A vimana is the flying palace or chariot of gods and kings in Sanskrit literature, most famously the Pushpaka vimana that carries Rama home to Ayodhya in the Ramayana. The Sanskrit word also names the tower over a Hindu temple's sanctum, and in modern Indian languages it simply means "aircraft." The only text that presents vimanas as engineered machines, the Vaimanika Shastra, was composed in the early 20th century, not in antiquity.
Vimanas matter because they sit where living sacred literature, medieval Indian engineering lore, a 20th-century channelled manuscript and the modern ancient-astronaut movement all meet. Each layer says something different, and the debate about whether ancient India "had aircraft" usually goes wrong by blending them. This guide separates them: what the epics actually describe, what a medieval treatise adds, where the Vaimanika Shastra came from, what engineers at the Indian Institute of Science found when they tested it, and how Billy Carson and his guests frame the open questions.
What does the word vimana mean?
The Sanskrit vimana literally means "measuring out" or "traversing," and over time it took on two main older meanings. The first is the aerial car or palace of the gods; the Monier-Williams Sanskrit-English Dictionary defines it as "a car or chariot of the gods, any self-moving aerial car," and notes that some descriptions make it more like a house or palace than a vehicle. The second is architectural: in Hindu temple design, the vimana is the tower rising over the garbhagriha, the inner sanctum where the deity sits.
The two meanings fit together. A temple tower is imagined as the god's dwelling, and the flying vimana of the epics is a dwelling that moves. In modern Hindi, Bengali and related languages, viman or biman is the ordinary word for an aeroplane, which is why Bangladesh's national carrier is called Biman. That everyday modern usage is one reason English readers sometimes assume the ancient word always meant a machine. It did not.
The Pushpaka vimana in the Ramayana
The Pushpaka, the "flowery" vimana, is the best-known vimana in Indian literature. In the Ramayana tradition it was fashioned by Vishvakarma, the divine architect, for Brahma, who gave it to Kubera, the lord of wealth. Ravana, Kubera's half-brother, seized it along with the island city of Lanka. After Ravana's defeat, Rama, Sita, Lakshmana and their allies board the Pushpaka and fly back to Ayodhya, and Rama then sends it back to its rightful owner.
Valmiki's text describes these vehicles in the language of myth and royal splendour. In the Aranya Kanda, Ravana sets out in a chariot "yoked with mule-like horses" that dazzles like the sun (3.31.34), and later invites the demon Maricha to board a "sky-flying chariot which is yoked with ghost-faced mules and adorned with gems" (3.42.7), in the translation by Desiraju Hanumanta Rao and K. M. K. Murthy. In the Yuddha Kanda, the Pushpaka, painted with images of swans, "flew into the sky, with a great sound" as Rama gives the word (6.123.1), and at journey's end it goes "in speed to Kubera, as impelled by Rama's advice" (6.127.61). The vimana moves at its owner's command and is large enough to carry Rama's allies home with him.
These are palaces and chariots inside a sacred epic, drawn by enchanted animals and obedient to divine and royal will. The Ramayana gives no dimensions, materials or means of propulsion. It is revered literature, still recited and performed across South and Southeast Asia, and it reads most naturally as exactly that.
Vimanas in the Mahabharata
The Mahabharata contains several celestial vehicles, and each appears inside a story about gods, kings and dharma. In the Adi Parva, the god Indra rewards King Vasu of Chedi with "a crystal car" in which he can "course through mid-air like a celestial endued with a physical frame"; because he travels through the upper regions he is called Uparichara, "the one who moves above" (Ganguli translation, section 63). In the Vana Parva, Indra's own chariot, driven by his charioteer Matali, descends through the clouds to carry the hero Arjuna to Indra's heaven, the city of Amaravati (section 42).
The most dramatic episode is the Saubha. King Shalva's Saubha is a flying city, described in Krishna's own account in the Vana Parva as a "car of precious metals capable of going anywhere at will" that attacks Dvaraka and, in the battle that follows, fights from high in the sky. Krishna finally launches his discus, Sudarshana, which goes "right through it, even as a saw divideth a tall tree," and the city falls (Vana Parva, sections 15 to 22). The Bhagavata Purana retells the story (10.76 to 10.78) and adds that the asura architect Maya, at the god Shiva's word, "constructed a flying iron city named Saubha"; in that version Krishna shatters it with his club.
Readers sometimes notice that Kisari Mohan Ganguli's 19th-century translation lists among the weapons on Indra's chariot "propellors furnished with wheels and worked with atmosphere expansion." The phrase sounds mechanical to modern ears, but it sits in a list of divine missiles, thunderbolts and fire-mouthed Nagas, and it reflects a Victorian translator's word choices. Nothing in the epic amounts to a design. Traditional Hindu chronology places the Mahabharata war at the threshold of the present age, a framework explained in the guide to the Kali Yuga and the yuga cycle.
The Samarangana Sutradhara and medieval flying machines
The first Indian text to describe a vimana as something a person might build is the Samarangana Sutradhara, an 11th-century treatise on architecture attributed to King Bhoja, the Paramara ruler of Dhar in Malwa. Its chapter 31 deals with yantras, a word covering machines and automata. There it describes a light, bird-shaped wooden flying machine and a heavy, temple-shaped one, each said to rise when mercury is heated in an internal fire chamber.
The author stops short of a usable account. He says he leaves out the construction details "for the sake of secrecy, and not due to lack of knowledge." Scholars such as V. Raghavan, who surveyed the treatise's machines in the 1950s, read this passage alongside its other marvels, such as mechanical birds, moving figures and water devices for royal pleasure gardens. It belongs to a long medieval tradition of court automata, and it gives no buildable design.
Where did the Vaimanika Shastra come from?
The Vaimanika Shastra is a 20th-century Sanskrit text, not an ancient or Vedic one. It runs to about 3,000 verses in eight chapters. Pandit Subbaraya Shastry of Anekal, near Bangalore, said the verses came to him psychically from the sage Bharadvaja, and he dictated them to his associate G. V. Sharma, a process usually dated to 1918 to 1923. One surviving transcript, found in Poona, is signed and dated 1919.
Drawings of the craft were made under Shastry's direction by T. K. Ellappa, a draughtsman at a local engineering college in Bangalore. A copy of the manuscript was in the Rajakiya Sanskrit Library at Baroda by 1944. G. R. Josyer, founder of the International Academy of Sanskrit Research, announced the text publicly in 1952. A Hindi edition, the Brihad Vimana Shastra by Brahmamuni Parivrajaka, appeared in 1959, and Josyer's English translation, with the drawings, was published as Vymanika Shastra in 1973.
What the 1974 Indian Institute of Science study found
In 1974 five researchers at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, H. S. Mukunda, S. M. Deshpande, H. R. Nagendra, A. Prabhu and S. P. Govindaraju, published "A Critical Study of the Work Vymanika Shastra" in the journal Scientific Opinion. They traced the manuscript's history, interviewed G. V. Sharma and Venkatarama Shastry, Subbaraya Shastry's adopted son, and concluded that the work came into existence "sometime between 1900 and 1922."
They then tested the four craft described in most detail: the Shakuna, Sundara, Rukma and Tripura vimanas. Their findings are specific. The Shakuna was "a near impossibility." Of the Rukma they wrote that "the craft is a decided impossibility." They found that a key statement about lift was "a gross violation of Newton's laws," that "None of the planes has properties or capabilities of being flown," and that the principles of propulsion would make the craft "resist rather than assist flying." The drawings, which show cylinders, pistons, worm gears and pumps, "definitely point to a knowledge of modern machinery," which the authors linked to Ellappa's training. Their overall verdict was that the planes were "poor concoctions, rather than expressions of something real."
The question returned to public view in January 2015, when a session at the 102nd Indian Science Congress at the University of Mumbai included a talk on ancient Indian aviation drawing on the text. NASA scientist Ram Prasad Gandhiraman started an online petition calling for the talk to be cancelled, and it drew public criticism from scientists.
Where the ancient-astronaut reading comes from
From the 1960s onward, writers in the ancient-astronaut tradition began reading the vimana stories as memories of real aircraft, possibly piloted by visitors from elsewhere. Erich von Däniken's Chariots of the Gods? (1968) helped popularise the idea, David Hatcher Childress built on it with the Vaimanika Shastra, and the television series Ancient Aliens has returned to vimanas repeatedly. That is their reading, and the wider movement is traced in the guide to ancient astronaut theory, its origins, evidence and criticism.
Critics answer that the argument depends on the modern Vaimanika Shastra being treated as ancient, and on reading epic poetry as technical reporting. The archaeological record of South Asia's earliest cities, set out in the guide to the Indus Valley Civilization, shows sophisticated urban planning but no flying machines. For a case where the evidence for advanced ancient technology is physical and dated, compare the Antikythera mechanism, a Greek geared calculator recovered from a shipwreck.
Billy Carson's reading
Billy Carson approaches vimanas as part of a larger question he returns to across his work: whether ancient traditions preserve memories of knowledge and technology that were later lost. His documented engagement takes two forms. A 4biddenknowledge Podcast Network clip from his Egyptian Mystery School series, titled "Egyptian Mystery School - Coral Castle, Secret Anti Gravity Technology, Vimanas," places the Indian flying craft beside the anti-gravity legends that surround Ed Leedskalnin's work in Florida; the clip and the evidence on Leedskalnin's methods are covered in the companion guide to Coral Castle.
The second is his podcast interview with researcher Praveen Mohan, Ancient Temples, Gold Technology and Anunnaki Secrets Revealed (Season 8, Episode 49, released 28 October 2025). The episode lists among its topics "evidence of portal technology and ancient Vimana flying crafts" and the links Carson and Mohan explore between Hindu gods, the Nagas and the Anunnaki, with a chapter on "Ancient Texts: Vedas, Vimanas & Nuclear Weapons." The Hindu-Anunnaki comparison also runs through the archive post Anunnaki Hindu Gods of Ancient India, first published in 2021.
These conversations pose the vimana stories as an open question: are they memories of real technology, encoded in myth? Set beside them is the textual record. The epics describe divine vehicles in sacred narrative, the medieval treatise withholds its details, and the one technical manual is a 20th-century work that the Indian Institute of Science team found could not describe a craft capable of flight. Readers can weigh Carson's question against that record for themselves.
Watch, read and go deeper
Start with the Praveen Mohan interview on the 4biddenknowledge Podcast, where the temples, gold and vimana questions are discussed at length. The Coral Castle guide links the Egyptian Mystery School clip that pairs vimanas with anti-gravity legends. For the comparison between Indian and Sumerian gods that frames much of Carson's interest, the Anunnaki topic hub gathers the related guides in one place.
Frequently asked questions
Is the Vaimanika Shastra an ancient text?
No. It was composed in the early 20th century and dictated by Pandit Subbaraya Shastry to G. V. Sharma, with dates usually given as 1918 to 1923. The 1974 Indian Institute of Science study placed its composition between 1900 and 1922. Shastry attributed it to the sage Bharadvaja, received psychically.
What is the Pushpaka vimana?
The Pushpaka is the flying palace-chariot of the Ramayana. Made by the divine architect Vishvakarma, it passed from Brahma to Kubera, was seized by Ravana, and carried Rama back to Ayodhya after Ravana's defeat, before Rama returned it to Kubera.
Do the Ramayana and Mahabharata describe how vimanas work?
No. The epics describe vimanas as divine or royal vehicles that move at their owners' will, sometimes drawn by enchanted animals. They give no measurements, materials or propulsion systems. Technical descriptions appear only in the 11th-century Samarangana Sutradhara, which deliberately withholds its details, and in the 20th-century Vaimanika Shastra.
Did the Indian Institute of Science say vimanas could fly?
No. Its 1974 study of the four craft in the Vaimanika Shastra found the Shakuna "a near impossibility," the Rukma "a decided impossibility," and concluded that "None of the planes has properties or capabilities of being flown." It described the designs as "poor concoctions, rather than expressions of something real."
Why is a temple tower also called a vimana?
In Hindu temple architecture the vimana is the tower over the sanctum, imagined as the deity's dwelling. The flying vimana of the epics is also a divine dwelling, one that travels, so the two senses of the word share the idea of a home for the gods.
Sources and further reading
- Valmiki, Ramayana, Aranya Kanda and Yuddha Kanda, translated by Desiraju Hanumanta Rao and K. M. K. Murthy (valmikiramayan.net).
- The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Adi Parva and Vana Parva, translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli (1883 to 1896).
- Bhagavata Purana, Canto 10, chapters 76 to 78.
- Monier Monier-Williams, A Sanskrit-English Dictionary (1899), entry "vimana."
- V. Raghavan, Yantras or Mechanical Contrivances in Ancient India (Indian Institute of Culture, Bangalore, 1952).
- G. R. Josyer, Vymanika Shastra (1973).
- H. S. Mukunda, S. M. Deshpande, H. R. Nagendra, A. Prabhu and S. P. Govindaraju, "A Critical Study of the Work Vymanika Shastra," Scientific Opinion (1974), pp. 5 to 12.
