Secrets of Vimanas - Part 19
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.
“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
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" 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).
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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). For more refer to chapter on Sacred Angkor
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.
