Chariots of the Gods

In the Samsaptakabadha a distinction is made between chariots that fly and those that ca

Really a story that is hardly worth mentioning if it were not so remarkably like the story of Moses! And, of course, there is yet another reference to the fertilisation of humans by gods. Like Gilgamesh, Aryuna, the hero of the Mahabharata, undertakes a long journey in order to seek the gods and ask them for weapons. And when Aryuna has found the gods after many perils, Indra, the lord of heaven, with his wife Sachi beside him, grants him a very exclusive audience. The two of them do not meet the valiant Aryuna just anywhere. They meet him in a heavenly war-chariot and even invite him to travel in the sky with them.

There are numerical data in the Mahabharata that are so precise that one gets the impression that the author was writing from first-hand knowledge. Full of repulsion, he describes a weapon that could kill all warriors who wore metal on their bodies. If the warriors learnt about the effect of this weapon in time, they tore off all the metal equipment they were wearing, jumped into a river and washed themselves and everything that they had come into contact with very thoroughly. Not without reason, as the author explains, for the weapon made the hair and nails fall out. Everything living, he bemoaned, became pale and weak.

In the eighth book we meet Indra in his heavenly jet chariot again. Out of the whole of mankind he has chosen Yudhisthira as the only one who may enter heaven in his mortal frame. Here, too, the parallel with the stories of Enoch and Elijah ca

In the same book, in what is perhaps the first account of the dropping of an H bomb, it says that Gurkha loosed a single projectile on the triple city from a mighty Vimana. The narrative uses words which linger in our memories from eye-witness accounts of the detonation of the first hydrogen bomb at Bikini: white-hot smoke, a thousand times brighter than the sun, rose up in infinite brilliance and reduced the city to ashes. When Gurkha landed again, his vehicle was like a flashing block of antimony. And for the benefit of the philosophers I should mention that the Mahabharata says that time is the seed of the universe.

The Tibetan books Tantyua and Kantyua also mention prehistoric flying machines, which they call 'pearls in the sky'. Both books expressly emphasise that this knowledge is secret and not for the masses. In the Samarangana Sutradhara whole chapters are devoted to describing airships whose tails spout fire and quicksilver.

The word 'fire' in ancient texts ca

'It was as if the elements had been unleashed. The sun spun round. Scorched by the incandescent heat of the weapon, the world reeled in fever. Elephants were set on fire by the heat and ran to and fro in a frenzy to seek protection from the terrible violence. The water boiled, the animals died, the enemy was mown down and the raging of the blaze made the trees collapse in rows as in a forest fire. The elephants made a fearful trumpeting and sank dead to the ground over a vast area. Horses and war chariots were burnt up and the scene looked like the aftermath of a conflagration. Thousands of chariots were destroyed, then deep silence descended on the sea. The winds began to blow and the earth grew bright. It was a terrible sight to see. The corpses of the fallen were mutilated by the terrible heat so that they no longer looked like human beings. Never before have we seen such a ghastly weapon and never before have we heard of such a weapon.' (C. Roya, Drona Parva 1889.)

The story goes on to say that those who escaped washed themselves, their equipment and their arms, because everything was polluted by the death-dealing breath of the 'gods'. What does it say in the Epic of Gilgamesh? 'Has the poisonous breath of the heavenly beast smitten you?'

Alberto Tulli, formerly Keeper of the Egyptian Department in the Vatican Museum, found a fragment of a text from the time of Tuthmosis III, who lived about 1500 B.C. It relates the tradition that the scribes saw a ball of fire come down from heaven and that its breath had an evil smell. Tuthmosis and his soldiers watched this spectacle until the ball of fire rose in a southerly direction and disappeared from view.

All the texts quoted date from mille

A helicopter lands in the African bush for the first time. None of the natives has ever seen such a machine. The helicopter lands in a clearing with a sinister clatter; pilots in battle-dress, with crash-helmets and machine-guns, jump out of it. The savage in his loin-cloth stands stupefied and uncomprehending in the presence of this thing that has come down from heaven and the unknown 'gods' who came with it. After a time the helicopter takes off again and disappears into the sky.

Once he is alone again the savage has to work out and interpret this apparition. He will tell others who were not present what he saw: a bird, a heavenly vehicle, that made a terrible noise and stank, and white-ski