Vimanas: Ancient Indian Flying Machines, UFOs, or Sanskrit Sci-fi?

“Flying chariots,” “celestial cars,” “mechanical birds,” “winged vehicles,” and “aerial cities.” These may sound like the swarming aircrafts from James Cameron’s sky-battles in Avatar, but, in fact, they come from a much older source: ancient Sanskrit literature. Called vimanas (pronounced “vimans”) in Sanskrit, such flying vehicles appear throughout India’s ancient texts, especially in combat sequences, when gods and divine beings battle their enemies high above the earth.

Chariots flown by gods are not unique to Indian mythology: the Greek god Apollo flies the Sun Chariot; Kay Kavus, the mythological Persian king steers a flying throne to China; and Thor, of the Norse tradition, commandeers the Chariot of Thunder. What drew me to vimanas is the contingent of modern writers insist that these flying vessels are not limited to mythology – that is, they were actual machines, constructed and flown by ancient Indians.

Ancient Astronaut Theory

David Hatcher Childress, author of The Anti-Gravity Handbook, describes vimanas as “flying saucers… capable of hovering like a modern helicopter or dirigible;” in Chariots of the Gods, Erich von Daniken shows them “…navigating at great heights with the aid of quicksilver and a great propulsive wind.”

Authors like Childress and Daniken – and there are countless others – claim that vimanas are evidence of advanced ancient technology that was invented, perfected, and then lost over time by what vimana expert Dr. Pinotti calls “a forgotten superior civilization” in ancient India.

So is there any convincing, tangible evidence that these ancient flying machines existed? Well, no. The arguments for the existence of vimanas and ancient technology, based largely on loose interpretations and assumptions, are, at best, flimsy. The people who propose these theories – alternative historians, UFO spooks, conspiracy theorists and so on – are more noteworthy for imagination than scholarship. Observe: Childress and von Daniken are both proponents of the “ancient astronaut theory,” which claims that ancient people learned advanced technology from aliens who briefly visited Earth thousands of years ago. So it was with a healthy dose of skepticism that I recently looked through the ancient sources these writers cite in their speculations about vimanas.

Is it a Bird, is it a Plane...?

What I found, though, was amazing. The texts were the product of a remarkable, advanced-beyond-its-time civilization. Only the theorists were missing the point: the fascinating part about the descriptions of vimanas had nothing to do with technology. Just look at a few of the frequently cited passages:

The Vedas (ca. 1500-500 BC), the most ancient scriptures of Indian literature, do not refer to vimanas specifically, but depict vehicles which theorists claim to be the vimanas’ predecessors. One line in the Rig Veda describes “golden-coloured… birds” that fly “up to the heavens.” Described in further detail, these 'birds' appear to be structural:

Twelve are the (pillars), and the wheel is single; three are the naves…. therein are set together spokes three hundred and sixty, which in nowise can be loosened.

Another translation adds “pivots and instruments” to the description. Advocates of ancient technology theories call them the “mechanical birds.”

In the Ramayana (ca. 4th century BC), the Hindu epic poem recounting how Lord Rama rescues his wife Sita from the evil god Ravana, vimana experts cite the flying chariot called the Pushpaka vimana:

Self-propelled was that car. It was large and finely painted. It had two stories and many chambers with windows... It gave forth a melodious sound as it coursed along its airy way.

Later, the Pushpaka vimana is described as an “aerial and excellent chariot going everywhere at will…[rising] up into the higher atmosphere.”

Vimana experts especially point to the Mahabharata (ca. 540-300 BC), a dense, 100,000-verse epic poem which (mainly) records the five Pandava brothers’ violent struggle for rights to the royal throne of Hastinapura. Across the poem’s extended battle scenes, descriptions of flying vimanas are ubiquitous. For example, Arjuna, one of the epic’s heroes, describes “celestial cars by thousands stationed in their respective places and capable of going everywhere at will, and he saw tens of thousands of such cars moving in every direction.” Elsewhere, there are descriptions of a city-vimana, made of iron, which floats in space: Hiranyapura, the “sky-ranging, unearthly aerial city.”

These ancient passages provide an image of vimanas as enormous flying structures, often multi-storied, with elaborate architecture and remarkable agility in flight. Their descriptions as mechanical vessels certainly distinguish them from less-detailed portrayals of Greek, Norse and Persian mythological flying structures, but was that sufficient to bridge the gap between myth and reality? To warrant dozens of books about ancient flying saucer theories? This clearly wasn’t the whole story. What about vimanas had brought all the conspiracy theorists out of the woodwork?

Ancient Engineering

The answer begins with King Bhoja of Dhar (1000-1055 AD), a brilliant medieval Indian philosopher-king and prolific author. One of his more celebrated works is an encyclopedic text on Indian architecture, Samarangana Sutradhara. In one chapter, the King discusses vimanas:

Strong and durable must the body of the Vimana be made, like a great flying bird of light material…. with its iron heating apparatus underneath… a man sitting inside may travel a great distance in the sky. The movements of the Vimana are such that it can vertically ascend, vertically descend, and move slanting forwards and backwards…

"Strong and durable must the body of the Vimana be made, like a great flying bird of light material…. with its iron heating apparatus underneath… a man sitting inside may travel a great distance in the sky."

Bhoja’s description of vimanas goes beyond anything in the Mahabharata, the Ramayana or the Vedic texts. Instead of mythological war-chariots carrying the gods into heavenly battle, Bhoja portrays vimanas as practical, tangible machines with well-defined properties. Nothing celestial about them; they’re examples of fine engineering, described in concrete terms. Of course the text is surprising: imagine someone writing a mechanical study of Apollo’s Sun Chariot.

Ancient technology theorists, of course, point to the vimana’s iron heating apparatus (elsewhere, Bhoja references a “mercury engine”). Traditional scholars, meanwhile, maintain that Bhoja's work is more a continuation of past mythological traditions than anything scientific. The king only describes the vimanas from afar, providing few close details. And most are skeptical when Bhoja writes, "manufacturing details of the vimanas are withheld for the sake of secrecy, not out of ignorance.”

TheVaimanika Shastra of Subbaraya Shastry

But the mystery of vimanas deepens. In 1918, an Indian mystic named Subbaraya Shastry fell into an incantatory trance and began reciting ancient Sanskrit verses. He spoke of vimanas. Like Bhoja’s Samarangana Sutradhara, Shastry’s verses were scientific discourse, rather than stories about gods soaring across the heavens. As the story goes, Shastry’s incantations were 'channeled' across thousands of years from an ancient seer named Bharadvaja who is prominent in other ancient writings. Shastry’s followers transcribed the holy man’s dictations; 35 years later, the text was rediscovered, translated into Hindi and published by G.R. Joyser, the director of the “International Academy of Sanskrit Research” in India. It was published in English shortly thereafter.

The Vaimanika Shastra ('Science of Aeronautics'), as the compiled text is called, is remarkable. Whereas the Samarangana Sutradhara discusses the aircrafts in a broad, conceptual way, Shastry’s text goes into meticulous detail regarding a vimana's every technical facet. The manuscript is comprised of eight chapters with such titles as 'The secret of constructing airplanes which will not break, which cannot be cut, will not catch fire and cannot be destroyed' (Chapter 1), 'The secret of making planes invisible' (Chapter 3), and 'The secrets of destroying enemy planes' (Chapter 8). There are short treatments on the avoidance of aeronautical disaster, the structure of the atmosphere, even proper diet and clothing for vimana pilots.

Particularly interesting is a discussion of how flying has changed over time: in the earliest Yuga (epoch), the text claims that people could fly without the use of vimanas. In other words, Indians invented ancient flying machines only after they lost the ability to fly on their own. The text goes on to describe a number of specific vimana models (complete with fine drawings by a local engineer), serving various purposes; some are built to carry hundreds of passengers or large loads of ammunition, others have the capacity to transform into boats or submarines.

Finally, the text cites 32 “secrets” related to construction and operation of vimanas. These include anti-gravity, radar, invisibility, the use of heat-absorbent metal alloys, solar energy, protective force-fields, and mirrors and lenses crafted for purposes of attack and defense. Also included are concoctions of animal urine as a source of power as well as a weapon called a ‘marika,’ which resembles modern laser technology. Proponents of ancient technology theories, for whom the apparently thousands-of-years-old Vaimanika Shastra is a touchstone, point out that the manuscript references “the work of no less than 70 authorities and 10 experts of air travel in antiquity.”

When the Vaimanika Shastra was brought before the Indian Institute of Science, the scientists scoffed. As thoroughly as it had been written, the committee just as thoroughly dismantled the study in an essay called A Critical Study of the Work Vymanika Shastra. They questioned whether the author (whoever that may have been) had any grasp of basic physics, chemistry and electricity, not to mention the “disciplines of aeronautics: aerodynamics, aeronautical structures, propulsive devices, materials, and metallurgy.” Their conclusion: “None of the planes has properties or capabilities of being flown; the geometries are unimaginably horrendous from the point of view of flying; and the principles of propulsion make them resist rather than assist flying.”

Indeed, vimanas are rather unwieldy. J.B. Hare, who wrote about the text for the Internet Sacred Text Archive, describes them as “absurdly non-aerodynamic… brutalist wedding cakes, with minarets, huge ornithopter wings and dinky propellers.”

World's Earliest Science Fiction?

So, did an ancient Indian civilization build flying machines with anti-gravity, lasers and invisibility cloaks? No, probably not. Not that the discussion will reach a conclusion: vimana enthusiasts will continue pushing their theories (among the more recent arguments is an Indian writer’s claim that wall paintings in a fort in Rajasthan depict rocket launchers), while mainstream science continues to dismiss (or ignore) them. In all likelihood, the hypothesizing will go on indefinitely.

Don't get me wrong. It would be thrilling if the passages describing vimanas were revealed as historical evidence of ancient aeronautical engineers. But until someone unearths the remains of an ancient flying saucer or some other hard evidence to support these passages, they can’t be called anything but excerpts of fiction — merely the invention of long-dead writers.

But wait – we’re talking about thousands-of-years-old depictions of flying machines and medieval studies on the mechanics of fantastic aircrafts. That’s what makes vimanas interesting. It’s not the neverending questions of historicity: it’s the fact that these passages are some of the earliest masterpieces of science fiction, thousands of years before their time. The irony is poignant: Vimana theorists comb these texts for proof that ancient civilizations were sophisticated, while the product of that self-same sophistication is right in front of them. In the squabble of “did they or did they not exist?” what goes ignored is the power of these passages as literature. The rational-thinking historian in me dismisses vimana theories, but to the science fiction-reader in me, they are irresistible. As James Fitzgerald, a Sanskrit scholar at Brown University and translator of the Mahabharata, recently told me, emphatically: “vimanas are literary fantasies and should be treated as such.”

With Fitzgerald in mind, the detailed passages describing vimanas in the Mahabharata, the Ramayana and the Vedas become something more captivating and mysterious than potential historical documents. They demonstrate a creative power that is arguably matchless among ancient literature. King Bhoja’s elaborate study on fantastic flying machines, meanwhile, is uncanny. As for the colorful, idiosyncratic, often absurd Vaimanika Shastra: there’s no way to know whether the holy man Subbaraya Shastry actually channeled the verses from an ancient seer – but it hardly matters.

The treatise on aircrafts with solar power, lasers and force fields is either thousands of years old, or it comes from the imagination of a mystic living in an isolated Indian village in 1918 – either way, it is a text of eerily sophisticated (if bizarre) creative power. While it’s impossible to know the author’s intentions, the text has a dark playfulness; it sounds like something Borges might have written in a more whimsical mood. That the Indian Institute of Science went to such lengths to dismiss the Vaimanika Shastra, contesting everything from inappropriate units of measurement to the suggestion of goat and elephant urine as sources of power, only deepens its potency as fiction.

There is something primeval, something fundamentally captivating about an ancient flying machine. Forget about vimana experts bent on finding that missing puzzle piece of ancient technology; open any number of science fiction books, turn on any number of movies – Avatar, for example – and you will find zooming aircrafts not so different from the “celestial cars”, “winged vehicles” and “aerial cities” of thousands-of-years-old Sanskrit literature.

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About The Author

Will Hunt (follow me:

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Last three pieces by this author:

Second Neolithic 'Venus' Unearthed at Orkney, Scotland | Arbil, Iraq Discovery Could be Earliest Evidence of Humans in the Near East | Ostrich Egg Shells Discovered in South Africa Could be Earliest Evidence of Human Language

Will Hunt is an American freelance writer based in Chennai, India. He studied English and Portuguese as an undergraduate, then received a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship to research various archaeological sites throughout the ancient world. His writing has appeared in various places, including Rolling Stone and Men's Journal.

Comments

Ugly American:

2,000 years ago Lucian of Samosata wrote True History which contains:

travel to outer space
encounter with alien life-forms, including the experience of a first encounter event
interplanetary warfare and imperialism
colonization of planets
artificial atmosphere
liquid air
reflecting telescope
creatures as products of human technology (robot theme)
worlds working by a set of alternate 'physical' laws
explicit desire of the protagonist for exploration and adventure

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_History

Sat, 17-04-2010 06:47

coldarc:

here is what i think happend to us in ancient times

the ancient gods came to earth some 40 to 50 thousand years ago, had children with man and created the giant race of beings refered to as gods. they where draconican reptilians, crossbeeded with man to create god and godess adam and eve. that the sons and daugher of adam and eve become a long list of generations of gods. the egyptian gods decended from the indian gods. the sumerian or what look like sumerian gods and egyptian gods stretched around the whole world. they created pyramids temples and so on to remind them of the constelation and the galactric center their forfathers home worlds. the planet earth represent the galactric center as the sun symbol does to. two snakes two wings and an eye just like two spirals floating in winged milk around the eye like galactic center. each god represent a constelation and rule pyramids of land corresponding the their alignment like a mini galaxy on earth. the name egypt came from a guy named egyptus and has nothing to do with egyptian gods only existing in egypt. the gods had ancient knowlege from before their time about the fractal holograpic nature of reality. they lived longer than humans was telepaths also refered to as demons and did mind control. to put and end to the race of giants the god ra or re created the greet flood to become the only god to rule the world. then god ra iterbreeded with humans as the age of each generation became lesser and lesser to preserve some of god ra´s genes. the sacred bloodlines still live today in royal families disguised as politicians and presidents. the pyramid buliders later called the stone masons whas the arcitect and builder for the gods. they are now what is called the freemasons and still preseved some of the arcitecture of ancient sumer or sumeria what earth was called in ancient times. only the resamblement of the constelation of orion or god ra is preserved in washington dc. the new land of teotihuacan or what it was beforce the aztects. it aqually had an obelisk. that whats missing from the teotihuacan sun pyramid city. the biblical mytology refer to the linage of sacred bloodlines. the draconians or reptilians what ever you want to call them was a part of an ancient star war. if you look at mars there is a crater with identical propotions to the death stars in the move starwars. it might be an ancient particle weapon. life did not evolve on earth first. life evolved on planets around the stars in the zordiac constelations long before the terraformation of earth took place. earth was a gas planet and was terraformes by heating the planets upper atmospheric layer of poisionous gases. earth had very much hydrogen and oxygen in the beginning. what became the oceans and clouds. above and below. all the gas planets have cold electric cores made trough phase conjugate harmonics aswell as eny particle in the hologram. its the coherent behavior of particles that makes up the larger phase conjugate expansion and contraction waves. the reason planets orbit stars is becouse they are fraction phase conjugate spheres. secondary harmonics. they have their own space contraction density. in other words time moves at a faster rate on earth that on the sun. light from the sun is not light on earth. the frequency of light remain the same but the releationship between the phase conjugate frequency range and the lenght of light from the sun causes light form the sun to be in low radio wavelnght on earth. its the x-rays on from the sun that is light on earth. gravity is time compressed energy. the planet act like a frequency converter. and create a dopler like effect. if the speed of light remain constant in all frames of reference its frequecy relationship must change dependent on the speed of time desity of time or time compression. this means a low frequency on earth become a hight frequency on the sun. if the phase conjugate frequency on earth is 10khz compared to the sun and you generate 60hz on earth it will be 60 times 10khz on the sun. this is just an aproximate wey to explan holographic time differential effect on longitudinal bidirection waves. the extraterestrials use a propulsion system that utilize the holographic principle of particle generation of light or phase conjugated bidirectional light wave scalar wave phase differentials. there is two main aproches to star travel. the first one create a phase conjugate wave particle field or higher gravity field at a higher energy density that earth. this technology has serious problems at vast distances and have to accelerate to high speeds. the other technology puches a hole in the fabric of space and follow the suns gravity or the galactic centers gravity to cause time to slow down so everything else moves faster. this technology needs a waveguide to lock their position to a fixed target, preventing lonitudinal drift. like an anchor on a boat on the ocean in a strom., or else they can end up enywhere. they amplify a wave that eminate from the galactic center spacetime density then they split its wave into two beams and change the freuency on one halves of the beam then combine the beams again. this wil repel the wave that is resbonsible for the lonitudinal bidirectional drift in the first place. this create a seperate phase conjugate effect in the gravity amplifer cavity reflectors. they can only move in jumps, from one star to another at the time. this is also the technology of the stargate. they do the same thing they anchor the wave from a time differential in one gate on each planet, allow matter to move faster trought a distace of space. actually its the stars that is moving toward each other that zero down the distance between two points in space. you are actual only moving a litle. the tv show stargate is a cover for the real thing. agencies on this planet use movies to cover up the truth. its possible that the giant gods had acess to such technology. there is no wormholes the rosenbridge is a fantasy. there is no black holes. holograms contain no wormholes. anti-gravity is a way to modify gravity and spacetime. there are aliens out there they cames from the stars.

Mon, 27-09-2010 16:02

Clermont:

Holy crap, COLDARC.

This is the best read i've had in a long long time. This is the funniest crap I think I've ever let run through my head. I'm not sure what the best part of it is.. whether it's the semi-retarded English you use, or the fact that you throw in random long words at the end of each "sentence" (grammar is hilarious too - like you are a 7th grade pakistani kid drunk on red bull and quaaludes ) or simply your conviction. Yes, I think it must be your conviction that makes me laugh so hard and kept me reading the whole time.

Oh, man, if we could teleport back to when I was a stoned college student and have you right there in front of a crowd telling us how all this fantastical stuff works. oh, the joy.

Don't get me wrong, I keep an open mind to the whole ancient alien theory among others,

but I gotta tell ya: this is one damn good read. I think I'm gonna make a tumbr page out of it.
Got any more?!?

cheers.

Sat, 18-12-2010 18:04

Peter Lilienthal:

Hi,

I think this is absolutely brilliant, people without enough imagination or who have trouble getting past your command of the English language just can't see it. Thank you for having the courage to put this out there and enduring ridicule from those who don't get it. You are a visionary.

Peter

Sat, 22-01-2011 16:52

Bob Proulx:

Look at everything modern society has created in the last 200 years. What if a society has 2000 years of uninterrupted peace and prosperity? Think of what could be accomplished!

Now consider what would happen to our society if it were to disintegrate. Nothing that we have created would last for a thousand years with the sole exception of our stone monuments. No writing or painting of any kind, the only thing that would survive would be the oral history , and eventually someone would put that into song, and before you know it the stories of the fish who were made of metal and breathed fire would be laughed at by the scientists of the year 4500 ad.

Now put those two ideas together and the ancient history of the detailed passages describing vimanas in the Mahabharata, the Ramayana and the Vedas become something more , they become...sensible. I believe these ancient writings are the stories of humanity's distant past because, with all that we know about our own modern civilisation, this idea makes the most sense, it is the most most believable theory because it could easily happen to us.

Sat, 22-01-2011 16:54

Julian Alien:

I'm sure these things existed and obviously bits and pieces of the design survived.It is akin to reading the King James version without a translation of the epic of Gilgamesh to guide you.It has been translated and edited so much you don't know what the hell you are looking at.If there was an ancient flying machine sitting around I am sure the degeneration of man over time would have cut it up into trinkets to sell at a bazaar long ago.I plan on buying one of these trinkets on my next trip to India.

Sat, 22-01-2011 19:00

Michael Berry:

It seems to me that every author and theorist is missing a singular and likely the most plausibly viable explanation for all the ancient writings that speak of things that we are able to envision as technology we now posses in similar form. The result of (DEEP DEEP SHAMANIC VISIONARY EXPERIENCES). The evidence for these fantastical craft occur nearly worldwide and across time and space, Indus, Egyptian, Sumeric, Mayan, the list even includes less advanced primitive cultures. If we attribute every seemingly inexplicable structure, legend,writing or pictograph to some alien contact then as the late Dr. Carl Sagan remarked, Earth could be considered a major crossroads of alien travel and visitation. Close and reasoned examination shows nothing that cannot be attributed to the cleverness of the Human mind.

The one common thread of these traditions is based on Shamanism and the passed on experiences within a tribe or early civilisation. Some achieved a highly advanced culture within certain parameters but all regard the VISIONARY EXPERIENCE as a central core of the traditions and eventual religions that developed. All of these cultures had access to powerful psycotrophic flora or some fauna and some, Egypt, the Maya, the early Indus and others left a record, all subject to a plethora of imaginitive interpretation. Likely some of these traditions were gradually diffused across the planet in time and space, but earthbound. I do believe that the Deep-Deep Shamanism entails at least a kernel of truth but that truth would seem to point at an Earthbound explanation, perhaps separate but similar VISIONS of the World of our own time or not too distant future.

A very good example of my point is the Sacophagus Lid of Pakal the Great, Palenque, 615-683AD. To demonstate the point, I would direct you to a short correspondence with some enigmatic pics. found on the site (The Pacal/Moon Connection) that I wrote as a short e-mail to John Anthony West a few years ago. The point of this is that in some very special and notable instances, early man was so profoundly affected by the Shamanic experience that they knew it to be important enough to attempt to record the experience for posterity. Now the big question, why do these legacies seem to point to our era , or has a small cadre of present day man projected these visions thru similar means across the fabric of time, I would proffer that mmankind is " playing mind games".

Sat, 22-01-2011 21:56

Olivia Jean McAfee:

I first remember reading about vimanas in Chariots Of The Gods, the first international best-seller of the controversial author Erich Von Daniken. Down the years I have come across several other interesting references to vimanas elsewhere, too. It wasn't , however, until I recently received an e mail from an Indian reader of my blog (www.datanumen.com) that I recalled just how very intriguing these vimanas and, indeed, many other references to space travel and fantastically advanced technology in ancient Indian texts are. Consequently, I've recently started to explore the Indian ancient astronaut connection in general and in doing so came across this post. Youve got a lot of interesting, fresh content here and I thank you for the time invensted in authoring this piece.

Thu, 27-01-2011 19:50

Ian foley :

I have given it much thought over the years and done a fair amount of reading...Conclusion - we were very advanced at one time and technology took a turn over the years and for a number of reasons/factors we have fallen to a very low level. Technology as we have pursued it has gone counter to what once was and counter to nature. We no longer use the resources available to us and only believe what fits into our modern perameters and lets not forget religion which has made us deny truths and facts - the earth was not flat but the church said it was at one time...Now just take that mentality and project it forward, yep that is how we became so dummbed down to this modern "standard" we are at today...So much for the opposing thumb and ability to reason. But what happened to and where did these "gods" of the past go to. Why have the indians of the jungles settled for a primitive life compared to their decendents who created freeways of water to navigate and built amazing cities? Why have we chosen to be so ignorant? I have no answer, other than to say pehaps greed has played a role for the modern world. Great article and great comments...

Sat, 29-01-2011 22:15

smith:

hoax, stupid, fake.

Wed, 02-03-2011 12:36

Barbara:

This is the most informed writing I’ve ever seen on this subject.

Tue, 05-04-2011 07:30

dan man:

<p> i  think this is absolutely brilliant, people without enough <a href="http://outlookrepairhelp.com/2011/outlook-repair-service-providers-use-outlook-express/">outlook </a>on imagination or who have trouble getting past your command of the English language just can't see it. Thank you for having the courage to put this out there and enduring ridicule from those who don't get it. You are a visionary.</p>

Thu, 11-08-2011 19:50

outlook repair:

<p> keep up the grea posts!</p>

Thu, 11-08-2011 19:52

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