UFO's from India?

July 3, 2003 12:46 PM

Did UFO's originate in Ancient India? According to Indian legend, the kingdom of Rama existed at the same time as the lost kingdom of Atlantis. Both kingdoms developed airships that could fly not only between countries, but also into outerspace. The Indian ships, called Vimanas, are described in many ancient manuscripts, and perhaps most spectacularly in the Mahabarata, in which some believe there is a description of an ancient nuclear war. Is it possible that such technology could have been lost in antiquity, or kept in the posession of some "secret society"? Fascinating stuff...
posted by greengrl (28 comments total)

*rolls eyes, smiles archaic smile*
posted by y2karl at 12:57 PM on July 3, 2003

India's that country where they smoke a lot of opium, right?
posted by mathis23 at 1:00 PM on July 3, 2003

No.
posted by delmoi at 1:07 PM on July 3, 2003

That last link is better if you read it in a combination Bullwinkle/Gandhi accent and periodically giggle a la the Maharishi:

Would you believe it if i said that the human body is capable of levitating off the ground? No you wouldnt because your mind would not accept this phenomena.Why not ? If the mind can bend objects in physical space so can the body levitate off the ground. But yes it is possible to levitate the human body as i had witnessed 2 years ago when i was a novice in transcendental meditation and the techniques of Siddhi.
posted by yhbc at 1:07 PM on July 3, 2003

UN-altered REPRODUCTION and DISSEMINATION of these
IMPORTANT ideas is ENCOURAGED.
posted by hyperizer at 1:09 PM on July 3, 2003

Why would the UN want to alter this stuff?

Oh, because they're trying to keep it a secret from everybdoy, got it...
posted by soyjoy at 1:11 PM on July 3, 2003

Well, at least SOMEONE has finally explained UFOs. What are they now....Indian Flying Objects?
posted by graventy at 1:19 PM on July 3, 2003

Cool post. I don't believe these sorts of things, but I do find them fascinating. I'd not heard this particular theory before. Thanks.
posted by elwoodwiles at 1:23 PM on July 3, 2003

To clarify, the writing style of some of the linked material reminded me of Usenet "legend" Robert E. McElwaine.
posted by hyperizer at 1:24 PM on July 3, 2003

He said ancient Aryans knew the use of the element 'fire' as could be seen from their 'Astra' weapons that included Soposamhara (flame belching missile), Prasvapna (which caused sleep) and four kinds of Agni Astras that traveled in sheets of flame and produced thunder.


All of them still available on the steam tables at the neighborhood curry palace...
posted by gimonca at 1:29 PM on July 3, 2003

And all to be found buried in Iraq.
posted by ciderwoman at 1:49 PM on July 3, 2003

Unfortunately, the 'Secret Society of the Nine Unknown Men' never managed to attend the meeting where the would present their work, since nobody ever figured who should be invited. So all that great knowledge was lost forever when, years after the death of the nine, their respective grandchildren needed the space for another child and threw away all those old books grandpa had collected for whatever reason.
posted by nkyad at 1:51 PM on July 3, 2003

I hope that someday... perhaps after my death... someone can explain to me the great pyramid, stonehinge, easter island, and now... the continent of Mu. Bruahaha...
posted by woil at 2:17 PM on July 3, 2003

'Secret Society of the Nine Unknown Men' sounds like the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Sean Connery strikes again!
posted by CommaTheWaterseller at 2:21 PM on July 3, 2003

Just as an aside, think of how destructive the Earth is--how few artifacts survive even a few hundred years, and these recent years of relative climatic peace and calm. What ruin is left by an ice age, a major meteorite, or other destructive forces in the great list of things that erode.

Hundreds of millions of years and how many dinosaur skeleton fossils remain, from animals that must have numbered in the trillions?

Someone said that of our civilization, if we just disappeared, in a thousand years all that would remain of us would be the remains of some concrete dams, deeply buried, and some difficult-to-hide unnatural radioactive isotopes. And a few scraps, here and there, if you stumbled on them.
posted by kablam at 3:00 PM on July 3, 2003

I did a semester in India in college, and one time I told the story about how I saw a UFO in 8th grade. Later that week, this girl Maya woke me at 2am to tell me that there was a UFO in the sky. I went outside, expecting a joke of some sort, and there was this diagonal line slowly travelling across the sky. It looked like some stray from that old Apple drawing program Logo.

Take it from me: I've been to India, I've seen their UFOs, and they're totally, totally lame.
posted by Samsonov14 at 3:54 PM on July 3, 2003 [1 favorite]

I hope that someday... perhaps after my death... someone can explain to me the great pyramid, stonehinge...

Well, stonehinge used to creak a lot, but since we oiled it it's opening and closing much more easily.

Sorry.
posted by jokeefe at 4:04 PM on July 3, 2003

A few months ago I was looking around rense.com for God knows what reason and ran into the whole Ancient Indian UFO theory. I attempted, at the end, to verify the supposed quotes from the Mahabarata, but never succeeded...

Seeing the quotes reproduced on a page at sacred-texts.com certainly makes them seem a little more authentic to me. However, anytime I read something like "There are AUTHENTIC VERSES" I can't help but suspect...

For example, could someone please direct me to where, exactly, in the Mahabharata, appears "Gurka, flying a swift and powerful vimana hurled a single projectile charged with the power of the universe" ? Because all I'm sure of after heavy Googling is that a lot of pages claim all these excerpts exist. They all seem to use the same quotes, from the same translation...

For that matter, I'm more curious about how the quoted passages, if real, appear in mainstream translations. I wonder if they're what inspired Roger Zelazny to write Lord of Light....
posted by jbrjake at 4:17 PM on July 3, 2003 [1 favorite]

Oh yeah, and it'd be really cool if an ancient Indian text proved the "Baghdad Battery" was really intended for that purpose, since one of those links describes a very similar device.

Anyone know if the Baghdad Battery survived the looting?
posted by jbrjake at 4:20 PM on July 3, 2003

"Gurkha, flying in his swift and powerful Vimana, hurled against the three cities of the Vrishnis and Andhakas a single projectile charged with all the power of the Universe. An incandescent column of smoke and flame as bright as the thousand suns rose in all its splendour...An iron thunderbolt, a gigantic messenger of death, which reduced to ashes the entire race of the Vrishnis and the Andhakas....The corpses were so burned as to be unrecognizable. The hair and nails fell out; pottery broke without apparent cause, and the birds turned white....After a few hours all foodstuffs were infected.... To escape from this fire, the soldiers threw themselves in streams to wash themselves and their equipment..."

It's a shitty, senastionalized translation, but it's the best I could find. Most of the time, vimanas are decribed as either chariots or big ol' flying towns.

This sort of thing is pretty much universal. They had vimanas, Christians had Ezekeil's wheel, and growing up, I had V.
posted by Samsonov14 at 4:34 PM on July 3, 2003

For that matter, I'm more curious about how the quoted passages, if real, appear in mainstream translations. I wonder if they're what inspired Roger Zelazny to write Lord of Light....

Was wondering that myself. The resemblance is uncanny. He must have wandered into some of this stuff too in his studies. That and/or a little acid.

His followers called him Mahasamatman and said he was a god. He preferred to drop the Maha- and the -atman, however, and called himself Sam. He never claimed to be a god. But then, he never claimed not to be...
posted by Hildago at 4:38 PM on July 3, 2003

I've long been fascinated by the concept of the rise of civilization and technology being cyclical -- that it's happened before, and that it will happen again. I can't imagine what sort of a cataclysmic event would be necessary to wipe all evidence of their former existence off the face of the earth, but I imagine ("hope" may be a better word) that it would be possible.
posted by waldo at 7:50 PM on July 3, 2003

Now you're thinking of "Nightfall" by Issac Asimov (which was made into a rather artsy movie.)
posted by kablam at 8:07 PM on July 3, 2003

I can't imagine what sort of a cataclysmic event would be necessary to wipe all evidence of their former existence off the face of the earth

Oh, that's easy -- when the Planet-X class Kupier Belt Object (XKBO) Nibiru passes by the Earth on the course of its 3600 year solar orbit, the earth stops rotating, and electrical and magnetic storms destroy everything not buried in the dust and debris of the objects's tail. Read more in the highly informative essay "Who Will Determine Your Need To Know About Planet X (Nibiru)?".
posted by eddydamascene at 9:02 PM on July 3, 2003

Thanks eddy, that's a good read, especially right now.

It is felt that an XKBO know as Nibiru (and also known as "Marduk") will pass close by our planet in June of 2003. ...The Earth may stop rotating completely for 3 days.

So that's what was going on. I thought things felt a little off.
posted by soyjoy at 11:17 PM on July 3, 2003

That green X FILES text color oscilloscope craziness ( last linked reference?) made me hit the back button on instinct ....perhaps I should cringe and do a cut and paste into notepad to satiate my ArtBellishments....my curiousity.

SUN
posted by RubberHen at 11:59 PM on July 3, 2003

Soyjoy: I thought the world turned a bit slower because Gregory Peck had died.
posted by sharksandwich at 6:42 AM on July 4, 2003

....perhaps I should cringe and do a cut and paste into notepad to satiate my ArtBellishments....my curiousity.

*opens basement trap door, hands a list with zip codes of above, footnoted with special instructions in regards to Rubberhen, to waiting chupacabra*
posted by y2karl at 10:55 AM on July 4, 2003