Flying devices are commonplace in many religions, and Hinduism is no exception. According to ancient Sanskrit texts found a few years ago by Westerners in a South Indian temple, Vimanas were open topped flying devices, restricted to the Earth’s atmosphere.
The origin of the word “vimana” can be found in Sanskrit, even though the Cologne Digital Sanskrit Lexicon doesn’t list it:
vimaanam.h: an aircraft, plane
In its original meaning, vimana refers to flying machines, though, of course, not directly to flying saucers. According to Sanskrit literature professor Prof. Dileep Kumar Kanjilal, Ph.D. of the West Bengal Senior Educational Service:
“In addition to the Vaimanika Shashtra, the Samarangana Sutradhara and the Yuktikalpataru of Bhoja, there are about 150 verses of the Rig Veda, Yajurveda and the Atharvaveda, a lot of literary passages belonging to the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the Puranas, the Bhagavata and the Raghuvamsa and some references of the darma Abhijnanasakuntalam of Kalidasa, the Abimaraka of Bhasa, the Jatalas. the Avadhana Literature and of the Kathasaritsagara and a number of literary works contained either references to graphic aerial flight or to the mechanism of the aerial vehicles used in old ages in India.”
Reference to flying vehicles occurred in the Mahabharata in about 41 places of which the air attack of Salva on Krisna’s capital Dwaraka deserve special notice.
The first researcher to spot such unusual flying machines was Lord Desmond Leslie, the friend of contactee George Adamski, in the early 1950’s. Leslie not being a true expert of Sanskrit, his work has been criticized. Dr. Roberto Pinotti, an Italian scientist and ufologist, on October 12, 1988 was a speaker in the World Space Conference in Bangalore, India.
He referred to several Hindu texts and pointed out that Indian gods and heroes fought in the skies using piloted vehicles armed with weapons. These weapons consisted of seven different types of mirrors and lenses, which were used for offensive and defensive purposes. The “Pinjula Mirror” offered a form of visual shield, preventing the pilots from “evil rays”, and the weapon named “Marika” was used to shoot enemy aircraft.
Dr. Pinotti declared that these weapons “do not seem to be too different from what we today call laser technology.” The vehicles themselves were made of special heat absorbing metals, called “Somaka, Sound alike and Mourthwika”.
“In the Vedic literature of India, there are many descriptions of flying machines that are generally called vimanas. These fall into two categories:
- manmade craft that resemble airplanes and fly with the aid of birdlike wings
- unstreamlined structures that fly in a mysterious manner and are generally not made by human beings
UFOPRESS 