On Dec 29, 2014, at 6:33 AM, Michael Witzel <witzel@fas.harvard.edu> wrote:

I would like to draw your attention to V. Raghavan's (separately published) paper (33 pp.)

Yantras or Mechanical Contrivances in Ancient India. 

Transaction no. 10 (2nd edition)

The Indian Institute of Culture

(6, North Public Square Road, Bangalore 4)

1956

He also deals with "aerial vehicles" extensively, with text passages taken from Epic and Classical literature but also (importantly) from:

* Maneśvara's Mānasollāsa (c. 1131 CE) and 

* Bhoja's  Śrṅgāramañjarī and his Samarāṅgaṇasūtradhāra.

Extensive description of a light wood bird, with several fires heating mercury inside… 

Amusingly, the texts often refer to the technical knowledge of …  the Yavana.

Cheers!

Michael

On Dec 28, 2014, at 12:07 PM, Dominik Wujastyk wrote:

Here's a refutation of the Vaimanika arguments, by a group of Indian scholars at the Indian Institute of Technology at Bangalore, from 1974.  PDF attached to this email.

H. S. Mukunda, S. M. Deshpande, H. R. Nagendra, A. Prabhu, S. P. Govindaraju, "A Critical Sudy of the Work Vymanika Shastra" in Scientific Opinion, 1974:5-12.

Best,

Dominik Wujastyk

​

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============

Michael Witzel
witzel@fas.harvard.edu
<www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm>
Wales Prof. of Sanskrit,
Dept. of South Asian Studies, Harvard University
1 Bow Street,
Cambridge MA 02138, USA

phone: 1- 617 - 495 3295, fax 617 - 496 8571;
direct line:  617- 496 2990

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