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Title page of the English

translation of Vyamanika

Shastra published in 1973

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The Vaimānika Shāstra ( वमैािनक शा�, lit. "shastra on the topic of

Vimanas"; sometimes also rendered Vimanika, Vymanika) is an early 20th-century Sanskrit text on aeronautics obtained by psychic channeling andautomatic writing. It makes the claim that the vimānas mentioned in ancientSanskrit epics were advanced aerodynamic flying vehicles, similar to a rocket.

The existence of the text was revealed in 1952 by G. R. Josyer who assertedthat it was written by Pandit Subbaraya Shastry (1866–1940), who dictated itduring the years 1918–1923. A Hindi translation was published in 1959, whilethe Sanskrit text with an English translation was published in 1973. It contains3000 shlokas in 8 chapters which Shastry claimed was psychically delivered

to him by the ancient Hindu sage Bharadvaja.[1] The text has gained favoramong proponents of ancient astronaut theories.

A study by aeronautical and mechanical engineering at the Indian Institute ofScience, Bangalore in 1974 concluded that the aircraft described in the textwere "poor concoctions" and that the author showed a complete lack ofunderstanding of aeronautics. The study also states "The Rukma Vimana was the only one which made sense. Ithad long vertical ducts with fans on the top to suck air from the top and send it down the ducts, generating a lift

in the process." [2]

Contents

1 Origin and publication

2 Structure and content3 See also

4 Notes

5 References

6 External links

Origin and publication

Subbaraya Shastry was a mystic from Anekal, who was reputed to speak out verses (slokas) whenever he gotinspiration, described by Josyer as "a walking lexicon gifted with occult perception". According to Josyer, hedictated the text to G. Venkatachala Sharma in the early 1900s (completing it in 1923).

Subbaraya Shastry died in 1941, and Venkatachala took his manuscripts into keeping. The Vaimanika Shastra

manuscript appeared at Rajakiya Sanskrit Library, Baroda by 1944.[3] The text was published in Hindi in

1959[4] and later in English by G.R. Josyer, titled Vymanika Shastra. Josyer's edition also added illustrationsdrawn 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.[5]

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An illustration of the

Shakuna Vimana that is

supposed to fly like a bird

with hinged wings and tail.[5]

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 1973publication that contained the full Sanskrit text with English translation, Josyer quotes a 1952 press release of hiswhich 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 thecourse of an interview recently, showed some very ancient manuscripts which the Academy hadcollected. He claimed that the manuscripts were several thousands of years old, compiled byancient rishis, Bharadwaja, Narada and others, dealing, not with the mysticism of ancient Hinduphilosophy of Atman or Brahman, but with more mundane things vital for the existence of man andprogress 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 showedsome types of designs and drawing of a helicopter-type cargo-loading plane, specially meant forcarrying combustibles and ammunition, passenger aircraft carrying 400 to 500 persons, double andtreble-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 "thepeople connected with publication – directly or indirectly – are solely to blame either for distorting or hiding thehistory 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.[5]

Structure and content

Unlike modern treatises on aeronautics that begin by discussing the generalprinciples of flight before detailing concepts of aircraft design, the VaimanikaShastra straightaway gets into quantitative description, as though a particularaircraft is being described. The topics covered include, "definition of anairplane, a pilot, aerial routes, food, clothing, metals, metal production, mirrorsand 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 claimedto 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".[5]

In 1991, the English portion and the illustrations from the Josyer book werereprinted by David Hatcher Childress in Vimana Aircraft of Ancient India& Atlantis as part of the Lost Science Series. According to Childress, the 8chapters treat the following:

1. The secrets of constructing aeroplanes, which will not break, which

cannot be cut, will not catch fire, and cannot be destroyed.2. The secret of making planes motionless.

3. The secret of making planes invisible.

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4. The secret of hearing conversations and other sounds in enemy places.5. The secret of retrieving photographs of the interior of enemy planes

6. The secret of ascertaining the direction of enemy planes approach.7. The secret of making persons in enemy planes lose consciousness.

8. The secret of destroying enemy planes.

The propulsion of the Vimanas according to Kanjilal (1985) is by a "Mercury Vortex Engines",[7] apparently aconcept similar to electric propulsion. Childress finds evidence for this "mercury vortex engine" in theSamarangana Sutradhara, an 11th-century treatise on architecture.

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

The Vymanika Shastra was first committed to writing between 1918 and 1923, and nobody isclaiming that it came from some mysterious antique manuscript. The fact is, there are nomanuscripts of this text prior to 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 noexposition of the theory of aviation (let alone antigravity). In plain terms, the VS never directlyexplains how Vimanas get up in the air. The text is top-heavy with long lists of often bizarreingredients used to construct various subsystems. ... There is nothing here which Jules Vernecouldn'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 likebrutalist wedding cakes, with minarets, huge ornithopter wings and dinky propellers. In otherwords, 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 aircraftthat the Vaimanika Shastra described were aeronautically unfeasible. The authors remarked that the discussionof 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 thebest poor concoctions, rather than expressions of something real. None of the planes hasproperties or capabilities of being flown; the geometries are unimaginably horrendous from thepoint 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 drawingsdefinitely point to a knowledge of modern machinery. This can be explained on the basis of the factthat Shri Ellappa who made the drawings was in a local engineering college and was thus familiarwith names and details of some machinery. Of course the text retains a structure in language andcontent from which its 'recent nature' cannot be asserted. We must hasten to point out that thisdoes not imply an oriental nature of the text at all. All that may be said is that thematically thedrawings ought to be ruled out of discussion. And the text, as it stands, is incomplete andambiguous by itself and incorrect at many places.

The authors expressed puzzlement at the contradiction and errors in the Vaimanika Shastra text, especiallysince 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).[9]

See also

VimanaShivkar Bapuji Talpade

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Chariots of the Gods

Pranava-Vada of Gargyayana, another Sanskrit text channeled in the early 1900s

Notes

1. ^ Childress (1991), p. 109

2. ^ "Flights of fancy? (Part X of XII)" (http://www.hvk.org/articles/0601/100.html). The Week. 2001-06-24.Retrieved 2009-06-29.

3. ^ Mukunda 1974, p. 2.

4. ^ Swami Brahmamuni Parivrajaka, Brihad Vimana Shastra, Sarvadeshik Arya Pratinidhi Sabha. DayanandBhavan, New Delhi, 1959.

5. ̂a b c d Mukunda 1974

6. ̂a b Shastry & Josyer 1973

7. ^ Childress (1991), p. 249

8. ^ Mukunda 1974, p. 11

9. ^ Mukunda 1974, p. 12

References

Mukunda, H.S.; Deshpande, S.M., Nagendra, H.R., Prabhu, A. and Govindraju, S.P. (1974). "A critical

study of the work "Vyamanika Shastra""(http://cgpl.iisc.ernet.in/site/Portals/0/Publications/ReferedJournal/ACriticalStudyOfTheWorkVaimanikaS

hastra.pdf). Scientific Opinion: 5–12. Retrieved 2007-09-03.

A.S. Shastry, G.R. Josyer, Vymanika Shastra - Pronouncements of Maharshi Bhradwaja (1973) [1]

(http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/vimanas/vs/default.htm)[2] (http://www.sacred-texts.com/ufo/vs/index.htm)

Dileep Kumar Kanjilal, Vimana in Ancient India : Aeroplanes Or Flying Machines in Ancient India,

Sanskrit Pustak Bhandar (1985).

David Hatcher Childress, Vimana Aircraft of Ancient India, Adventures Unlimited Press (1991), ISBN0-932813-12-7

External links

Flights of fancy? (http://www.hvk.org/articles/0601/100.html), The Week, 24 June 2001.

Vimanika Shastra / Vymaanika Shaastra (http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/vimanas/vs/default.htm)

An incomplete version, containing the first six chaptersVymanika Shastra Rediscovered (http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/vimanas/vimanas.htm)

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Categories: Ancient astronaut speculation Unidentified flying objects 1973 books Channelled texts

Sanskrit texts

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