Aeronautics in Ancient India?

[Dominik Wujastyk]

On Thu, 26 Jun 1997, sudheer birodkar wrote:

> I am looking for information on aeronautics in ancient 
> India. I am told that there is a book called Brihat Vimana 
> Samahita in Sanskrit. 

This text was printed, but there are no manuscripts of the work and it
must therefore be a fabrication.  References to flying in ancient works
(not only Sanskrit) are delightful, and to be taken in the spirit in which
they were undoubtedly written, as flights of fancy rather than flights of
aeroplane.  There is an identifiable genre of science fiction within
Sanskrit literature.  I'm not aware of much writing on it, but it
certainly exists.  Raghavan wrote on it a bit.

All the best,
Dominik

--
Dominik Wujastyk               Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine
email: d.wujastyk at ucl.ac.uk          183 Euston Road, London NW1 2BE, England
<URL: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~ucgadkw/>                    FAX: 44 171 611 8545