{"it":{"id":"TX025","kind":"text","sub":"Indian","name":"Mahabharata (vimana and divine weapon passages, e.g. Vana Parva 'Saubha' flying city; Brahmastra)","place":"Ica","date":"c.400 BCE-400 CE","oldest":"mss. mostly 2nd mill. CE; BORI Critical Edition 1919-66","inst":"BORI Pune Critical Edition","lang":"Sanskrit","src":[223,517],"lat":-14.065,"lon":-75.729,"tags":["Asia","Sky beings"],"sum":"The Mahabharata is one of the longest poems in the world. In the opening book, in the translation by Kisari Mohan Ganguli, the poem describes its own size. Vyasa composed six hundred thousand verses, and of those, one hundred thousand are known among humankind, or 100,000 verses.\n\nThe story is a war between two branches of one royal family. Along the way it describes weapons the gods give to heroes. Arjuna wins the great weapon Pasupata from the god Shiva. The teacher Drona gives Arjuna the irresistible weapon called Brahmasira and warns him never to use it against a human foe, because if it is hurled at a weaker enemy it might burn the whole universe.\n\nWhat is hard to explain is the scale. These are not swords. A weapon that could burn the world, held back by a rule about who may be its target, reads more like a modern fear than an ancient one.\n\nThe mainstream view is that the weapons are divine gifts in a sacred epic, and their power shows the power of the gods who grant them. The poem itself links them to prayer and to discipline, not to machines.\n\nWhy would an ancient poet imagine a weapon too strong to use?","why":"The Mahabharata describes divine weapons that could burn the whole universe.","nfacts":3,"nsrc":4,"yt":"Find the exact Brahmastra verses in a full translation.","rel":["TX026","W11A22"],"hook":"The Mahabharata counts 100,000 verses and a weapon that could burn the universe."},"S":{"223":["www.gutenberg.org","https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/15474"],"517":["Wikipedia: Mahabharata","https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahabharata"]},"rec":{"id":"TX025","alias":["W15T09"],"ms":[{"a":"verses_Jaya","v":"8800","u":"verses","unc":"","by":"","yr":"","m":"redaction","b":"S","t":"MEASUREMENT","id":"W15M018","s":["W15S20"],"c":"Wikipedia Mahabharata","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mahabharata&oldid=1378502504"},{"a":"verses_Bharata","v":"24000","u":"verses","unc":"","by":"","yr":"","m":"redaction","b":"S","t":"MEASUREMENT","id":"W15M019","s":["W15S20"],"c":"Wikipedia Mahabharata","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mahabharata&oldid=1378502504"},{"a":"verses_full","v":">100000","u":"verses","unc":"","by":"","yr":"","m":"redaction","b":"S","t":"MEASUREMENT","id":"W15M020","s":["W15S20"],"c":"Wikipedia Mahabharata","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mahabharata&oldid=1378502504"}],"lab":[],"eng":[],"ori":[],"gaps":[],"dat":[],"aa":[{"id":"AA126","a":"Ancient aircraft and nuclear war.","who":"David Childress; von Daniken","main":"Epic poetry; vimanas are divine vehicles in mythic idiom.","ms":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/15474","st":"unresolved","n":"interpretive claim; no measurable data","nl":1},{"id":"AA224","a":"Records contact with non-human/advanced beings or craft","who":"AA literature (see claimant_index)","main":"Bulk compiled 3rd c BCE-3rd c CE; oldest parts ~400 BCE","ms":"W15S20","st":"unresolved","n":"Vimana passages are literary; no technical content verified.","nl":"1"}],"ac":[],"me":[],"ci":[{"who":"Erich von Daniken","med":"book","ep":"Chariots of the Gods? (Eng. pb, IA scan), ch.6 (TOC p.55)","v":"Weapon causing 12-year drought, killing unborn; core >=5,000 yr old","b":"S","s":["W17S17"]}],"cq":[],"sd":[],"pas":[{"ref":"Mahabharata, Vana Parva Sec. XIV (Ganguli)","q":"\"he rose into the sky on his car of precious metals capable of going anywhere at will\"","exact":"yes","tr":"K.M. Ganguli","url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/15474","mo":"flying vehicle"},{"ref":"Mahabharata, Vana Parva Sec. CLXXII (Ganguli)","q":"\"a mighty unearthly city, moving at will, and having the effulgence of fire or the sun\"","exact":"yes","tr":"K.M. Ganguli","url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/15474","mo":"flying city"},{"ref":"Mahabharata, Santi Parva Sec. CCCXL (Ganguli)","q":"\"the Danava city called Saubha\"","exact":"yes","tr":"K.M. Ganguli","url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/15476","mo":"flying city"}],"tr":[{"by":"K.M. Ganguli","yr":"1883-96","t":"The Mahabharata","lic":"public domain","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahabharata"},{"by":"Ganguli vols 1-4 (Gutenberg #15474-15477)","yr":"1883-96","t":"The Mahabharata","lic":"public domain","url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/15474"}],"mo":[],"tl":[],"wit":[{"id":"W15T09","mw":"Redactions: Jaya 8,800 verses; Bharata 24,000; Mahabharata >100,000; oldest surviving Sanskrit text Kushan period (200 CE); Khoh copper plate 533-534 CE calls it 100,000 verses; Spitzer manuscript lacks two parvans","kn":"Bulk compiled 3rd c BCE-3rd c CE; oldest parts ~400 BCE","pf":"genuine ancient","st":"unresolved","sn":"Vimana passages are literary; no technical content verified.","b":"S","s":["W15S20"]}],"tx":{"mainstream_reading":"Epic poetry; vimanas are divine vehicles in mythic idiom.","alternative_reading":"Ancient aircraft and nuclear war.","alt_proponent":"David Childress; von Daniken","mistranslation_or_dispute":"Exact refs (Ganguli): Vana Parva Sec. XIV ff. (Salwa rises 'into the sky on his car of precious metals capable of going anywhere at will'); Vana Parva Sec. CLXXII (Arjuna sees 'a mighty unearthly city, moving at will'); Santi Parva Sec. CCCXL (Saubha 'city of the Danavas'). No nuclear language in these passages.","key_theme":"Saubha, flying city of king Salwa; Hiranyapura 'unearthly city moving at will'","language":"Sanskrit","physical_object_institution":"BORI Pune Critical Edition","composition_date":"c.400 BCE-400 CE","oldest_ms_date":"mss. mostly 2nd mill. CE; BORI Critical Edition 1919-66","b":"V"},"sub":[],"src":[{"id":"W15S20","t":"Wikipedia Mahabharata","u":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mahabharata&oldid=1378502504"},{"id":"W17S17","t":"von Daniken, Chariots of the Gods? English pb (Internet Archive OCR full text; saved prim/chariots_ia.txt)","u":"https://archive.org/download/chariots_of_the_gods/chariots_of_the_gods1_djvu.txt"},{"id":"S0757","t":"www.gutenberg.org","u":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/15474"},{"id":"S0528","t":"Wikipedia: Mahabharata","u":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahabharata"}],"qs":["Why would an ancient poet imagine a weapon too strong to use?","Does a rule about whom a weapon may hit sound ancient or modern?"],"gal":[{"src":"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5a/Disrobing_of_Draupadi.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Disrobing_of_Draupadi.jpg","title":"Disrobing of Draupadi.jpg","lic":"Public domain","licurl":"","by":"Nainsukh","cap":"The disrobing of Draupadi, a miniature of the Basohli School"},{"src":"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e0/Draupadi_and_Pandavas.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Draupadi_and_Pandavas.jpg","title":"Draupadi and Pandavas.jpg","lic":"Public domain","licurl":"","by":"Raja Ravi Varma","cap":"The Pandava brothers—Yudhishthira (centre), Bhima (bottom left), Arjuna (bottom right), Nakula and Sahadeva (both standing beside the throne)—with their common ","alt":"The Pandava brothers—Yudhishthira (centre), Bhima (bottom left), Arjuna (bottom right), Nakula and Sahadeva (both standing beside the throne)—with their common"},{"src":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/95/Ganesa_writing_the_Mahabharat.jpeg/1280px-Ganesa_writing_the_Mahabharat.jpeg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ganesa_writing_the_Mahabharat.jpeg","title":"Ganesa writing the Mahabharat.jpeg","lic":"Public domain","licurl":"","by":"Indian from Mewar, Rajasthan, Northern India","cap":"Ganesa writing the Mahabharat, dictated by Vyasa. Page from an illustrated manuscript of the Mahabharata. Not on view"},{"src":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a4/Ganesha_write_Mahabharata.jpg/1280px-Ganesha_write_Mahabharata.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ganesha_write_Mahabharata.jpg","title":"Ganesha write Mahabharata.jpg","lic":"CC0","licurl":"http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en","by":"Gita Press Gorakhpur","cap":"Sankshipta Mahabharat Part 1 Gita Press Gorakhpur by MahaMuni Usage https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ Topics Sanskrit, \"महामुनि का संग्रह\", \"Pr"},{"src":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/01/Neminath_Wedding.JPG/1280px-Neminath_Wedding.JPG?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Neminath_Wedding.JPG","title":"Neminath Wedding.JPG","lic":"Public domain","licurl":"","by":"Anishshah19","cap":"This is a photograph of a plate showing Wedding Procession of Lord Neminatha (22nd Jain tirthankara) . The enclosure shows the animals that are to be slaughtere"}],"sum":"# The Mahabharata: Flying Cities and a Weapon Too Strong to Use\n\nBefore the enemy arrived, the city of Dwaraka was locked down. Drinking was forbidden, so that no one would be careless. The police drove out every mime, dancer and singer. The bridges over the rivers were destroyed and the boats forbidden to sail. For two miles around the walls the ground was dug into pits and holes, with combustibles buried beneath the surface, and nobody could enter or leave without the agreed sign. The city was ready for a siege from every side, and also, as the poem is careful to say, from above. The attacker was a king named Salwa, and he was coming in a city that flew.\n\nThat scene comes from the Mahabharata, the great epic of ancient India, in the English translation made by Kisari Mohan Ganguli in the 1880s and 1890s. It is one of the longest poems ever composed. Its fullest version runs to more than 100,000 verses, each a couplet, along with long passages of prose, about 1.8 million words in all. That is roughly ten times the length of the Iliad and the Odyssey together. The poem knows how big it is. In its opening book it says the sage Vyasa composed six hundred thousand verses, of which one hundred thousand are known among humankind. A copper-plate inscription from 533 or 534 CE already calls it \"a collection of 100,000 verses.\"\n\n## A story that grew\n\nAt its centre is a war between two branches of one royal family, the Pandavas and the Kauravas, cousins who fight over a throne and meet at last on the field of Kurukshetra. Around that story the epic wraps teaching, law, philosophy and hundreds of tales within tales. Indian tradition sometimes calls it the fifth Veda.\n\nIt was not written all at once. The poem itself distinguishes a core of 24,000 verses, the Bharata proper, and scholars commonly speak of three stages: a Jaya, or Victory, of 8,800 verses attributed to Vyasa, the Bharata of 24,000, and the full Mahabharata of more than 100,000. Some scholars, such as John Brockington, think the Jaya and the Bharata were the same text. The bulk was probably compiled between the third century BCE and the third century CE, with the oldest preserved parts not much older than about 400 BCE, and the text reached its final form by the early Gupta period, around the fourth century CE. The oldest surviving Sanskrit text dates to about 200 CE.\n\nThe war it describes may echo something real. The setting matches Iron Age India, when the Kuru kingdom was the centre of power, roughly 1200 to 800 BCE, and many historians place a possible historical battle around the tenth century BCE. A dynastic quarrel of that time may have grown, over centuries of retelling, into the end of an age.\n\n## The flying city of Saubha\n\nThe siege of Dwaraka is told by the god Krishna himself, explaining to the Pandava king Yudhishthira where he had been. Salwa, king of the Saubha, came to avenge a rival Krishna had killed. He \"besieged that city around and above,\" and \"stationing himself in the upper regions, the king began his fight with the city.\"\n\nKrishna pursued him to the sea and found him \"on his car of costly metals\" in the midst of the waves. The details of the fight are strange even for an epic. Salwa's car hung \"in the sky, full two miles off,\" so high that Krishna's own troops could not see it and could only watch \"like spectators in a place of amusement.\" The weapons that rained down included maces, lances and \"bullets from barrels.\" Day became dark and then light again, hot and then cold, while \"a perfect shower of coals, and ashes, and weapons\" fell. Twice the car simply vanished, and Krishna \"concluded in my mind that it was certainly illusion.\"\n\nIn the end Krishna loosed his discus, the Sudarsana. \"Rising into the sky, it seemed like a second sun.\" It went through the town of Saubha \"even as a saw divideth a tall tree,\" and the flying city, \"high as the peak of the Meru,\" fell in two and burned.\n\nSaubha is not the only city in the sky. In another passage the hero Arjuna, riding in the god Indra's chariot, sees \"a mighty unearthly city, moving at will, and having the effulgence of fire or the sun.\" Its name is Hiranyapura, the golden city, given to a race of demons by the creator god as a boon. When Arjuna attacks, its people soar with it into the sky. \"Now (the city) entered unto the earth and now it rose upwards; and at one time it went in a crooked way and at another time it submerged into water.\" He brings it down with his arrows, and then sixty thousand enemy cars surround him.\n\n## Weapons that burn the world\n\nThe epic's weapons are as large as its cities. Arjuna wins the great weapon Pasupata from the god Shiva. His teacher Drona gives him the irresistible weapon called the Brahmasira, and with it a warning: never use it against a human foe, because if it is hurled at a weaker enemy it might burn the whole universe.\n\nLater Hindu tradition describes the weapons of the god Brahma, the Brahmastra and its stronger form, as fireballs with roars and flames that make rivers evaporate and armies die at a stroke, leaving a place where not a blade of grass will grow and no rain will fall for years. Near the end of the war, the bitter warrior Ashwatthama looses such a weapon against Arjuna. Arjuna answers with the same weapon. Two sages step between the two weapons and order both men to withdraw. Arjuna does. Ashwatthama does not know how, and instead turns his weapon on the womb of Uttara, to kill the unborn heir of the Pandavas. Krishna saves the child.\n\n## The mainstream reading\n\nScholars read all of this as myth and devotion. The weapons are divine gifts in a sacred poem. Their power shows the power of the gods who grant them, and the poem binds them to prayer, discipline and the right to use them, not to machinery. The flying cities belong to demons, gods and kings of illusion, beings whose nature is to break the rules of ordinary space. The heavy, siege-ready detail of Dwaraka shows that the poets knew real warfare, with walls, trenches, engines for hurling fire and paid soldiers, and lifted it into the heavens.\n\nThe record itself rates the modern claims about these passages as unresolved interpretation. There is no measurable data here, and no verified technical content.\n\n## What still holds the eye\n\nAnd yet the passages keep their pull. In 1968 Erich von Daniken asked how the chronicler of the Mahabharata knew \"that a weapon capable of punishing a country with a twelve years' drought could exist,\" and one \"powerful enough to kill the unborn in their mothers' wombs.\" He claimed the epic's original core was at least 5,000 years old, an estimate far older than anything scholars accept. But his question was not only about age. It was about imagination, about what a poet would need to have seen, or heard of, to describe a battle against a city two miles up that could vanish, dive into the sea and come back.\n\nThe most striking thing may be the rule. Drona does not simply give Arjuna a weapon. He gives him a restriction, a doctrine of when the weapon must not be used, because the cost of using it would be the world. Ashwatthama's crime is not that he fires it but that he cannot call it back.\n\nWhy would an ancient poet imagine a weapon so strong that the greatest act of the hero is to put it away?"},"img":null,"md":null,"hh":[{"v":"400 BCE","h":"Oldest preserved parts","s":[299]},{"v":"c.400 BCE-400 CE","h":"Date","s":[300]},{"v":"Sanskrit","h":"Language","s":[300]}],"hs":{"299":["Wikipedia: Mahabharata (and sources cited there)","https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahabharata"],"300":["www.gutenberg.org","https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/15474"]},"lh":{"s":"img/h/TX025.webp","w":800,"h":583,"o":"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5a/Disrobing_of_Draupadi.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled"}}