AFOVA New Letter 2 of Year 2021

Section 7 – Panorama CV 2 No. 02 / 2021 Page 258 of 332 So let's first learn the background of this author, Sri Subbaraya Shastri. Subbaraya hailed from Togare Agrahara in Hosuru near Bengaluru. As if the poverty wasn't enough, almost the entire family suffered from leprosy. Many in the family succumbed to the disease. Subbaraya left home and moved into the forest in the Avani region near Kolar. There he met with a sage through whom he learnt the basics of Sanskrit. There were no books or scriptures for reference, all the learning was verbal and one on one, like true Upa-Nishad style. Then followed hours of deep meditation. As the practice of meditation got intensified, mind channeling was practised. Subbaraya became a bridge between many Maharishi's through psychic channeling. Maharshi Bharadwaja and Rishi Gautama became the main source of knowledge in subsequently developing some hitherto unknown knowledge about "Jala Tantra", "Bhoutika Kala nidhi" and "Yantra Sarvasva". Vaimanika Shastra was part of Yantra Sarvasva. All these works were verbatim recited and dictated by Subbaraya Shastri to Venkatachala Shastri after he came out of the forest and started living in Anekal near Bengaluru. When his book Vimana Shastra was raising many eyebrows, Britishers jailed him under the pretext of him being a freedom fighter. Within a few months of imprisonment Shastri died due to prolonged illness, he passed away in utter penury. Thus ended the life of a great scholar and researcher. What happened to all his works then? Fortunately some well-wishers saved all his works safely. When G.R Josyer got to know about his works and sought permission to translate some of them to English. Vimana Shastra was one of them.The book was priced at 160 dollars in those days (around 1972) still there were so many buyers all over the world. Even NASA in the USA got hold of a copy of this book. While the entire world is convinced that the Wright brothers were the pioneers of aviation, here is a book which portrayed India indeed had the knowledge of flying vehicles called Vimanas from ancient times. The book even produced certain mind boggling details of construction, working of engines, gyroscopic systems which were developed much later in aviation technology. NASA actually undertook an experiment of construction of mercury vortex engines, very similar to what was written in Vaimanika Shastra. Pushpak Viman is a well-known aerial vehicle which Ravan used. He had used it to take away Sita to Lanka and after slaying Ravan, Sri Ram returned to Ayodhya along with Sita, Lakshman and Vibhishan in the same Pushpak Viman. This is elaborately mentioned in