Chapter 30.6 - Introduction to Ancient Indian Aeronautics

[Full title: Scientific and Technical literature (6): Other Miscellaneous Disciplines]

Indians had made great strides in almost all disciplines. It is really unfortunate that not many works on them have survived. Archery, Dhanurveda, is considered a subsidiary Veda, Upa-veda. Very little literature on this is available at present. Visvamitra, Vikramaditya, Sadasiva and Sarigadatta are known to have composed works on this discipline but none of these has survived. Only a solitary work that touches some points of the subject in the context of its treatment of military science is the Viracintamani of Sarngadhara of 1363 A.D. Palakapya and Salihotra are the two disciplines that deal with elephants and horses respectively. Only two works that elephants are aew Delhi. Digitized by S 3 Foundation USA are available at present. These are the deal with ty

Hastyayurveda which deals with the treatment of the ailments of the elephants and the Matangalila of Narayana which deals with everything concerning elephants; their catching, their rearing, their training and so on. On the Asvavidya, there are works like the Asvayurveda by Gana, the Asvavaidyaka by Jayadatta and Dipankara, Yogamanjari of Vardhamana and the Asvacikitsa of Nakula. There is some literature on arts and crafts and architecture. There are works like Manusyalayacandrika which has seven chapters, the Mayamata which has 34 chapters, the Yuktikalpataru which has 23 chapters, the Samaranganasutradhara of Bhoja and Sanatkumara, the Vastusastra and the Visvakarmaprakasa, the Vastumandana and the Prasadamandana of the royal architect of King Kumbhakarna (1426-1489) and some portion of the Vrttasamhita, the Matsya-purana, the Agni-purana, the Garudapurana, the Visnudharmottara-purana and the Kasyapasamhita, the Silparatna of Srikumara that deal with the discipline. The Mayamata, Sanatkumara-vastusastra and the Manasara deal with iconography as well. Works were written even on gemology. Some of the more prominent of them are the Agastimata, the Ratnapariksa of Buddhabhatta and the Navaratnapariksa of Narayana Pandita. There must have been well developed science of cooking in ancient India. Unfortunately there is only one work the Nalapaka available at present on the subject. It is ascribed to King Nala who is said to have been expert in the art of cooking. In the Mahabharata when the Pandavas had to conceal their identity in terms of the punishment meted out to them for defeat in the game of dice they took up service in different garbs in the palace of King Virata. There one of them, Bhima opted for the job of a cook because of his expertise in the art of cooking. Though there are no texts available at present on cooking there is enough material available about it in Sanskrit works of old . A by 53 Foundation USA CC-04 study of it carried out systematically would yield much Prof. ofsit valuable information in this connection. Pioneering efforts in

= Glimpses of History of Sanskrit Literature / 469 this direction were made, one by Veena Sharma in her article "Concept of Cooking in Paninian Grammar" and the other by Aswin P.M in his article "Food and Food Habits mentioned in the Apastamba Dharmasutra. "2. Boiled rice or odana was the staple food in India in the ancient and the medieval periods as it is even now in most parts of India. The rules of Panini and the works belonging to the Paninian school furnish enough evidence for it. It is known from those rules that the ancient people helped themselves with two kinds of foods - chief anna and auxiliary vyanjana. The chief food mainly consisted of cooked rice called odana or bhakta from which has derived the Hindi term bhat. The best variety of it was grown on the bank of the river Devika. The Kasika refers to it: devikakule bhavah salayah devikakula-salayah. All grammarians explain the act of cooking in the following manner: placing the cooking pot on the stove, adhisrayana, pouring water into the pot, udasecana, putting rice grains into pot tandulavapana, continuous fuelling of stove, edhopaskarana. The cooking pot was called sthali, vide the example randhanaya sthali. The amatra was a term in use for utensil. The cup in which food was served was called sarava, vide Kasika, saravesu uddhrtah sarava odanah. The example mallika denotes that sometimes rice and other foods were served in a cup made of coconut shell or in a cup called karpara, vide Kasika, karpara odanah. There were various kinds of food, items, some made of flour-the flour being of any kind, of sali, vrihi, barley or wheat-called pistaka, some of rice with curd or without it, some called supa, prepared from several lentils which was sometimes garnished with salt, clarified butter and radish with a mix of tamarind. As for the non-vegeterian food there is a reference of rice mixed with meat, mamsodana as also = 1. Encyclopaedia of Indian Wisdom, (Dr. Satya Vrat Shastri Felicitation Volume), Part II, Bharatiya Vidya Prakashan, Delhi, 2005, pp. 427-430. 2. Journal of Sukritindra Oriental Research Institute, Kochi, Kerala, Vol. cc-d 8, No.2, April 2017 PP 63-85 Delhi. Digitized by S 3 Foundation USA

ghrtasupa, mulakasupa or ginger and pepper fried in ghee or oil or tamarind, sarngaverikam, maricikam, taintidikam, vide Pan. Samskrrtam, 4.4.3 and the meat baked on iron bar sulakaroti mansam, vide Pan. sulat pake, 5.4.65, etc. As evidence of the vast sweep of the Indians in various disciplines is the existence of the 'discipline' of theft. There is detailed reference to it in the context of a thief Sarvilaka breaking into the house of Carudatta, the hero of the play Mrcchakatika, who first makes a breach in fencing wall in the grove of trees round the house. He pulls out bricks to make a hole. Finding two persons asleep inside, he wants to make sure whether they are actually sleeping or feigning sleep. He sends a dummy first. Finding that there are only musical instruments in the room and to make sure that the owner is really poor and has no wealth buried underground he scatters magical seeds which not expanding convinces him that he is really poor. The entire scene shows the playwright's intimate acquaintance with the methods, the means and the strategy of the thieves or the art of theft, if it can be called as such. Interestingly, there are patron deities for such activities like Kumara Kartikeya to whom prayers are offered before undertaking them or at the end when the mission is successful. The thieves call themselves Skandaputras, the sons of Skanda: prathamam etat skandaputranam siddhilaksanam. It is a matter of investigation as to how Skanda came to be associated with such nefarious activities. Further, the thief refers to certain acaryas, the authorities on the art like Kanakasakti who have recorded four types of burglary, the Sandhi-bhedas, the pulling out of the baked bricks, the cutting through of the unbaked ones, the sprinkling of those made of earth clods and chipping of those of made of wood. The other acaryas referred to are Bhaskaranandin and Yogacarya. The latter the thief claims as his teacher who had given him a magic ointment which would render him invisible to the police and make him immune to attack by a weapon.

Indians had good knowledge of Chemistry as well. The most important name associated with this discipline is that of Nagarjuna who is considered an authority on the twin disciplines of Medicine and Chemistry. The Chinese traveller Hieun Tsang (629-645 A.D) refers to various alloys of mercury and iron prepared by him. The tradition is that he had written a work on Chemistry. Even Susruta is credited with preparing various chemical ingredients and their uses. In the works Rasarnava and Rasaratnasamuccaya are mentioned the methods of extracting zinc from various minerals. Even the Buddhists had taken great strides in the field. The iron pillar at Mehrauli in Delhi is a wonder of the metallurgical knowledge of the ancient Indians. For hundreds of years it has stood in the open but has suffered no rust or erosion. Even music has made great progrees in India. Apart from the Natyasastra of Bharata, a number of important works on the discipline are the Sangitamakaranda, the Sangitasudarsana of Sudarsana, the Sangitaratnakara of Sarngadeva, the Sangitadarpana of Damodara and the Ragavibodha of Somanatha. The paucity of literature on dance is rather surprising. Apart from the Natyasastra the other works on the discipline are the Abhinayadarpana, Srihastamuktavali and the Nartananirnaya etc. As for painting there is profuse material available in the extant Sanskrit literature but there are few independent works on the subject. It is only the Visnudharmottara-purana that has a separate section on it.