Scholarly commentaries on Indian texts are no longer my affair, since I know how much is suppressed as irrelevant, and since I realized that foreign sacred books are arrogantly dismissed by Bible-soaked Westerners:

“Our religion is incomparably deeper and truer!” I cannot stand this denigration of other religions.   

It did not occur to anyone to bring out a complete translation of the Ramayana and Mahabharata, without a commentary.

(source: According to the Evidence – By Erich von Daniken p. 162 - 167).

Ancient Indian Spacecraft And Aircraft Technology  

India had a treasure trove of hitech warfare technology that even the 'mighty West' does not possess.  

The Brahmastra and Vimana used in the pre-Mahabharata period are nothing but the earlier versions of today's nuclear weapons and spacecraft.'

India had a treasure trove of hitech warfare technology that even the 'mighty West' does not possess. The Brahmastra and Vimana used in the pre-Mahabharata period are nothing but the earlier versions of today's nuclear weapons and spacecraft.'  

It is this feeling that one would get after listening to a lecture on 'High Technology in Ancient Sanskrit Literature' by Mr. C. S. R. Prabhu, senior scientist, NIC, Hyderabad, on Thursday as part of the three- day Indo-Nepal Sanskrit Conference, currently underway at the Rashtriya Sanskrit Vidyapeetha here.  

Mr. Prabhu, quoting extensively from ancient texts, stressed that the pre-Mahabharata period was an age of high technology, which was ignored in the Medieval period due to reasons not known.  

He quoted from the texts of a great scholar, Subbaraya Sastry, who, in a state of yogic trance, is said to have orally dictated the spacecraft technology in a period somewhere between 1875 and 1919, which was recorded by his disciples. The text, a copy of which is still in Nepal 's Royal Library, contained technical details on assembling, fabricating and erecting a spacecraft, the metals, semi-conductors, advanced alloys used and other minute aeronautical information. Though quite difficult to be believed on the face of it, the fact that this technology did not exist anywhere in the world - not even in America and Europe - in the mentioned period, makes it hard for one to disbelieve.  

The technical information given in Sastry's texts was as minute, precise and clear, as if it were a 'Make your own spacecraft' or a 'Spacecraft technology in 30 days' except for the Sanskrit language used, which was very much archaic and obsolete, Mr. Prabhu said. On a tip on making an alloy, the text said 'Krishnaseesam Chanjanikam Vajrathundam samamsathaha' from which the real meaning of 'Vajrathundam' (used in that context), could not be found in any contemporary Sanskrit dictionary. ''After a great amount of interaction with ayurvedic specialists and Swamijis with intuitive interpretations, it turned out to be the cactus plant,'' he said.   

To further strengthen his claim, he said there were wall paintings in some forts in Rajasthan depicting the use of rockets in Mughal warfare and even by Tipu Sultan of Mysore . Another interesting fact he gave was that the spacecraft could become invisible on its own. The lead alloy (Thamogarbha loha) used in making the body of the spacecraft would absorb light around it in a photo chemical reaction that would make it disappear.  

On testing the Krishna seesa metal mentioned in the formula in the laboratory of Birla Institute of Science, Hyderabad , Mr. Prabhu found the metal absorbing 78 per cent of laser light, which means, any other light could be easily absorbed, giving ample proof that there existed a technology to make things invisible. Also the use of an alloy of copper, zinc and lead made the spacecraft's body resist corrosion by 1000 times over that of the current levels. Using Ararakamra material for the axle and wheels had made it possible for taking 'U' turns and serpentine movements. 

An astonishing fact is that the Ararakamra metal was an alloy of copper, zinc, lead and iron, the combination of which is impossible, according to modern metallurgy. Technically, the ''Young's modulus'' of this metal is said to be higher than that of steel, making it stronger. As the spacecraft had to be capable of resisting high temperature, on re- entering our atmosphere from the outer space, its body was made with a metal called 'Raja Loha'. Its special feature was that apart from resisting heat, it converted light from lightnings into energy. To crosscheck all these details, there were no furnaces available in Hyderabad to melt metals at a high temperature of 2500 degrees celcius, Mr. Prabhu lamented.  

Another hitch came into his research in the form of the 'energy' used. 'Though the texts explained that the spacecraft was propelled by 'Sourasakthi', modern solar technology does not generate so much power to drag a rocket', he pointed out. Later he found out to his bewilderment that it was a kind of 'nuclear power' that was used in those days. 'The solar power, when coupled with gamma rays produced nuclear energy that had the power to propel a rocket', Mr. Prabhu observed.  

He even spoke on 'Tripura Vimana' that was used to travel in space, water and on land, by using the metal 'Trinetra loha'. Mr. Prabhu said he had submitted the model and some more information on the 'super metal' to the Indian Metal Society Conference and further claimed that the advisor to the government on scientific affairs Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam too had asked him to bring the design of the plane.  

A committee which was appointed by Indian Institute of Science to investigate into it, declared Sastry's texts as 'fraud', but Mr. Prabhu reasons that the descriptions mentioned in the ancient texts were perhaps too advanced to believe, making the committee to hastily come to the conclusion. He wanted a national level effort to prove that the so called 'myths' were in fact, scientific formulae on advanced technology. He said he had proposed a project called 'Bharadwaja Institute of Vedic Science and Technology', the objective of which was to derive, decipher and reproduce advanced methodologies and processes from Vedic and post-Vedic Sanskrit texts, for which he sought government's support.

(source: Ancient Indian Spacecraft And Aircraft Technology - thehindu.com). Refer to Hidden mysteries.

Large Symbols Like Peruvian Signs Found on Gujarat Hillside

Vadodara, Gujarat, India. August 6, 2006: Geologists have discovered a striking archaeological feature on a hillock in the Kutch district of the western Indian state of Gujarat. This feature is shaped like the Roman numeral VI. Each arm of this feature is a trench that is about two meters wide, two meters deep and more than 100 meters long. The feature has evoked the curiosity of archaeologists because such signs have mostly been observed so far in Peru. The team, led by Dr RV Karanth, a former professor of geology at the Maharaja Sayajirao University in Vadodara, Gujarat, has been involved in a palaeoseismological study of the Kutch region for the past 11 years Palaeoseismology involves the study of sediments, landforms and other geological evidence of past earthquakes to unravel their history and determine the nature and occurrence of present-day earthquakes. This feature was discovered at a hillock 3km from the sleepy oasis township of Khavda, which is also known as the gateway to the Rann of Kutch, an extensive salt marsh of western India and southeast Pakistan between the Gulf of Kutch and the Indus river delta.

Dr. Karanth says such trenches have not been noticed elsewhere in the region. Archaeologists, he says, can now pursue further research. Geometric lines and animal shapes etched into the desert plain by people of the Nazca civilisation (AD 1-700) of Peru are well known. "But such signs on hill-slopes have not been reported from Peru," says Dr. Karanth. He says that one of the prominent explanations given for the Peruvian features is that they may have been constructed to make astronomical observations and calculations. "The Tropic of Cancer passes through Kutch. So if this structure is man-made, it is likely that the slope of the hillock was utilized for making certain astronomical calculations in the past," explains the geologist. Interestingly, there are numerous indications to suggest that Harappans were well-versed in astronomy. The straight streets of that time were oriented in the cardinal directions - east, west, north and south. Linkages between ancient Harappan scripts and latter Vedic texts also suggest that Harappan priest-astronomers tracked the progress of various planets and mapped the sky. Dr. Karanth has also discovered ruins of a fort-wall, houses, storage tank and a temple on the hilltop.

(source: Large Symbols Like Peruvian Signs Found on Gujarat Hillside - bbcnews.co.uk). For more refer to chapter on India on Pacific Waves

Did You know?
Oppenheimer and Atom bomb in modern times
Only seven years after the first successful atom bomb blast in New Mexico, Dr. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967) Scientist, philosopher, bohemian, and radical. A theoretical  physicist and the Supervising Scientist of the Manhattan Project, who was familiar with ancient Sanskrit literature, was giving a lecture at Rochester University. During the question and answer period a student asked a question to which Oppenheimer gave a strangely qualified answer:

Student: Was the bomb exploded at Alamogordo during the Manhattan Project the first one to be detonated?

Dr. Oppenheimer: "Well -- yes. In modern times, of course.

Charles Berlitz goes on to quote a number of passages from the Mahabharata that describe the impact of a weapon that I suspect  must be the brahmaastra, although he neither names the weapon nor cites those sections of the text from which his quotations are drawn (he lists Protap Chandra Roy's translation of 1889 in his bibliography):...a single projectile Charged with all the power of the Universe.

An incandescent column of smoke and flame As bright as ten thousand Suns Rose in all its splendor......it was an unknown weapon, An iron thunderbolt, A gigantic messenger of death, Which reduced to ashes. The Entire race of the Vrishnis and the Andhakas....the corpses were so burned As to be unrecognizable. Their hair and nails fell out; Pottery broke without apparent cause, And the birds turned white. After a few hours all foodstuffs were infected......To escape from this fire. The soldiers threw themselves in streams to wash themselves and their equipment...
One is reminded of the yet unknown final effect of a super-bomb when we read in the Ramayana of a projectile:
...So powerful that it could destroy
The earth in an instant -
A great soaring sound in smoke and flames...
And on it sits Death...
(source: Doomsday 1999 - By Charles Berlitz p. 118-122). For more on Oppenheimer, refer to Quotes 21-40).

***

The Discovery of Dwaraka

Discovered in 1981, the well-fortified township of Dwaraka extended more than half a mile from the shore and was built in six sectors along the banks of a river before it became submerged.

The findings are of immense cultural and religious importance to India. Among the objects unearthed that proved Dwarka's connection with the Mahabharata epic was a sea engraved with the image of a three-headed animal. The epic mentions such a seal given to  the citizens of Dwarka as a proof of identity when the city was threatened by King Jarasandha of the  powerful Magadh kingdom (now Bihar). The foundation of boulders on which the city's walls were erected proves that the land was reclaimed from the sea about 3,600 years ago. The epic has references to such reclamation activity at Dwarka. Seven islands mentioned in it were also discovered submerged in the Arabian Sea. 
Why is that the rediscovery of Dwaraka has not attracted the same degree of attention in the West, as that of ancient Troy by Heinrich Schliemann? 
(Note: Please refer to Chapter on Dwaraka. For information on Lost city found off Indian coast

y a n t r a s :    m e c h a n i c a l    p r o d u c t i o n s

Maharshi Bharadwaja is an august name in the pantheon of Hindu Sages who recorded Indian civilization, in the spiritual, intellectual, and scientific fields in the hoary past. The rishis transmitted knowledge from mouth to mouth and from ear to ear, for long eras. Written transmission through birch-backs or palm leaves or home made paper, are from this side of a thousand years. The word “yantra” is derived from the root yam, to control, and has been freely used in ancient India for any contrivance. Mechanical skills had produced in ancient India many accessories for scientific activities, such as surgical instruments in medicine, the pakayantras or laboratory equipment in medicine, Rasayana, and the astronomical yantras described in Jyotisa works. These belong to a different category. In the Mahabharata we hear of the Matsya-yantra or the revolving wheel with a fish which Arjuna had to shoot in order to win Draupadi in the svayamvara.
More interesting references are made by Valmiki to yantras on the field of battle, the continuity of which tradition we see later in the Arthasastra of Kautilya. The fortifications include equipment in the form of yantras. In Ayodhya 100.53, in the Kaccita-sarga, while enquiring about measures of defense, Rama asks Bharata whether the fort is equipped with yantras. Lanka, as a city built by Maya, is naturally more full of the yantras. The city, personified as a lady, is called yantra-agara-stani, informing us of a special chamber filled with yantras. (Sundara 3. 18). The Arthasastra of Kautilya is one of the books of culture which throws a flood of light on the particular epochs in which they arose. This work of 300 B.C.E. being a treatise on statecraft, speaks of yantras in connection mainly with battles, but also with architecture to some extent. An early work, a theoretical treatise and a text of great reputation, the Arthasastra forms our most valuable document on the subject of yantras.
And, as early as the Bhagavad Gita, the machine became an apt simile for man being a tool in the hands of the Almighty that sits in man's heart and by His mystic power makes man not only move but also delude himself into the notion of his being a free or competent agent.

“To deny to Babylon, to Egypt and to India, their part in the development of science and scientific thinking is to defy the testimony of the ancients, supported by the discovery of the modern authorities.  -  L. C. Karpinski 

“Thus we see that India’s marvels were not always false.”  - Lynn Thorndike

The following machines are to be made of a metal called Veera. An alloy formed by melting and fusing the three metals Kshwinka, Arjunika and Kanta (magnet), in three, five and nine parts respectively, is called Veeraloha or a metal namely Veera. When it undergoes shastraic processes, it cannot be destroyed by fire, air, water, electricity, cannon, gun-powder or the like. It will then be very strong, light, and of golden color. The metal is specially meant for Machines. 

Panchamukha Yantra 

A machine of this name contains doors in east, south, west, north and top. Weighs 170 Ratals. Carries one thousand Ratals. By the help of electricity it can travel five Kroshas per hour. It is used as conveyance for men and in wars. Since the machine is conducted by the power of a spirit called Gaja it is named as Gajaakarshana Panchamukha Ratha. 

Mrugaakasrshana Yantra 

These are the machines drawn by such animals as oxen, asses, horses, camels, elephants and so on. 

Chaturmukha Ratha Yantra

This machine has faces or openings on four sides. Weighs 120 Ratals. It can be conducted with any oil, preferably that of coconut shells, or with the help of electricity. Travels six Kroshas per hour. Used for traveling, wars, and transporting things. 

Trimukha Ratha Yantra 

This Machine weighs 116 Ratals. It has three doors, downwards, upwards and on one side. It can carry a weight of 600 Ratals. It is conducted with the help of oil extracted from knotted root of Simha-Krantha, and from that extracted out of the stalks of a kind of grass. If such oils are not available, electricity may be made use of. It is used for the purposes that the above machine, viz. Cahkra-mukha-Ratha Yantra is used. 

Dwimukha Yantra 

It weights 80 Ratals. Doors to east and west. Conducted by a wheel fitted with screws. Travels three Koshas per hour. Can carry a weight of three hundred Ratals. Used for the above purposes. 

Ekamukha Ratha Yantra 

This machine has only one door. Weighs 48 Ratals. Carries two hundred Ratals of weight. Travels with the help of oil extracted from the seeds of Kancha-Thoola or Sovlaalika or by electricity: speed 1 Keosha per hour. Used for the above purposes. 

Simhaasya Ratha Yantra 

This machine presents a front of a lion’s appearance. Possesses two doors. 75 Ratals in weight. Carries a weight of 50 Ratals. It can travel both on land and air. It has the quality of expanding and contracting. Used for the above purposes. 

Vyaaghraasya Ratha Yantra 

This is modeled after a tiger. Possesses wings. Weighs 64 Ratals. Carries 200 Ratals of weight. It travels in air expanding its wings with electric power, but contracting its wings with steam power. It is used for the above purposes.   

Dolamukha Yantra 

This is modeled after a litter. Contains two doors. Weights 50 Ratals. Carries 148 Ratals. Travels three Kroshas per hour. Conducted with the help of the electricity and an oil, viz Shilyusha extracted from wine.  

Kurmamukha Ratha Yantra 

This is modeled after a tortoise. Contains small doors. Weighs 32 Ratals. Used for only spying. 

Ayah – Prasaarana Yantra 

Out of those that are conducted by electricity this is one which travels on iron line spread on earth. It may be constructed to contain from 40 to 80 wheels. It resembles the railway train somewhat, weighs 4000 Ratals. Carries twenty-five thousand Ratals. Travels three Kroshas per hour with the power of electricity. It is used in transporting men and goods from place to place.  

Panchamukee Yantra 

This machine has five faces. Weighs 115 Ratals. Carries twelve thousand Ratals. Carries twelve thousand Ratals. Has another machine which enables the five doors to open or shut. Conducted with electricity. Speed four Kroshas per hour. Used for the above purposes. 

Eka Chakra Yantra 

This contains only one wheel. It is modeled after a trap. Weights 105 Ratals. Carries 800 Ratals. It is given motion and kept in motion by its wheels being worked by bellows. Travels three Kroshas per hour. 

Trimukhi Yantram 

This machine has three faces. Contains three  compartments which can be separated. Weights one thousand Ratals. Travels on water. The three compartments are so arrayed that it can travel with the second compartment if the first is damaged, and if the second also gets damaged, the third compartment can safeguard the contents, by separating them as may be necessary. Should the topmost apartment be in a dangerous predicament, it can rise into heavens and travel in the air. Uses as above. 

Jrumbhala Yantra 

This machine has the door below. It is modeled after a shut umbrella. The covering is made of thick water-proof cloth which is manufactured out of the juice of the five trees or Pachavarga Kasheeree Vruksha. Weighs 42 Ratals. Carries 300 Ratals. It can expand into the shape of a tent by working a screw inside. So also it can contract into the former shape by working another screw. Appears like a flag. Used for secret wanderers like spying. With electric power or with the help of its wheels turned by bellows it can travel six Kroshas per hour. 

Goodha Gamana Yantra 

This machine can accommodate only three persons. Weighs half a maund. Appears like an ordinary tower. Contains five keys. Can travel on land as well as air. Its motion is almost invisble. Can travel eight Kroshas per hour with the power of an oil called Sinjurika. Used for secret travels.

Wyrajika Yantra 

This machine is made of glasses of abhraka or mica. There are sixteen doors. Weights three Ratals. Carries five Ratals. Appears like a sparking light and as such none can know that it is a machine. Should anyone go near it, the sparkling light produced by turning an inner key will kill him. Can travel on water as well as on land. With the electric power of solar rays it can travel twelve Kroshas per hour. Used for journeys, in wars and in dispatching money. 

Indranee Yantra 

This machine is constructed with paper, manufactured out of grass belonging to Maunjavarga; the 3^rd, 9^th, 11^th, 22^nd, 30^th and 42^nd classes of grass are known as Pishangamunja, Pingala Munja, Rajjumnunja and son on. This machine cannot be destroyed by fire or water. It is exceedingly light and strong. It can travel 15 Kroshas per hour with the help of wind-worked wheels. Carries 100 Ratals. 

Vishwaavasu Yantra 

This machine has two doors. Weighs 148 Ratals. Carries three thousand Ratals. With the help of steam it travels two and a half Kroshas per hour. It can go both forward and backward. It can be expanded or contracted. Contains seven keys. Used for the above purposes. 

Sourambhaka Yantra 

This machine has three storeys. There are secret seats for 400 people to sit in each of the three storeys. The seats are not ordinarily visible. The storeys can alone be perceived. Weights 230 Ratals. Carries thirty-six thousand Ratals. It travels with the help  of electricity or steam, or with the help of spirits of seventh kind of wine. Can go 32 Kroshas per hour. Useful in carrying men and things in warfare. 

Sphotanee Yantram 

This machine has only one door, weighs 50 Ratals. Carries 200 Ratals. Sails on water. Just like a bubble of water, sometimes it can rise above water and at times it can dive underneath water. Moves with the power of steam or of spirits of Kanajala Kshaara. Travels four Kroshas per hour. Used by marine spies.   

Kamatha Yantram 

This is modeled after a tortoise. Weights 500 Ratals. Carries eight thousand Ratals. Contains two doors. Travels under the surface of water. Used for the above purposes. 

Parvathee Yantram 

This is modeled after a lotus. Contains four doors. Weighs 69 Ratals. Carries 800 Ratals. A pole is fixed in the middle to contain keys inside to expand and contract the machine just like a lotus opens and shuts. With the help of the power of steam or electricity it cant travel 24 Kroshas per hour. Used in voyages to distant islands. 

Thaaraamuckha Yantram 

This contains a face of seven keys, sparkling like stars. Twelve doors. Weights two thousand Ratals. Carries twenty-five thousand Ratals. Out of the seven keys, if the first is pressed, a melodious music accompanied with every kind of musical instrument will be heard by those that are inside: if the second is pressed, dramatic scenery and action will be visible: by pressing the third, a stream of fresh water flows amidst the occupants, so that they may make use of water as they please: by pressing the fourth, plates with flowers, scents, plantains, camphor etc. will be ready before the occupants so that they may worship God: by pressing the fifth, plates of excellent food will be ready before them; while they are taking their dinner, the plates turn round through wires: by pressing the sixth: by pressing the seventh beds will be ready for all. Should the keys be kept as they were everything will vanish. With the help of steam or electricity it can travel four Kroshas per hour. Used for the above purposes. 

Rohinee Yantram   

This is modeled after a hollow bamboo and is of bamboo color. Weighs three thousand Ratals. Carries fifty thousand Ratals. Contains five hundred compartments in which gun-powder, bullets, weapons etc. can be preserved. Though fire breaks out nothing will be burnt or damaged, because the fire is suppressed by the nature of the metal with which it is composed. With the help of steam or electricity, it can run six kroshas per hour. It is used chiefly in wars. 

Raakaasya Yantram 

From the machine a glorious light will flow out just like moon-light once in three hours. This light illuminates a distance of sixty four Kroshas by which everything that lies in its range will be made clearly visible. Weights one ratal. In the machine there is a wheel turning to right round and round just like the Sun. Can travel on land, water and in air. Useful in finding out objects from afar off. With the help of spirits of sixteenth kind of wine it can travel four Kroshas per hour on land, eight kroshas on water and twelve Kroshas in air. 

Chandramukha Yantram 

This machine has a front like the moon’s disk: it is dark in the middle and bright all round. Weighs 400 Ratals. Contains sixteen doors. Carries sixteen thousand ratals. Contains five storeys and sixty-eight cylinders. These cylinders are useful in filling the five kinds of smokes, the seven powers, thirty-two kinds of powders and forty-eight kinds of gas. When they are in those cylinders no harm is done to them. This travels in paths dug out inside the earth. Travels with the help of spirits of 13^th quality of wine. Speed sixteen kroshas per hour. Used in wars. 

Anthaschakra Ratham 

This is modeled after the crooked rod of a litter. This rod, resembling the two angularly bent rods of an oil mill, will be turning round and round always. There are thirty two screwed wheels. This machine must be fixed to the earth. It is used in transporting elephants, camels, horses, men, conveyances and son, or binging them near from a distance. This can be done by working at the screws inside. This must be fixed in the fitth circle of the warfield. 

Panchanaala Yantram 

This is fitted by joining five cylinders. There are distillery machines in each of these cylinders. These distilleries are used in manufacturing not only oils, spirits, etc. but also smokes, powders and so on. Weighs 230 Ratals. Travels three Kroshas per hour with the help of spirits of 9^th class of wine. 

Thanthreemukha Yantram 

The front of this machine appears like a trap of wires. Inside the machine there is a magnetic wheel in the center. Behind this, there are exact representations of lions, tigers and other fierce animals all made of wires. In front there is a magnifying glass of 103 rd class. By working at the keys, these iron lions, tigers and so on can be made to roar and pounce upon people that come near it. By doing so, none can go near it. Weights 80 Ratals. Carries thousand Ratals. With the help of the powers of spirits of the third class wine, it can travel four kroshas per hour. Useful in wars. 

Vegineee Yantram 

This is modeled after an umbrella. It can run very fast by turning the screws at the junction of wheels. Can accommodate only three persons. Travels 8 kroshas per hour. 

Shaktyudgama Yantram 

This is a machine which spreads the electricity in sky. It has five storeys. Contains big glass vessels (containers) in each of them. In the first storey, the glass vessels will be filled with tar mixed with coal. In the second, the glass vessels will be filled with sea-foam or lather with the extract of tin. In the vessels of the third storey, sulpjur with the oil of the seeds of Visha mushti will be filled. Those of the 4^th, will be filled with the five essences of oils of the Pranaksharas. The five balls along with mercury, are fitted in those of the fifth. Wires from these five vessels are united as per shastraic principles. The vessels of the first storey must be filled with electricity and through this the vessels of other storeys must be filled. Through this it can spread in the sky. The machine weighs 32 Ratals. Used in constructing airplanes. 

Mandalaavartha Yantram 

This is modeled after a spinning top. Contains six faces and sixty-four screws inside. Weighs 68 Ratals. Carries eight thousand Ratals. Like a top it turns round the armies and crowds of people, round and round. It can turn round thrice, a distance of two kroshas in an hour, with the help of electricity and spirit of eleventh of class of wine. Useful in wars and in mutinies of people. 

Ghoshanee Yantram 

This is modeled after an immense serpent. Contains three coverings and 24 faces. It is filled with electricity. Contains also 148 cylindrical apartments to stock poisonous gas. By working at the inner screws, it can produce a noise equal to 32 thunderbolts. Emits poisonous gas as it travels. The sound thus produced will be heard for a distance of 14 ¼ miles. People near it die of the mortal effects of the deafening noise and poisonous gas. Those who are beyond eight kroshas of it will swoon. Weighs 116 Ratals. Carries six thousand Ratals. Can travel six kroshas per hour, with the help of electricity and spirits of 13^th kind of wine.

Ubhayamukha Yantram 

This machine possesses the same symmetry on either side. Contains sixty-four small holes or doors on either side. Contains a fresh water stream inside. Above that stream, there flows another stream of tar. In the middle there are oils belonging to seven varieties. Contains 71 keys inside. By working at these keys, the poisonous gases, powers or anything of the kind that is injurious to lives, will be swept off in the range of twelve miles (roughly) around the machine and purifies the atmosphere. Weighs 48 Ratals. Carries 108 Ratals. Travels five Kroshas per hour with the help of electricity or spirits of 27^th class of wine. Use for purifying atmosphere whenever and wherever necessary. 

Thridala Yantram 

This is modeled after a three-leafed Bilwa patra…. Having three compartments. The first is square, the second is triangular, and the third is a hexagon in shape. Each of these compartments has two doors. Each compartment is provided with Peshanee Yantras. A Peshanee Yantra is one which grinds grain such as wheat into powder. Always filled with flour. This machine is conducted by electricity. 

Thrikuta Yantram 

This machine has two towers, like the peaks of a mountain. Each of these towers is one hundred (bahu) or yards in height. Each of the towers contains 32 keys inside. There are cylinders at every key. Above the towers there are flags and wheels. In front there are instruments to measure the cold. Indicates the weather, wind, sun-light, rain, thunderbolt, fall of stars and other future phenomena. 

Thripeetha Yantram 

This machine contains three bases. In the first, there is a machine having three heads like the elephant’s, but possessing two trunks in each head. In the second there is a three-headed instrument, each of the heads having two trunks of Vyali animal. In the third there is an instrument which has three heads, each of which has the appearance of a rhinoceros with tusks. They can be fitted together or separated as required. The first of these Yantras can stop a stream of water, suck up water of the stream and thus change the direction of the stream. The second can tear mountain asunder and thus create passage. The third can bore a hole in earth, suck up water from down below, and jet the same out through the tusks above its head. Weighs six thousand Ratals. Carries 80 Ratals. Travels and works by the help of steam, electricity and spirits of 23^rd class of wine. This machine is used in constructing roads in water and bridges, and in piercing tunnels across mountains and rocks. 

Vishwamukha Yantram 

This is a very spacious machine. In it there are twelve cylinders containing magnifying glasses. These cylinders are very big and they are fitted that they can be turned into any direction as may be necessary. Weighs 1800 Ratals. Carries forty thousand Ratals. There are two stories in it, which can be separated or joined together with the help of keys. Travels twelve Yojanas with the help of spirits of 32^nd quality, steam or electricity. The upper storey can be separated and can be soared into heavens. By fixing the cylinders to it in the sky an area of 24 Yojanas with forests, countries, seas, cities etc become clearly visible, and a picture/photo of the same can be obtained. Used in traveling and so on. 

Ghantaakaara Yantram 

This machine appears as though seven almirahs are fixed together. Various kinds of wires, the essence or dravaka of the 16^th kind of magnet, and many other dravakas are filled in it. There are two bells of bell-metal or white brass in each of these almirahs, and they are so fitted as to produce a terribly alarming sound just like the alarm of a clock. By the waves produced news of the world at large can be learned. Used in gathering information and in pictures. 

Vishthrithaasya Yantram 

The machine contains a widely open mouth. Weighs 76 Ratals. Carries 120 Ratals. In front of this machine there are five keys appearing as turrets. In the first turret there is a vessel of Chandra Kantha stone of the sixth class. As soon as the moon rises, water oozes in this stone vessel and it is filled. The same water is used by the men in the machine to drink. The other turrets attract the powers of cloud, stars and so on. Travels three Yojanas per hour with the help of spirits of the 14^th class or electricity. Used in traveling. Etc. 

Kravyaada Yantram 

This machine contains three faces. Weighs a hundred Ratals. Carries ten thousand Ratals. With the help of steam it can travel nine Yojanas per hour. Used in traveling and in carrying goods. 

Shankhamukha Yantram 

A machine containing a five faced boring instrument and resembling a conch shell is called Shankha mukha Yantram. There are keys to expand or contract the machine whenever or wherever necessary. Weighs a thousand Ratals. Used in constructing wells, digging, deep pits or boring holes in mines. It can dig 213 bahus or yards in an hour. 

Used also for the purposes contained in the description. 

Gomukha Yantram 

This is modeled after the face of a cow. Weighs 80 Ratals. Carries 700 Ratals. There is a constant flow of water through this mouth. Travels two Yojanas per hour with the help of spirits of the 20^th class. Used in supplying water. 

Ambaraasya Yantram 

This machine appears like sky for those who look at it. Weighs 180 Ratals. Carries 2400 Ratals. Used in transporting elephants, camels, and so on. Travels 3 Yojanas per hour with the help of steam and electricity. 

Sumukha Yantram 

This machine presents a beautiful face of a crab. Weights 118 Ratals. Carries 1150 Ratals. Can travel with the help of spirits of the 14^th class, steam or electricity. Travels two Yojanas on land, four Yojanas in air, and three Yojanas in water, per hour. Used in traveling and transporting goods from place to place. 

Thaaraamukha Yantram 

The balls that are made out of the metal found where stars fall, are called Thaaraamanies. A machine which contains such balls is called Thaaraamukha Yantram. There are three big cylindrical pillars in it. There is another smaller machine inside this machine. The smaller machine contains some draavakas or acids, electricity, some glasses and so on. There are keys at the bottom of the three pillars, above named. By working the first key a brilliant light just like the rainbow will be produced. By working the second key a brilliancy light just like sun-light covered by clouds will be given out.  By working the third key smoke will be issued out like dew. When this machine sails on sea, it can take the photos/pictures of all machines and animals that travel or stay both on and under the surface of the sea. Used in finding out objects that are both on and under the surface of the sea. 

Manigarbha Yantram 

This machine is round or circular in formation. Inside the machine there are balls called Souraka, Paavaka, and so on which attract the heat of solar rays. Weights 64 Ratals. Carries seventy thousand Ratals. Contains twelve faces to allow solar rays in. Travels three kroshas per hour with the help of the spirits of the third class. Used in traveling and attracting the heat of the sun-light. 

Vahinee Yantram 

This machine contains 16 keys and twelve metallic cylinders. Is 32 feet in height and 11 feet in circumference. Underneath there are 48 boring instruments. There are 96 wheels which throw off the mud dug. There are 22 keys which dig up rocks. There are twelve instruments sucking water up. This is a machine to be fixed in earth firmly. The water thus sucked up flows like streams. This machine can dig earth as far as 82 thousand feet deep. Used in digging earth and sucking water up. 

Chakranga Yantram 

This machine is modeled after a trap. There are wheels with stones throughout this machine. By turning one wheel plenty of wind blows out. By turning one wheel plenty of wind blows out. By turning another water flows down. In this way there are wheels by turning which fire, steam, poisonous gas, dew, power, colors and so on are issued. By the turning of the wheels it travels two kroshas per hour. Used in many ways. 

Chaitraka Yantram 

This machine is modeled after a scorpion. There are 24 joints inside. There is a key at every joint. Every key is numbered and colored differently. Music, melodious instruments, conversation, photos and many other wonders will be produced according to the definite key that is pressed. Those who go near it to enjoy these wonders will be not only photographed of their appearance but also of their mind. Used in Bhedopaya or in conquering enemies of deceit. 

Chanchupata Yantram 

This machine is modeled after a bird with its mouth open. Contains four wings. There are five keys to each of these wings. Wires are to be connected to earth from its open mouth. As long as these wires extend in earth, so long the earth will have acquired a peculiar power by which people, if standing in this area will be benumbed. By working the keys attached to the wings the people who stand in the infected area will faint, or the earth will crack and so on, according to the work allotted to be done by the keys. 

Pingaaksha Yantram 

This is modeled after a litter. 

Throughout the body of this machine it is full of green eyes. There is a button in every one of these eyes. This is to be firmly fixed on the summit of a mountain. It is 60 ft. long and 14 ft. in circumference. This is to be fixed in a town or city when it is surrounded by enemies. From this machine keys are arranged and fixed through wires underneath the surface of the earth to the extent of twenty-four miles, around the place. Inside the machine buttons are arranged and numbered for all these keys outside. By pressing the first button it will act upon the particular key and the gates of the fort will be shut. By pressing another the moats will get filled with water. In this way, by pressing the other buttons wonderful phenomena such as tremendous fumes of fire, floods of water, cyclones etc. will be created according to the defined work of each key. This machine is used in defending a city or country against strong enemies when offensive and defensive actions are at an end. 

Puruhootha Yantram 

This is modeled after a mrindanga, or musical instrument. It is 25 feet in height and as much in circumference. There is a machine called Shabda-sphota Yantra inside the machine. When the key is worked a tremendous noise bursts out equal to the simultaneous roar of 63 fierce lions. Used as per the nature of its work.   

Ambareesga Yantram 

This is modeled after an inverted earthen pot. 46 ft in height and 23 ft. in circumference. Contains keys resembling the feet of tortoise on all four sides. Travels in water 6 kroshas per hour with the help of Chakra Bhastrika. Used in finding the things on land under the surface of the seas and bringing them up. 

Bhadraashwa Yantram 

This is modeled after a horse. It possesses a tail of 38 ft. in length. Weighs 54 Ratals. It gallops like a horse with the help of spirits of 32^nd class. Possesses three horses’ speed. At the top of there are three-faced keys. When it is set to work by the key it goes on galloping just like a horse in a circular way. Circles a distance of twelve Yojanas per hour. While in gallops, brilliant sparks of light will come out and destroy all dew or fog covering that area and clear the atmosphere. Used in places and times of dew, where and when the dew obstructs the view.  

Virinchi Yantram 

This is like a globe in appearance. Around it there are 32 wires of 80 ft long and 40 ft in circumference, both in front and back of the machine.  There are three keys to these wires. By working the first key, it becomes loaded with powder and bullets. By working the second it gets ready to the aim. By working the third it fires. It rends the mountains asunder to an extent of 24 feet per shot. Used in constructing tunnels in mountains and rocks. 

Kuladhar Yantram 

This is modeled after a crow. Contains three beaks like those of crows. Inside there is machinery of electricity and so on. At the top there are keys resembling small snuff boxes in which round buttons are inserted. When this machine is fixed on rocks and set to work it expels with the help of its beaks, slabs of stone as per desired dimensions. Cuts out 22 ft. stone in an hour. It is used in cutting stones. 

Balabhadra Yantram 

This is modeled after an inverted metal boiler. 64 feet long and 16 feet wide. On either side there are 16 ploughs 16 ft by 4 ft. wide, fixed. Each plough contains two wings. At the beginning and end of them there are turning screws. Inside there is electricity or steam boiler. There are 24 keys above the machine. At the bottom of everyone of these keys are wheels. By the side there are 32 screws. As soon as they are pressed the machine goes on ploughing land. When the above 24 keys are set, the machine begins to run. Goes 3 Yojanas per hour. Ploughs an area of 3 Yojanas by 64 feet, per hour. The depth of the mud turned up in the land is 3 feet. Used in tilling the land. 

Shaalmali Yantram 

This machine is square in shape and white in color as of the flower of acaria Shireesha. At the top there are sixteen keys each intended for a definite work. By turning the first key, there appear a pair of hands the trunks of elephants and they can hold a weight of hundred Ratals. By working the second key that weight will be placed wherever necessary. The other keys are intended to carry up weights from deep water, and to arrange pieces of stone, timber or the like in or above water in constructing bridges or so. It can also bring down weights from a height of 200 feet. 

Pushpak Yantram   

This is crescent in formation. It is provided with many cradles suspended to it. There are 14 of them on each of the sideways and 8 in the middle, suspended. In those of the right hand side there are machines resembling pigs, while in those of the left wing there are sawing machines. In those of the middle there are screwed wheels suspended to chains. There are two wheels. This machine is to be in a place where timber is to be cut and sawn. If the first key of the upper wheel is turned, the above said pigs come down one by one. Bu working the second screw the pigs fall at the trunk of trees, beat them and cut them with tremendous noise and produce enormous quantity of smoke and fire. This fire spreads to the extent of 16 miles around, burns up all waste matter on land and clears the area. By the action of the fire on trees, the oil and so on will be extracted and stored up in bottles placed at the bottom of those trees. The heat of the fumes on the fire renders all the trees in that area soft like a plantain. The leaves of the trees fall down. By working the third key some more pigs come down and roam about that place exhaling tremendous breaths. Owing to this wind blown the ashes of that area will be swept off  and the land cleared. In the same way, if the key on left side be turned, the saws from the cradles come down one by one. By turning the first screw of that wheel the saws will get themselves ready at the place. of the trees where they are to be sawn. By working the 3^rd screw, the saws will go back to their cradles and from them pairs of hands like the trunks of elephants will come down. These pairs of hands will collect the pieces of timber that are sawn down. This machine weighs 180 Ratals. Can travel in forest with the help of steam power. It is a machine to be fixed to the earth. It can saw 3200 ratals of weight of timber per hour. Used in hewing and sawing timber in large quantities. 

Ashtadla Yantram 

This machine is modeled after a lotus containing 8 petals. Under each of these petals there will be an enclosure. In each of these enclosures. In each of these enclosures there will be the 8 things viz. smoke, electricity, water-vapor, air, Rushakam, Vishasaram, Manjusham and Katusaram which are described in Meghotpati Prakaranam. There is the key in the center of the lotus. In it there are eight screws for the 8 petals. By working any screw the things that are in the connected petal will go high above and form a cloud. By working the central key fumes like solar rays will be given out. As soon as the heat of these fumes acts upon those clouds formed before, they begin to rain. This machine is specialized to get rain. 

Souryayana Yantram 

This is like a pillar 116 feet high and 58 feet in circumference. At the top there is a sieve containing holes and made of glass of the 96^th class called Somapa. From this sieve in this pillar there are twelve machines in order. Above the sieve there is a covering of 97^th class of glass called Somasya Darpana. Above this covering there is a glass wheel called Kumudinee containing spokes made of 98^th class of glass called Chandrika Darpana. In the twelve points of this machine there are twelve upper screws and twelve lower screws. Bu turning the first screw, the contents of the machine such as electricity, cold fluid, Shaitya Drava, Sudha Mushee, Soonruta, Pushkalee, Pranada, Dravinaamrutha, Sooraneee, Jambaalee, Lulita, Vaachaklavee, Gacyoosha, rise up in the definite proportions. Through the cylindrical tubes which are fixed to the wheels of the sieve these powers pass and touch the glass covering above. By turning the electric screw then, the wheel turns 1192 rounds in a minute. Then a power called Someeya of the lunar rays is attracted by this wheel and it gets down through the sieve. Thus the power fills in the bottle below in the form of gas. It must be kept air-tight. Its use is this. When such limbs as head, hands, feet, of a person are cut off, the limbs are fixed to the right place of the body and the body kept in a box. The body must be wrapped in a covering of the bark of a plant called Vaarshneeka Valkala. When to such a body the above Somadrava gas is injuncted 5 Rajanikas, the body is resuscitated. This must be done within five minutes after the injury is done. Used in setting the cut limbs right, or resuscitating the persons killed, in the above manner.  

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Diamonds, Mechanisms Weapons of War Yoga Sutras - By G. R. Josyer.

Did You Know?

Kaliyugi Arjuna in Modern India

The tradition of ancient Indian archery is kept alive even today by a handful of display archers in the country. In the early years of the current century a famous archer from South India, nicknamed Kaliyugi Arjuna, shot a number of tigers and other wild beasts with his bow and arrows. Possessed of a powerful physique and an uncanny aim, he did great things with his favorite weapon, and for some time taught archery to the students of the Prem Maha Vidyalaya, Brindaban. 

He could shoot four arrows simultaneously from the same bow and hit four difficult and different targets all at once. He made people put up spectacle frames fitted with silver rupees instead of glasses, which he shot down with two arrows of such an impeccably calculated force as to displace the little discs without injuring the man. He smeared exceedingly sharp arrow-tips with chalk dust and shot them at the bare backs of students with a perfect delicacy of control, so that they left only chalk marks on their tender targets without even grazing them. But he could also shoot powerful shafts that ripped through copper and iron plates. He could easily support a football in mid air for more than five minutes with a continuous shower of arrows. Imprisoned for seditious activities during the first world war, under the British Rule, he died in jail.

We have seen many of these feats repeated by another archer not many years ago. As well as performing many of the exploits of Kaliyugi Arjuna he could easily hit four thin sticks set upright in the ground at a fair distance with as many arrows discharged together from the bow. And he could also hit his target with his back turned to it, only seeing its reflection in a mirror.

In antiquity, when almost every able-bodied man tried to learn the use of the bow, the standard of archery must doubtless have been high, with not a few outstanding masters of the great weapon.

(source: Ancient Indian Warfare with Special Reference to the Vedic Period - By Sarva Daman Singh appendix). 

War in Ancient India

The history of ancient India is largely a history of Hindu culture and progress. Hindu culture  has a distinct claim to a higher antiquity than Assyrian schools would claim for Sargon I and as much or even higher antiquity than Egyptian scholars would claim for the commencement of the first dynasty of Kings. One aspect of this culture consists in India's political institutions which were almost modern. Modern warfare has developed on mechanical lines, giving less scope for the qualities of courage and individual leadership. The value and importance of the army were realized very early in the history of India, and this led to the maintenance of a permanent militia to put down dissent within and arrest aggression from without. This gave rise to the Ksatriya warrior caste, and the ksatram dharmam came to mean the primary duty of war. To serve the country by participating in war became the svadharma of this  warrior community. 

Hindu military science recognizes two kinds of warfare - the dharmayuddha and the kutayuddha. Dharmayuddha is war carried on the principles of dharma, meaning here the Ksatradharma or the law of Kings and Warriors. In other words, it was a just and righteous war which had the approval of society. On the other hand, kuttayuddha was unrighteous war. It was a crafty fight carried on in secret. The Hindu science of warfare values both niti and saurya i.e. ethical principles and valor. It was therefore realized that the waging of war without regard to moral standards degraded the institution into mere animal ferocity. A monarch desirous of dharma vijaya should conform to the code of ethics enjoined upon warriors. The principles regulating the two kinds of warfare are elaborately described in the Dharmasutras and Dharmasastras, the epics (Ramayana and Mahabharata), the Arthasastra treatises of Kautalya, Kamandaka, and Sukra. Hindu India possessed the classical fourfold force of chariots, elephants, horsemen, and infantry, collectively known as the Caturangabala. Students also know that the old game of chess also goes by the name of Caturanga. From the references to this game in the Rg Veda and the Atharva Veda and in the Buddhists and Jaina books, it must have been very popular in ancient India. The Persian term Chatrang and the Arabic Shatrang are forms of the Sanskrit Caturanga. 

According to Sir A. M. Eliot and Heinrich Brunnhofer (a German Indologist) and Gustav Oppert, all of whom have stated that ancient Hindus knew the use of gunpowder. Eliot tells us that the Arabs learnt the manufacture of gunpowder from India, and that before their Indian connection they had used arrows of naptha. It is also argued that though Persia possessed saltpetre in abundance, the original home of gunpowder was India. In the light of the above remarks we can trace the evolution of fire-arms in the ancient India. (source: German Indologists: Biographies of Scholars in Indian Studies writing in German - By Valentine Stache-Rosen. p.92). Terence Duke, author of The Boddhisattva Warriors: The Origin, Inner Philosophy, History and Symbolism of the Buddhist Martial Art Within India and China, says that martial arts went from India to China and fighting without weapons was a specialty of the ancient Ksatreya warriors of India. 

Introduction

The value and importance of the army were realized very early in the history of India, and this led in course of time to the maintenance of a permanent militia to put down dissensions. War or no war, the army was to be maintained, to meet any unexpected contingency. This gave rise to the Ksatriya or warrior caste, and the ksatram dharman came to mean the primary duty of war. To serve the country by participating in war became the svadharma or this warrior community. 

The necessary education, drill, and discipline to cultivate militarism were confined to the members of one community, the Ksatriyas. This prevented the militant attitude from spreading to other communities and kept the whole social structure unaffected by actual wars and war institutions. 

(image source: War in Ancient India - By V R Ramachandra Dikshitar).

Says the Arthva Veda: "May we revel, living a hundred winters, rich in heroes." The whole country looked upon the members of the ksatriya community as defenders of their country and consequently did not grudge the high influence and power wielded by the Ksatriyas, who were assigned a social rank next in importance to the intellectual and spiritual needs of the society. The ancient Hindus were a sensitive people, and their heroes were instructed that they were defending the noble cause of God, Crown and Country. Viewed in this light, war departments were 'defense' departments and military expenditure were included in the cost of defense. In this, as in many cases, ancient India was ahead of modern ideas.

Chivalry, individual heroism, qualities of mercy and nobility of outlook even in the grimmest of struggles were not unknown to the soldiers of ancient India. Thus among the laws of war, we find that (1) a warrior (Khsatriya) in armor must not fight with one not so clad (2) one should fight only one enemy and cease fighting if the opponent is disabled, (3) aged men, women and children, the retreating, or one who held a straw in his lips as a sign of unconditional surrender should not be killed. It is of topical interest to note that one of the laws enjoins the army to leave the fruit and flower gardens, temples and other places of public worship unmolested.  Terence Duke, author of The Boddhisattva Warriors: The Origin, Inner Philosophy, History and Symbolism of the Buddhist Martial Art Within India and China, martial arts went from India to China. Fighting without weapons was a specialty of the ancient Ksatreya warriors of India. 

Om Tat Sat

                                                        

(Continued...) 

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