Since this deals with UFO folklore, I figured GD was the best way to go…
I’ve been pointed to research on Vimanas (aka Yantra aka UFO aka flying craft). I’ve seen a great deal of info about these on the net, so do a search if you are unfamiar with this idea.
Vimanas are the aircraft that ancient far-east Indian cultures had access to. Or created. Or were given. Depending on the writings you read. I’ve read they were used in war and peace. Most claim they are written about in many Indian epics, some Sanskrit texts, etc. Some even claim there are instruction manuals for these craft.
My first idea on this is that it’s all BS. But I admit I know very little of east Indian culture and written text. Anyone know the dope on these legends/texts? Do they even exist, and to what extent (the texts, not the vimanas).
There’s also a story that scientists have uncovered an ancient Indian city destroyed by an atomic blast some 8000 years ago. Also BS, I presume.
Anyone shed any light here? Another MJ12-like fraud? Simple misunderstanding like Roswell? Thanks!
The only thing that I know of that remotely touches on ancient people and flying crafts has to do with the Nazca indians.
A few years ago a couple of scientists built a balloon out of textiles similar to the ones the Nazca wove. They got the balloon to take a person up into the air to a considerable height.
This doesn’t mean that ancients actually flew, but it does prove that they could have with the materials they had at hand.
Magnum’s Mustache said: *My first idea on this is that it’s all BS. *
Your first idea was right, MM. As a professional historian of Indian science, I come across this sort of story, of which this article is a comparatively sensible example, all the time. And I have never yet seen any evidence for practical flying machines in ancient India that Cecil wouldn’t laugh out of court.
*But I admit I know very little of east Indian culture and written text. Anyone know the dope on these legends/texts? Do they even exist, and to what extent (the texts, not the vimanas). *
Just a quibble: “east Indian” actually refers to the East Indies, not the Indian subcontinent. Say “South Asian” or “Indian subcontinent” if you just want to make it clear that you’re referring to the Asian India instead of Amerindians.
There are any number of Sanskrit texts that refer to flying machines or “vimanas”. In the Ramayana, for example, the demon Ravana abducts the heroine Sita in a huge airborne chariot named Pushparaga. Heck, there are Arabic texts that talk about flying carpets, too. This doesn’t mean they ever existed.
Some Sanskrit texts on practical construction do discuss some of the purported mechanisms of flying machines as well as those of more ordinary machines for which there’s artifact evidence. Some readers have been misled by this into thinking that because the flying machine is discussed in a sober and practical way instead of being part of a legend of miraculous events, it must therefore have been developed in reality. However, the same texts also often discuss perpetual-motion machines, so you can see that reality is not necessarily a primary concern here. (S. R. Sarma has written a good article on perpetual-motion machines in ancient India, whose title is something like that although I can’t remember it exactly right now. I remember that one of the machines is a wooden wheel whose hollow spokes are half-filled with mercury, see, so you spin the wheel and the sloshing of the mercury keeps it spinning…)
The “practical details” of the flying machines are also not particularly practical. I quote from the above link: “Bhoja’s Samardngana-sutradhdra states that the main material of a flying machine’s body is light wood, or laghu-ddru. The craft has the shape of a large bird with a wing on each side. The motive force is provided by a fire-chamber with mercury placed over a flame. The power generated by the heated mercury, helped by the flapping of the - wings by a rider inside, causes the machine to fly through the air.” Mercury is, as you can see, a popular substance in Sanskrit texts for the production of a number of different “magical” effects, but I appeal to the Straight Dope Science Advisory Board to pronounce on the feasibility of running an aircraft on “power generated by heated mercury.”
Of course, if you don’t restrict yourself to works actually attested in the Sanskrit textual tradition, you can pretty much find anything you want. I quote again from the above link:
Without in any way impugning the sincerity or the abilities of Pandit Subbaraya Sastry, I merely note that this type of revelation is not generally accepted as a valid historical source. If you want a less credulous account of the evidence we actually have for technological achievements in ancient India, I recommend one of the following works, which are not perfect but which at least concentrate on the known texts and artifacts.
History of science and technology in ancient India, by Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya ; with a foreword by Joseph Needham.
History of technology in India, editor, A.K. Bag.
*There’s also a story that scientists have uncovered an ancient Indian city destroyed by an atomic blast some 8000 years ago. Also BS, I presume. *
I presume so too, although I have not encountered this story. But if the evidence for it is no better than that for the vimanas, you won’t be reading about this in serious journals any time soon.
[Note added in preview: this, of course, has nothing to do with the Amerindian Nazcas in adam yax’s interesting comment.]
I’ve heard of this, too. Unfortunately, I think it was in one of Erich von Daniken’s Chariots of the Gods books, so take it with more than a few grains of salt.
Asmodean, I am not a nuclear scientist, but I think an atomic blast would leave traces of radioactive elements. I, too, think the legend is so much BS manufactured by Von Daniken or some other nitwit.
Oh, that is an, uhm… “interesting” website. (“Earth acupuncture?”) OTOH, they published stories from guys describing how they made crop circles, so I have to commend them for that.
Maybe I’m showing my ignorance here, but if there are naturally-occurring nuclear reactors, is it possible for one to have existed in India and for it to produce so much plutonium (the one in Gabon has produced its own plutonium) that it would spontaneously explode? And the rest of the story was just made up by an imaginative writer trying to make sense of it?
