Ancient Hindus could navigate the air

The Rig Veda, the oldest document of the human race, includes references to the

following modes of transportation: jalayan—a vehicle designed to operate in air

and water (Rig Veda 6.58.3); kaara—a vehicle that operates on ground and in

water (Rig Veda 9.14.1); tritala—a vehicle consisting of three storeys (Rig

Veda 3.14.1); trichakra ratha—a three-wheeled vehicle designed to operate in

air (Rig Veda 4.36.1); vaayu ratha—a gas or wind-powered chariot (Rig Veda

5.41.6); vidyut ratha—a vehicle that operates on power (Rig Veda 3.14.1).

Ancient Sanskrit literature is full of descriptions of flying machines—vimanas.

>From the many documents found, it is evident that the scientist-sages Agastya

and Bharadwaja had developed the lore of aircraft construction. The Agastya

Samhita gives Agastya’s descriptions on two types of aeroplanes. The first is a

chchatra (umbrella or

balloon) to be filled with hydrogen. The process of extracting hydrogen from

water is described in elaborate detail and the use of electricity in achieving

this is clearly stated. This was considered to be a primitive type of plane,

useful only for escaping from a fort when the enemy had set fire to the jungle

all around. Hence the name agniyana. The second type of aircraft mentioned is

somewhat on the lines of the parachute. It could be opened and shut by

operating chords. This aircraft has been described as vimanadvigunam, i.e. of a

lower order than the regular aeroplane. The process of extracting hydrogen from

water is described in elaborate detail and the use of electricity in achieving

this is clearly stated. Aeronautics or Vaimaanika Shastra is a part of Yantra

Sarvasva of Bharadwaja. This is also known as Brihadvimaana Shastra. Vaimaanika

Shastra deals with aeronautics, including the design

of aircraft, the way they can be used for transportation and other applications,

in detail. The knowledge of aeronautics is described in Sanskrit in 100

sections, eight chapters, 500 principles and 3,000 shlokas. Great sage

Bharadwaja explained the construction of aircraft and the way to fly it in air,

on land, on water and use the same aircraft like a submarine. He also described

the construction of war-planes and fighter aircraft. Vaimaanika Shastra

explains the metals and alloys and other required material, which can make an

aircraft imperishable in any condition. Planes which will not break (abhedya),

or catch fire (adaahya) and which cannot be cut (achchedya) have been

described. Along with the treatise, there are diagrams on three types of

aeroplanes—Sundara, Shukana and Rukma. The aircraft is classified into three

types—Mantrika, Tantrika and Kritaka, to suit different yugas or eras. In krita

yuga, it is said, Dharma

was well established. The people of that time had the divinity to reach any

place using their ashtasiddhis. The aircraft used in treta yuga are called

Mantrika vimana, flown by the power of hymns (mantras). Twenty-five varieties

of aircraft including Pushpaka vimana belong to this era. The aircraft used in

dwapara yuga were called Tantrika vimana, flown by the power of tantras.

Fifty-six varieties of aircraft including Bhairava and Nandaka belong to this

era. The aircraft used in kali yuga, the on-going yuga, are called Kritaka

vimana, flown by the power of engines. Twenty-five varieties of aircraft

including Sundara, Shukana and Rukma belong to this era. Bharadwaja states that

there are 32 secrets of the science of aeronautics. Of these, some are

astonishing and some indicate an advance even beyond our own times. For

instance, the secret of para shabda graaha, i.e. a cabin for listening to the

conversation in another plane, has been explained by elaborately describing an

electrically worked sound-receiver that did the trick. Manufacture of different

types of instruments and putting them together to form an aircraft are also

described. It appears that aerial warfare was also not unknown, for the

treatise gives the techniques of shatru vimana kampana kriya, and shatru vimana

nashana kriya, i.e. shaking and destroying enemy aircraft, as well as

photographing enemy planes, rendering their occupants unconscious and making

one’s own plane invisible. In Vastraadhikarana, the chapter describing the

dress and other material required while flying, talks in detail about the

clotheswear for both the pilot and the passenger separately. Ahaaraadhikarana

is yet another section exclusively dealing with the food habits of a pilot.

This has a variety of guidelines for pilots to maintain their health through

strict diet. Bharadwaja

also provides a bibliography. He had consulted six treatises by six different

authors previous to him and he gives their names and the names of their works

in the following order: Vimana Chandrika by Narayanamuni; Vyoma Yana Mantrah by

Shaunaka; Yantra Kalpa by Garga; Yana Bindu by Vachaspati; Kheta Yaana

Pradeepika by Chaakraayani; Vyoma Yaanarka Prakasha by Dundi Natha. As before

Bharadwaja, after him too there have been Sanskrit writers on aeronautics and

there were four commentaries on his work. The names of the commentators are

Bodh Deva, Lalla, Narayana Shankha and Vishwambhara. Vaimaanika Shastra

explains the metals and alloys and other required material, which can make an

aircraft imperishable in any condition.Evidence of existence of aircraft are

also found in the Arthashastra of Kautilya (c. 3rd century b.c.). Kautilya

mentions amongst various tradesmen and

technocrats the saubhikas as ‘pilots conducting vehicles in the sky’. Saubha was

the name of the aerial flying city of King Harishchandra and the form saubika

means ‘one who flies or knows the art of flying an aerial city’. Kautilya uses

another significant word, akasa yodhinah, which has been translated as ‘persons

who are trained to fight from the sky’. The existence of aerial chariots, in

whatever form it might be, was so well-known that it found a place among the

royal edicts of Emperor Asoka and which were executed during his reign from

256-237 b.c. It is interesting to note that the Academy of Sanskrit Research in

Melkote, near Mandya, had been commissioned by the Aeronautical Research

Development Board, New Delhi, to take up a one-year study on ‘Non-conventional

Approach to Aeronautics’, on the basis of Vaimaanika Shastra. As a result of

the research, a glass-like material which cannot be detected by radar has been

developed by Prof.

Dongre, a research scholar of Benaras Hindu University. A plane coated with this

unique material cannot be detected using radar. But perhaps the most interesting

thing about the Indian science of aeronautics and Bharadwaja’s research in the

field was that they were successfully tested in actual practice by an Indian

over a 100 years ago. In 1895, full eight years before the Wright Brothers’

first flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, USA, Shivkar Bapuji Talpade and his

wife gave a thrilling demonstration flight on Chowpatty beach in Mumbai. An even

more astonishing feature of Talpade’s aircraft was the power source he used—an

ion engine. The theory of the ion engine has been credited to Robert Goddard,

long recognised as the father of liquid-fuel rocketry. It is claimed that in

1906, long before Goddard launched his first modern rocket, his imagination had

conceived the concept of an ion rocket. But the fact is that not only had the

idea of an ion engine been

conceived long before Dr Goddard, it had also been materialised in the form of

Talpade’s aircraft. Talpade, a resident of Mumbai, was an erudite scholar of

Sanskrit literature, especially of the Vedas, an inventor and a teacher in the

School of Arts. His deep study of the Vedas led him to construct an aeroplane

in conformity with the descriptions of the aircraft available in the Vedas and

he displayed it in an exhibition arranged by the Bombay Art Society in the Town

Hall. Its proving the star attraction of the exhibition encouraged its maker to

delve deeper into the matter and see if the plane could be flown with the aid

of mercurial pressure. For, the one hundred-and-ninetieth richa (verse) of the

Rig Veda and the aeronautical treatise of Bharadwaja mention that flying

machines came into full operation when the power of the sun’s rays, mercury and

another chemicals called naksha rasas were blended together. This energy was, it

seems, stored in

something like an accumulator or storage batteries. The Vedas refer to eight

different engines in the plane and Bharadwaja adds that they are worked by

electricity. Talpade carried on his research along these lines and constructed

an aeroplane. In his experiments he was aided by his wife, also a deep scholar

of the Vedic lore, and an architect-friend. The plane combined the

constructional characteristics of both Pushpaka and Marut Sakha, the sixth and

eighth types of aircraft described by Bharadwaja. It was named Marut Sakha

meaning “friend of the wind”. With this plane, this pioneer airman of modern

India gave a demonstration flight on the Chowpatty beach in Mumbai in the year

1895. The machine attained a height of about 1,500 feet and then automatically

landed safely. The flight was witnessed, among many others, by Shri Sayajirao

Gaekwad, the Maharaja of Baroda and Justice Govind Ranade and was reported in

the Kesari, a leading Marathi daily newspaper. They

were impressed by the feat and rewarded the talented inventor. Unfortunately,

Talpade lost interest in things after his wife’s death, and after his own death

in 1917 at the age of 53, his relatives sold the machine to the Rally Brothers,

a leading British exporting firm then operating in Mumbai. Thus, the first ever

attempt at flying in modern India, undertaken and made successful by an Indian,

in a plane of Indian manufacture and built to Indian scientific specifications,

slid into the limbo of oblivion.

(The writer can be contacted at shachi_rairikar (AT) hotmail (DOT) com)

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