Many ancient Indian treatises, epics and legends tell about flying machines on which Indian gods, demigods, kings and famous commanders moved. Disputes still do not subside - did Vimana planes really exist in ancient India, or are these all the fantasies of numerous authors?
Vimanas in ancient Indian epics
The oldest references to flying mechanisms are found in well-known epics. But the older the source, the more vague descriptions are given there. So, in the most ancient Vedic texts, as well as in ancient Greek and other Indo-European treatises, the gods ride across the sky in solar chariots.
The word "vimana" is first encountered in the "Rig Veda" and denotes a certain mechanism "measuring space." There is also a description of him, but very vague and allegorical.
More details about the vimanas are given in the Ramayana, an ancient poem dedicated to the battle of King Rama with the demon Ravana for the beautiful Sita. Having defeated Ravana, Rama also captures his vimana Pushpaka and flies home with Sita on it. Literally it says there:
Promotional video:
Little is said about the device of the vimaana, but the researchers are struck by the very detailed description of the flight:
Proponents of the existence of flying machines of antiquity argue that such a detailed description of South India could really be done only by looking at it from a bird's eye view.
In the largest Indian epic, the Mahabharata, Vimanas are mentioned as war machines used in the Battle of Kurukshetra. Krishna's adversary Mayasura, ascending into the sky on a vimana, dropped flaming shells on the enemy's troops.
It should be noted that flying vehicles are mentioned not only in ancient Indian epics. A Chaldean work called Sifral (4th century BC) tells how to build a vimaana. Here for the first time in written sources such words as "graphite rod", "copper coils", "crystal indicator", "vibrating spheres", "stable corner structures" are found.
In later times, more precisely in the 11th century AD, the famous Indian scientist and philosopher Bhoja Paramara wrote a treatise "Samarangana Sutradhara" dedicated to construction. In the treatise, along with really valuable recommendations for the construction of gigantic structures, several chapters are devoted to the construction of vimanas. Specifically, it says:
The following are practical instructions on how to take off and land, and how to avoid various annoyances such as collisions with birds. In addition, the sutra states that the ancient vimanas had different configurations: some were in the form of a saucer, others as flat triangles, and others as long cylinders. In his work, Bhoja refers to a manuscript of the ancient Indian scholar Bharadwaja called Yantra Sarvasva. Scientists have not yet been able to locate this source.
Vimanika Shastra
In 1952, the English publisher Josier announced in the British press that a manuscript in Sanskrit had been found in one of the Indian libraries, which describes in detail the structure of ancient aircraft. In 1959 the manuscript was translated into Hindi, later into English. Josier claimed that the found manuscript was part of the lost manuscript of Bharadwaja. However, later it became known that the author of the found manuscript and drawings to it was the Indian mystic Subbaraya Shastri.
Shastri lived in Karnataka at the end of the 19th century and was a pandita - a connoisseur of ancient Sanskrit texts. At the beginning of the twentieth century, he organized telepathic sessions and was quite famous among the English enthusiastic about mysticism. It is believed that he wrote the text of Vimanika while in telepathic contact with Bharadwaja.
Rishi Bharadwaja is considered one of the seven great scientists of India, one of the authors of several chapters of the Rig Veda and the editor of the most relevant version of the Mahabharata today. In addition, he is credited with the authorship of a number of ancient Indian sutras in Sanskrit devoted to medicine, civil law and government, as well as unpreserved or still not discovered treatises on military affairs and the device of aircraft.
Of course, the authenticity of the Vimanika Shastra immediately provoked fierce controversy among scholars and theologians, which continues to this day. The manuscript, consisting of several dozen chapters, describes the structure of various types of vimaanas; device of a mercury vortex engine; composition of alloys for cladding and various internal devices; crew clothing and equipment; a device for overcoming the earth's gravity; a device that can make the vimaana invisible; radars and lightning rods; fuel composition; some types of weapons; flight trajectory calculation and many other details.
Criticism and justification of the theory of the existence of vimana
Most scientists argue that, scientifically, the mechanism described in Vimanick will never fly and that the authors of the treatise, whoever they are, are amateurs in aeronautics. In addition, scientists believe that if the Vimanas existed in antiquity, modern archaeologists would certainly find at least one detail from such an aircraft, and not just rock paintings.
Proponents of the existence of flying vehicles of antiquity provide convincing evidence. In particular, some of the metals and aircraft parts indicated in the Vimanika Shastra, as well as the flight characteristics given in the Samarangana Sutradhara in 1918 (the approximate time of the alleged writing of Vimanika by Subbaraya Shastri) were simply not yet known to mankind. In addition, experiments to create metal alloys according to the recipes given in "Vimanik", in some cases, were successful.
The idea to build the same "gravity" as depicted in "Vimanik" has been dominating inventors all over the world for several decades. So our Russian craftsmen caught fire with it. Check out how they try to prototype a vimaana engine right in the garage:
In any case, the idea of aeronautics is as old as humanity itself. And even if the vimana is just a figment of the imagination of ancient scientists, they can be congratulated: today these bold ideas have already been materialized. We must admit that the fact that we fly on airplanes and spaceships is largely their merit.