Originally posted by Reignite
reply to post by Harte
thanks, there is much in that link left to search through there; currently i am almost halfway along the first book, and there's plenty of quotes
very interesting.
here is a link i just found, it covers quite a few quotes on this subjects, but of course far from all of it:
ancient aeronautics
Your link is a good example of why I was so grateful for your citations.
Glancing through the quotations there, I find several mistakes.
The quote about Dhruva Maharaja "passing through space," for example:
While Dhruva Maharaja was passing through space, he saw, in succession, all the planets of the solar system, and on the path he saw all the demigods
in their vimanas showering flowers upon him like rain.
actually reads:
On his way passing one after another all the heavenly spheres around, was he covered by even more flowers, here and there showered on him by the ones
enlightened from their own elevated positions. (35) Surpassing the three worlds traveling by God, he even went beyond the great sages, after which the
accomplished Dhruva then achieved the refuge of Vishnu.
The differences here are usually dismissed by claiming that the former is Protap Chandra Roy's translation, while the latter is Ganguli's.
Problem is, Roy never translated the Mahabharata. He was the one that hired Ganguli to do it. So both "translations" are the same, exact text.
So, why the difference? To make the tale even wilder than it is, someone has altered the thing.
BTW, they never mention that Dhruva Maharaja's "journey" was to heaven, do they? This is what he "saw" after he died.
The Roy-Ganguli thing is not widely known. It wasn't due to any fraud - Roy is often credited with the translation because he was erroneously listed
as the translator (instead of the publisher) on one of the older editions of the English translation of the Mahabharata.
Good luck wading through all of this vedic stuff anyway.
Harte