Ancient Indian Vimanas

By Ahini Pandit.

Did Rama truly board the Pushpak Vimana after winning the war with Ravana ? Did medieval saint Tukaram truly go to heaven without leaving his human body as is described in scriptures? He too was said to have boarded a Vimana. Such questions never bothered any of the scientific minded. Mythology was just that, a collection of myths and was not real history.

Then two writers opened our eyes to a very different possibility. Zecharia Sitchin and Erich Von Daniken introduced idea of outer space visitors. Suddenly everything that sounded fantastic and magical began to make sense even to a rational mind.

Here I have decided to put together various fragments of information available about Vimanas in Sanskrit books written over last 5000 years. Classical Sanskrit can be read as any other modern Indian language, and although it is no longer a spoken language, it was never completely forgotten. Plus oral traditions of all scriptures ensured that Sanskrit books survived even when invaders plundered and burned various libraries in ancient India.

When one considers Tukaram’s case in particular, what I have found interesting is that while describing his passage to heaven, none of the chroniclers look at it as magic or any unusual happening .Tukaram boarding a Vimana sent by “God” is described as a completely normal event. Did common people in those days have more information about such things than we do today? This is quite plausible, as most of the information regarding history, art, theology, and ancient technical advancements either went underground or was completely lost after last Hindu King on Deccan Plateau lost the battle against Alladin Khilji around 1305 CE.

To put things in perspective, by the 1600’s no-one any longer had any idea exactly where Ajanta and Ellora cave were located or how to read the edict of Asoka. It was only in the late 19th century that European scholars (predominantly German) began rediscovering this ancient knowledge.

First clear mention of interstellar travel and a Yana (Specifically NOT a Vimana) is made in Chandra Purana, one of the lesser Puranas. This verse clearly states that early dwellers of Planet Earth arrived here from outer space ( Brahmanda). It then goes on to describe in minute details how their Yana was built. Some things mentioned there make very little sense, but largely we can understand that this Yana was a spacecraft designed to escape gravity and reach outer space. It did not have a component that helps modern spacecraft to turn back and get captured again in earth’s gravity. Logically this Yana was not built for returning to wherever it came from.

Though this does not prove visit from outer space, it does raise many relevant questions, which get no satisfactory answers.

Sanskrit treatises on secular and technical subjects have survived mostly in the large temple towns of the South. This was home to Bhaskaracharya’s “Lilawati”, which gave the world our concept of zero and the decimal system of counting. The same temple libraries are also home to “Vaimanik Shashtra“ by Rishi Bharadwaj and “Vimana Bindu” by Acharya Vachaspati .Both sages said to lived between 870 and 700 BC and are quoted widely by Panini (who was the first scholar to codify the laws of grammar) and others .

“Vaimanik Shastra” describes in minute detail how to build a mercury vortex engine to propel aircraft, and also how to build the outer body of this craft. Eight years before the Wright Brothers, Shivkar Bapuji had successfully built an unmanned craft and even tested it. I have previously posted a complete article on this subject to the Book of Thoth competition.

“Vimana Bindu”, in contrast, talks about the maintenance of the aircraft, sourcing of fuel, spare parts, and the like.

Two more books devoted to same subject are “Vimanachandrika” by Acharya Narayanamuni and “Vimana Yantra” by Maharihi Shoumik. Both books are completely technical and do not tell any stories like Chandra Purana. Most of these crafts are described as based on a mercury engine. According to Indologist Stephen Knapp, the earliest details of such an engine are found in the “Samaranga Sutradhara” written by unknown sages around same time as two lesser Vedas.

Another Indologist, William Clarendon, tries to explain how such engines will work from a modern scientific point of view. According to him, four mercury cylinders are built inside a circular airframe, with a mercury boiler at the center. After absorbing solar power, the latent heat in the mercury will develop enough power to escape gravity and navigate the craft over a large distance.

Surprisingly, in recent times NASA, the world’s richest and most powerful scientific organization, has been trying to create an ion engine - a device that uses a stream of high velocity electrified particles instead of a blast of hot gases like in modern jet engines. According to the bi-monthly Ancient Skies published in USA, the aircraft engines which are being developed for future use by NASA, by a strange coincidence also use mercury bombardment units powered by Solar cells! Interestingly, the impulse is generated in seven stages. The mercury propellant is first vaporized, then fed into the thruster discharge chamber where it is ionized and converted into plasma by a combination of electrically “broken-down” electrons, and then accelerated through small openings in a screen to pass out of the engine at velocities between 1200 to 3000 kilometers per minute. But so far NASA’s scientists have been able to produce only one pound of thrust in their experiments, a virtually useless power output.

Did we have visitors from outer space in ancient times? Quite likely, because the people who wrote such detailed treatises about flying machines had never actually built any. So who did?

Compared to this Vimanas are mentioned with much more frequency in various poems and verses describing events of their times upto 1509 when Tukaram is said to have reached heaven after boarding a Vimana. From Ramayana to12th century Geet Govindam outer features of these Vimanas are exactly similar. They are largely circular with or without windows. Can take off vertically ,often quite suddenly leaving large trail of smoke behind.

When we take a close look at more technical books or treatises on the subject, this description about shape etc. looks plausible.