The History of the Vymanika Shastra, page 4

Originally posted by The Vagabond

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I can bare to speculate that maybe Bharadwaja is the true and reliable source, and with that assumption in place the logic does more or less work.
However, I because I do not have any real reason to believe that assumption as undeniable truth, I can not embrace the VS as necessarily having any real value of any kind.

You and I can, however, agree that IF the VS was legitimate, the manuscript as it currently exists is heavily tainted by the interpretations of people who didn't know what they were doing, and is essentially of no help to us now.

Also, I could propose another speculation, for you to consider. If Bharadwaja is timeless, does that mean that the technology the VS is intended to describe may not have ever existed yet, but may be future knowledge already held by the timeless sage?
I don't read the Vedas- I don't know the first thing about Bharadwaja- I'm just tossing that out to make civil conversation on the subject.

My question about Bharadwaja being Timeless was mostly rhetoric. At the Time I had only a few Minutes and I had to be brief.

The scriptures .. the Vishnu Purana, in particular, states that this Universe is cyclical, and that birth and death are mere cycles. For each cycle there is a chosen progenitor, generically called a Manu. The seven sages, it is said, survive these cycles of life and death of the Universe and are in Yoga Samadhi in between cycles. Bharadwaja is said to be one of the seven.

This much is known to many. Whether or not to believe these texts is in the eye of the beholder.

The Vimanika Shasthra is attributed to Maharshi Bharadwaja in it's very title on the cover of the book. Like most other Sanskrit texts, this too probably was handed down by word of mouth over generations, and has been subjected to interpretation and distortion.

My feeling is we will never know what was originally composed, as in the case of most of these "holy books". Perhaps at some future Date we will run into some alien culture which is familiar with these concepts. Or perhaps we will ourselves evolve into a level of technology sufficiently advanced to decipher these texts in the spirit they were originally written. Until then, all that is left is speculation which the human kind has engaged in with its fertile imagination. That there is so much symbolism in the Hindu system doesn't make things any easier either.

Like you say, in its present state, the VS is pretty much useless.

Vedas would not probably get classified in the same category VS. They are more about concepts, rituals, the logic of existence, and such. The Aranyakas and Brahmanas were the preamble to the Upanishads, which were more like explanatory treatises of the Vedas. Fascinating reads all of them, but at the same Time, need to be taken with a grain of salt ...

[edit on 5-7-2005 by Ramster]