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Vaimānika Shāstra

January 20, 2023

This article contains Indic text. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks or boxes, misplaced vowels or missing conjuncts instead of Indic text.

The Vaimānika Śāstra (वैमानिक शास्त्र, lit. "shastra on the topic of Vimanas"; or "science of aeronautics", sometimes also rendered Vimanika, Vymanika, Vyamanika) is an early 20th-century text in Sanskrit. It makes the claim that the vimānas mentioned in ancient Sanskrit epics were advanced aerodynamic flying vehicles.

Title page of the English translation of Vyamanika Shastra published in 1973

The existence of the text was revealed in 1952 by G. R. Josyer who asserted that it was written by Pandit Subbaraya Shastry (1866–1940), who dictated it during the years 1918–1923. A Hindi translation was published in 1959, while the Sanskrit text with an English translation was published in 1973. It contains 3000 shlokas in 8 chapters which Shastry claimed was psychically delivered to him by the ancient Hindu sage Bharadvaja.[1] The text has gained favour among proponents of ancient astronauts.

A study by aeronautical and mechanical engineering researchers at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, in 1974 concluded that the aircraft described in the text were "poor concoctions" and that the author showed a complete lack of understanding of aeronautics. Regarding the "Rukma Vimana", the study noted, "If the craft is taken to mean what the drawing and the text say, it can be stated that the craft is a decided impossibility".[2]

Origin and publication

The existence of the text was revealed in 1952 by G. R. Josyer who asserted that it was written by Pandit Subbaraya Shastry (1866–1940), who dictated it during the years 1918–1923. A Hindi translation was published in 1959, while the Sanskrit text with an English translation was published in 1973. It contains 3000 shlokas in 8 chapters which Shastry claimed was psychically delivered to him by the ancient Hindu sage Bharadvaja.[3] The text has gained favour among proponents of ancient astronauts. The Vaimānika Śāstra manuscript appeared at Rajakiya Sanskrit Library, Baroda by 1944.[4] The text was published in Hindi in 1959[5] and later in English by G.R. Josyer, titled Vymanika Shastra.[6] Josyer's edition also added illustrations drawn by T. K. Ellappa, a draughtsman at a local engineering college in Bangalore, under the direction of Shastry, which had been missed in the 1959 edition.[7]

Its existence was first announced publicly in a 1952 press release by G.R. Josyer, who had founded his "International Academy of Sanskrit Research" in Mysore the year before. In the foreword to the 1973 publication that contained the full Sanskrit text with English translation, Josyer quotes a 1952 press release of his which was "published in all the leading dailies of India, and was taken up by Reuter and other World Press News Services":[6]

Mr. G. R. Josyer, Director of the International Academy of Sanskrit Research in Mysore, in the course of an interview recently, showed some very ancient manuscripts which the Academy had collected. He claimed that the manuscripts were several thousands of years old, compiled by ancient rishis, Bharadwaja, Narada and others, dealing, not with the mysticism of ancient Hindu philosophy of Atman or Brahman, but with more mundane things vital for the existence of man and progress of nations both in times of peace and war. [...] One manuscript dealt with Aeronautics, construction of various types of aircraft for civil aviation and for warfare. [...] Mr. Josyer showed some types of designs and drawing of a helicopter-type cargo-loading plane, specially meant for carrying combustibles and ammunition, passenger aircraft carrying 400 to 500 persons, double and treble-decked aircraft. Each of these types had been fully described.

Josyer then tells how he was visited by "Miss Jean Lyon, journalist of Toronto and New York" for an interview, and how Lyon in her Just Half a World Away (1954) concluded that he was "guilty of a rabid nationalism, seeking to wipe out everything since the Vedas".

A critical review pronounced Josyer's introduction to be "least scholarly by any standards" and said that "the people connected with publication – directly or indirectly – are solely to blame either for distorting or hiding the history of the manuscripts", perhaps in an attempt to "eulogise and glorify whatever they can find about our past, even without valid evidence". By tracing the provenance of the manuscript, interviewing associates of Shastry (including G. V. Sharma to whom the text was originally dictated), and based on the linguistic analysis of the text, the review concluded that it came into existence sometime between 1900 and 1922.[7]

Structure and content

 
An illustration of the Shakuna Vimana that is supposed to fly like a bird with hinged wings and tail.[7]
 
An illustration of Rukma Vimana

Unlike modern treatises on aeronautics that begin by discussing the general principles of flight before detailing concepts of aircraft design, the Vaimānika Shāstra starts with a quantitative description, as though a particular aircraft is being described. The topics covered include, "definition of an airplane, a pilot, aerial routes, food, clothing, metals, metal production, mirrors and their uses in wars, varieties of machinery and yantras, planes like ‘mantrik’, ‘tantrik’, and ‘kritak’" and four planes called Shakuna, Sundara, Rukma, and Tripura are described in greater detail. The extant text is claimed to be only a small (one-fortieth) part of a larger work Yantra Sarvaswa ("All about machines"[6]) composed by Maharishi Bharadwaj and other sages for the "benefit of all mankind".[7]

Appraisal

J. B. Hare of the Internet Sacred Text Archive in 2005 compiled an online edition of Josyer's 1973 book, in the site's "UFOs" section. In his introduction, Hare writes

The Vaimānika Śāstra was first committed to writing between 1918 and 1923, and nobody is claiming that it came from some mysterious antique manuscript. The fact is, there are no manuscripts of this text before 1918, and nobody is claiming that there are. So on one level, this is not a hoax. You just have to buy into the assumption that 'channeling' works. ... there is no exposition of the theory of aviation (let alone antigravity). In plain terms, the VS. never directly explains how Vimanas get up in the air. The text is top-heavy with long lists of often bizarre ingredients used to construct various subsystems. ... There is nothing here which Jules Verne couldn't have dreamed up, no mention of exotic elements or advanced construction techniques. The 1923 technical illustration based on the text ... are absurdly un-aerodynamic. They look like brutalist wedding cakes, with minarets, huge ornithopter wings and dinky propellers. In other words, they look like typical early 20th century fantasy flying machines with an Indian twist.

A 1974 study by researchers at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, found that the heavier-than-air aircraft that the Vaimānika Śāstra described were aeronautically unfeasible. The authors remarked that the discussion of the principles of flight in the text were largely perfunctory and incorrect, in some cases violating Newton's laws of motion. The study concluded:[8]

Any reader by now would have concluded the obvious – that the planes described above are the best poor concoctions, rather than expressions of something real. 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. The text and the drawings do not correlate with each other even thematically. The drawings definitely point to a knowledge of modern machinery. This can be explained on the basis of the fact that Shri Ellappa who made the drawings was in a local engineering college and was thus familiar with names and details of some machinery. Of course the text retains a structure in language and content from which its 'recent nature' cannot be asserted. We must hasten to point out that this does not imply an oriental nature of the text at all. All that may be said is that thematically the drawings ought to be ruled out of discussion. And the text, as it stands, is incomplete and ambiguous by itself and incorrect at many places.

The authors expressed puzzlement at the contradiction and errors in the Vaimānika Śāstra text, especially since its compilers supposedly had access to publications that did not make such errors (such as Dayanand Saraswati's commentary on the Rigveda published in 1878 or earlier).[2]

Controversy

Main article: 2015 Indian Science Congress ancient aircraft controversy

The 102nd Indian Science Congress held at the Mumbai University in January 2015 organised a session on "ancient sciences through Sanskrit" in which a presentation on Vaimānika Śāstra was included. It was delivered by Anand J. Bodas, a pilot, and Ameya Jadhav, who holds in an M.A. in Sanskrit as well as an M.Tech. degree. Bodas, speaking to the news media, has said that the aeroplanes of Vedic times could fly not only from country to country, but also "from planet to planet." "In those days, aeroplanes were huge in size, and could move left, right, as well as backwards, unlike modern planes which only fly forward," he added. Ram Prasad Gandhiraman, a NASA scientist, launched an on-line petition demanding that the talk be cancelled as it represents pseudoscience.[9][10]

Vaimānika Shāstra and vimanas are also mentioned in works about pseudoscience such as Regal's Pseudoscience: A Critical Encyclopedia.[11][12] According to Regal, vimanas are one of the common attempts to fit elements of ancient cultures into contemporary narratives.[12] When put under scrutiny, the Vaimānika Shāstra "comes off as jibberish [sic]".[12]

In popular culture

  • In 2010, 'Prapaatha', a Kannada language film made by K. Suchendra Prasad, has a story line where a young man tries to find out works of Subbaraya Shastry.[13]
  • In 2015 Hindi film Hawaizaada, Vaimānika Shāstra has been shown as the main theory book to build "India's first unmanned plane". The book was shown by Pandit Subbaraya Shastry (portrayed by Mithun Chakraborty), who originally wrote it.
  • In 2016, 'Vyamanika' is a duo album recorded by Kit Downes on church organ and Tom Challenger on saxophone in five Suffolk churches on the slipimprint recording label.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Childress 1991, p. 109
  2. ^ a b Mukunda 1974, p. 12
  3. ^ Childress 1991, p. 109
  4. ^ Mukunda 1974, p. 2.
  5. ^ Parivrajaka 1959
  6. ^ a b c Shastry & Josyer 1973
  7. ^ a b c d Mukunda 1974
  8. ^ Mukunda 1974, p. 11
  9. ^ Pseudo-science must not figure in Indian Science Congress, Mumbai Mirror, 31 December 2014
  10. ^ Indian Science Congress: Vedic myth must not be masqueraded as science, says Nasa scientist, Firstpost, 31 December 2014
  11. ^ Regal 2009, pp. 16–17.
  12. ^ a b c Regal 2009, p. 164.
  13. ^ "Beyond one's depth". The Hindu. Retrieved September 9, 2010.

References

  • Childress, David Hatcher (1991). Vimana Aircraft of Ancient India. Adventures Unlimited Press. ISBN 0-932813-12-7.
  • Kanjilal, Dileep Kumar (1985). Vimana in Ancient India : Aeroplanes Or Flying Machines in Ancient India. Sanskrit Pustak Bhandar.
  • Mukunda, H. S.; Deshpande, S. M.; Nagendra, H. R.; Prabhu, A. & Govindraju, S. P. (1974). "A critical study of the work "Vyamanika Shastra"" (PDF). Scientific Opinion: 5–12. Retrieved 2007-09-03.
  • Parivrajaka, Swami Brahmamuni (1959). Brihad Vimana Shastra. New Delhi: Sarvadeshik Arya Pratinidhi Sabha, Dayanand Bhavan.
  • Shastry, Subbaraya; Josyer, G. R. (1973). Vymaanika Shaastra - Aeronautics by Maharshi Bharadwaaja. Mysore: Coronation Press.
  • Regal, Brian (2009). Pseudoscience: A Critical Encyclopedia. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 9780313355080.

External links

  • , The Week, 24 June 2001.
  • Vimanika Shastra An incomplete version, containing the first six chapters, archived by Sacred Texts web site
  • The Vimanika Shastra An incomplete version, containing the first six chapters, archived by scribd.com
  • M. P. Rao; et al. (1 June 2001). "Vymanika Shastra Rediscovered". Aeronautics Research and Development Board, India.

January 20, 2023
vaimānika, shāstra, editor, performed, search, found, that, sufficient, sources, exist, establish, subject, notability, these, sources, used, expand, article, described, edit, summaries, found, talk, page, article, include, original, research, omit, significan. An editor has performed a search and found that sufficient sources exist to establish the subject s notability These sources can be used to expand the article and may be described in edit summaries or found on the talk page The article may include original research or omit significant information about the subject Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources Unsourced material may be challenged and removed Find sources Vaimanika Shastra news newspapers books scholar JSTOR January 2020 Learn how and when to remove this template message This article contains Indic text Without proper rendering support you may see question marks or boxes misplaced vowels or missing conjuncts instead of Indic text The Vaimanika Sastra व म न क श स त र lit shastra on the topic of Vimanas or science of aeronautics sometimes also rendered Vimanika Vymanika Vyamanika is an early 20th century text in Sanskrit It makes the claim that the vimanas mentioned in ancient Sanskrit epics were advanced aerodynamic flying vehicles Title page of the English translation of Vyamanika Shastra published in 1973 The existence of the text was revealed in 1952 by G R Josyer who asserted that it was written by Pandit Subbaraya Shastry 1866 1940 who dictated it during the years 1918 1923 A Hindi translation was published in 1959 while the Sanskrit text with an English translation was published in 1973 It contains 3000 shlokas in 8 chapters which Shastry claimed was psychically delivered to him by the ancient Hindu sage Bharadvaja 1 The text has gained favour among proponents of ancient astronauts A study by aeronautical and mechanical engineering researchers at the Indian Institute of Science Bangalore in 1974 concluded that the aircraft described in the text were poor concoctions and that the author showed a complete lack of understanding of aeronautics Regarding the Rukma Vimana the study noted If the craft is taken to mean what the drawing and the text say it can be stated that the craft is a decided impossibility 2 Contents 1 Origin and publication 2 Structure and content 3 Appraisal 4 Controversy 5 In popular culture 6 See also 7 Notes 8 References 9 External linksOrigin and publication EditThe existence of the text was revealed in 1952 by G R Josyer who asserted that it was written by Pandit Subbaraya Shastry 1866 1940 who dictated it during the years 1918 1923 A Hindi translation was published in 1959 while the Sanskrit text with an English translation was published in 1973 It contains 3000 shlokas in 8 chapters which Shastry claimed was psychically delivered to him by the ancient Hindu sage Bharadvaja 3 The text has gained favour among proponents of ancient astronauts The Vaimanika Sastra manuscript appeared at Rajakiya Sanskrit Library Baroda by 1944 4 The text was published in Hindi in 1959 5 and later in English by G R Josyer titled Vymanika Shastra 6 Josyer s edition also added illustrations drawn by T K Ellappa a draughtsman at a local engineering college in Bangalore under the direction of Shastry which had been missed in the 1959 edition 7 Its existence was first announced publicly in a 1952 press release by G R Josyer who had founded his International Academy of Sanskrit Research in Mysore the year before In the foreword to the 1973 publication that contained the full Sanskrit text with English translation Josyer quotes a 1952 press release of his which was published in all the leading dailies of India and was taken up by Reuter and other World Press News Services 6 Mr G R Josyer Director of the International Academy of Sanskrit Research in Mysore in the course of an interview recently showed some very ancient manuscripts which the Academy had collected He claimed that the manuscripts were several thousands of years old compiled by ancient rishis Bharadwaja Narada and others dealing not with the mysticism of ancient Hindu philosophy of Atman or Brahman but with more mundane things vital for the existence of man and progress of nations both in times of peace and war One manuscript dealt with Aeronautics construction of various types of aircraft for civil aviation and for warfare Mr Josyer showed some types of designs and drawing of a helicopter type cargo loading plane specially meant for carrying combustibles and ammunition passenger aircraft carrying 400 to 500 persons double and treble decked aircraft Each of these types had been fully described Josyer then tells how he was visited by Miss Jean Lyon journalist of Toronto and New York for an interview and how Lyon in her Just Half a World Away 1954 concluded that he was guilty of a rabid nationalism seeking to wipe out everything since the Vedas A critical review pronounced Josyer s introduction to be least scholarly by any standards and said that the people connected with publication directly or indirectly are solely to blame either for distorting or hiding the history of the manuscripts perhaps in an attempt to eulogise and glorify whatever they can find about our past even without valid evidence By tracing the provenance of the manuscript interviewing associates of Shastry including G V Sharma to whom the text was originally dictated and based on the linguistic analysis of the text the review concluded that it came into existence sometime between 1900 and 1922 7 Structure and content Edit An illustration of the Shakuna Vimana that is supposed to fly like a bird with hinged wings and tail 7 An illustration of Rukma Vimana Unlike modern treatises on aeronautics that begin by discussing the general principles of flight before detailing concepts of aircraft design the Vaimanika Shastra starts with a quantitative description as though a particular aircraft is being described The topics covered include definition of an airplane a pilot aerial routes food clothing metals metal production mirrors and their uses in wars varieties of machinery and yantras planes like mantrik tantrik and kritak and four planes called Shakuna Sundara Rukma and Tripura are described in greater detail The extant text is claimed to be only a small one fortieth part of a larger work Yantra Sarvaswa All about machines 6 composed by Maharishi Bharadwaj and other sages for the benefit of all mankind 7 Appraisal EditJ B Hare of the Internet Sacred Text Archive in 2005 compiled an online edition of Josyer s 1973 book in the site s UFOs section In his introduction Hare writes The Vaimanika Sastra was first committed to writing between 1918 and 1923 and nobody is claiming that it came from some mysterious antique manuscript The fact is there are no manuscripts of this text before 1918 and nobody is claiming that there are So on one level this is not a hoax You just have to buy into the assumption that channeling works there is no exposition of the theory of aviation let alone antigravity In plain terms the VS never directly explains how Vimanas get up in the air The text is top heavy with long lists of often bizarre ingredients used to construct various subsystems There is nothing here which Jules Verne couldn t have dreamed up no mention of exotic elements or advanced construction techniques The 1923 technical illustration based on the text are absurdly un aerodynamic They look like brutalist wedding cakes with minarets huge ornithopter wings and dinky propellers In other words they look like typical early 20th century fantasy flying machines with an Indian twist A 1974 study by researchers at the Indian Institute of Science Bangalore found that the heavier than air aircraft that the Vaimanika Sastra described were aeronautically unfeasible The authors remarked that the discussion of the principles of flight in the text were largely perfunctory and incorrect in some cases violating Newton s laws of motion The study concluded 8 Any reader by now would have concluded the obvious that the planes described above are the best poor concoctions rather than expressions of something real 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 The text and the drawings do not correlate with each other even thematically The drawings definitely point to a knowledge of modern machinery This can be explained on the basis of the fact that Shri Ellappa who made the drawings was in a local engineering college and was thus familiar with names and details of some machinery Of course the text retains a structure in language and content from which its recent nature cannot be asserted We must hasten to point out that this does not imply an oriental nature of the text at all All that may be said is that thematically the drawings ought to be ruled out of discussion And the text as it stands is incomplete and ambiguous by itself and incorrect at many places The authors expressed puzzlement at the contradiction and errors in the Vaimanika Sastra text especially since its compilers supposedly had access to publications that did not make such errors such as Dayanand Saraswati s commentary on the Rigveda published in 1878 or earlier 2 Controversy EditMain article 2015 Indian Science Congress ancient aircraft controversy The 102nd Indian Science Congress held at the Mumbai University in January 2015 organised a session on ancient sciences through Sanskrit in which a presentation on Vaimanika Sastra was included It was delivered by Anand J Bodas a pilot and Ameya Jadhav who holds in an M A in Sanskrit as well as an M Tech degree Bodas speaking to the news media has said that the aeroplanes of Vedic times could fly not only from country to country but also from planet to planet In those days aeroplanes were huge in size and could move left right as well as backwards unlike modern planes which only fly forward he added Ram Prasad Gandhiraman a NASA scientist launched an on line petition demanding that the talk be cancelled as it represents pseudoscience 9 10 Vaimanika Shastra and vimanas are also mentioned in works about pseudoscience such as Regal s Pseudoscience A Critical Encyclopedia 11 12 According to Regal vimanas are one of the common attempts to fit elements of ancient cultures into contemporary narratives 12 When put under scrutiny the Vaimanika Shastra comes off as jibberish sic 12 In popular culture EditIn 2010 Prapaatha a Kannada language film made by K Suchendra Prasad has a story line where a young man tries to find out works of Subbaraya Shastry 13 In 2015 Hindi film Hawaizaada Vaimanika Shastra has been shown as the main theory book to build India s first unmanned plane The book was shown by Pandit Subbaraya Shastry portrayed by Mithun Chakraborty who originally wrote it In 2016 Vyamanika is a duo album recorded by Kit Downes on church organ and Tom Challenger on saxophone in five Suffolk churches on the slipimprint recording label See also EditQuimbaya artifacts Chariots of the Gods Pranava Vada of GargyayanaNotes Edit Childress 1991 p 109 a b Mukunda 1974 p 12harvnb error no target CITEREFMukunda1974 help Childress 1991 p 109 Mukunda 1974harvnb error no target CITEREFMukunda1974 help p 2 Parivrajaka 1959 a b c Shastry amp Josyer 1973 a b c d Mukunda 1974harvnb error no target CITEREFMukunda1974 help Mukunda 1974 p 11harvnb error no target CITEREFMukunda1974 help Pseudo science must not figure in Indian Science Congress Mumbai Mirror 31 December 2014 Indian Science Congress Vedic myth must not be masqueraded as science says Nasa scientist Firstpost 31 December 2014 Regal 2009 pp 16 17 a b c Regal 2009 p 164 Beyond one s depth The Hindu Retrieved September 9 2010 References EditChildress David Hatcher 1991 Vimana Aircraft of Ancient India Adventures Unlimited Press ISBN 0 932813 12 7 Kanjilal Dileep Kumar 1985 Vimana in Ancient India Aeroplanes Or Flying Machines in Ancient India Sanskrit Pustak Bhandar Mukunda H S Deshpande S M Nagendra H R Prabhu A amp Govindraju S P 1974 A critical study of the work Vyamanika Shastra PDF Scientific Opinion 5 12 Retrieved 2007 09 03 Parivrajaka Swami Brahmamuni 1959 Brihad Vimana Shastra New Delhi Sarvadeshik Arya Pratinidhi Sabha Dayanand Bhavan Shastry Subbaraya Josyer G R 1973 Vymaanika Shaastra Aeronautics by Maharshi Bharadwaaja Mysore Coronation Press Regal Brian 2009 Pseudoscience A Critical Encyclopedia ABC CLIO ISBN 9780313355080 External links EditFlights of fancy The Week 24 June 2001 Vimanika Shastra An incomplete version containing the first six chapters archived by Sacred Texts web site The Vimanika Shastra An incomplete version containing the first six chapters archived by scribd com M P Rao et al 1 June 2001 Vymanika Shastra Rediscovered Aeronautics Research and Development Board India Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Vaimanika Shastra amp oldid 1125735628, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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