Vaimanika Shastra: The 'Ancient' Aircraft Manual From the 1920s

A 'Science of Aeronautics' presented as ancient, but dictated in the 1910s and 20s. Engineers who tested its designs in 1974 found they could not fly.

The Vaimanika Shastra is a Sanskrit aircraft text dictated between about 1918 and 1923 by Subbaraya Shastry, who said it was channeled from the sage Bharadvaja. Engineers in 1974 found its designs could not fly.

The Vaimanika Shastra ('science of vimanas') is a Sanskrit text on aircraft that was dictated by Pandit Subbaraya Shastry, who said he received it through psychic channeling from the ancient sage Bharadvaja. It was written down between about 1918 and 1923 by G. Venkatachala Sharma. G. R. Josyer announced it in 1952 and published an English translation in 1973.

It describes several types of vimana, including the Shakuna, Sundara, Rukma, and Tripura, with sections on pilots' training, clothing, food, metals, and mechanisms. Drawings were added by a local draftsman working under Shastry's instructions. It also lists exotic metals and substances with Sanskrit names that match no known materials, and describes devices for photography, cloaking, and weather that sound modern because they were imagined in a modern era.

In 1974, a team at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, led by aeronautical engineer H. S. Mukunda, studied the text. They concluded that the craft described were 'poor' designs at best, that they showed no understanding of how aircraft fly, and that they were incapable of flight. They also noted the drawings reflected the machinery of the early 20th century.

So the Vaimanika Shastra is a modern document. That makes it no less interesting: a text produced by a man who said an ancient sage spoke through him, at the moment when real airplanes first filled the news. It also shows how quickly a modern text can acquire an ancient reputation once it is quoted without its history.