IS BRAHMAASTRA A NUCLEAR WEAPON?

IS BRAHMAASTRA A NUCLEAR WEAPON?
> - S .Swaminathan, Tamil
> Tutor, SOAS, University of London
> Nowadays we see a lot of documentaries on television giving scientific or
rational explanations for the Biblical events. But not many things in the
Hindu epics or Puranas are explained in the same way. Any one with a
scientific bent of mind or rational outlook can find explanations for most
of the ‘unusual or abnormal’ phenomena
> or miracles. While I was working for the BBC World Service twelve years
ago I had to interview one Indian doctor who had specialisation in Test
Tube (IVF) Babies. Casually I mentioned that Gandhari also might have
undergone IVF treatment to give birth to 100 children from the urns where
the pieces of flesh were kept. But the doctor laughed at my suggestion.  I
was surprised to read my view many years later when Mr Cho Ramaswamy
started writing Mahabaharata in his magazine ‘Tughlak’.
> I am giving below some events from our epics and puranas and modern
explanations for the same. They
> may raise some questions such as ,Did they have all the modern equipments
like today? or Are they just imagination or intuition about the future? I
leave it to the judgement of the readers.
> Dasavatara and Darwin
> Many of us have noticed the similarity between Darwin’s Theory of
Evolution and ten avataras of Lord Vishnu . Fish/matsya Avatara,
Tortoise/kurma Avatara,, Boar/varaha Avatara, Man- Lion/narasimha Avatara,
> Dwarf/vamana Avatara, then Rama, Parasurama, Krishna, Buddha(or Balarama)
and Kalki avataras are equated with the life in the sea, amphibians, land
animals, half man/half animal-semi civilised state, then full grown
intelligent men. This is a reflection of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution.
While I was writing this , a news item appeared in the British newspapers
say that the have found a fossil of 3 foot tall man. They also added that
those people may be there even today in the remote forests. This justifies
the Vamana (dwarf) avatara. We already know that there are pygmies in the
Congo forests of Africa.
> One Indian scholar explains the Varaha Avatara as follows:
> ‘One is reminded of the meaningful story full of highly relevant
symbolism from our Puranas,
> centred round the incarnation of Lord Vishnu as the boar to restore the
Mother Earth that had tilted and slipped into the depths of ocean. The
moral is when human beings become oblivious of their responsibilities
consequent on their interconnectedness and interdependence, God Almighty
incarnates as Yagna Varaha-symbol of the principle of sacrifice. When our
actions become self oriented and disjointed, breaking the natural
interrelatedness, Truth gets
> devalues and there is atilt. Varaha(boar) comes to remind man of the
urgency of bringing the sense of sacrifice into his actions, of raising
them into Yagnas, so that harmony and strength are restored as also the
balance.
> Theory of Time Dilation
> If a 16 year old person travels at the speed of light (186000 miles per
second), that person will be a Markandeya
> for ever. He will be young for ever. We came to know this fact only after
the greatest physicist of our times Albert Einstein gave us the Theory of
Relativity. But there is a story in our Puranas about Arjuna’s travel to
Swarga
> (an alien planet?)  in Indra’s chariot driven by his driver Matali. When
Arjuna came back to earth he saw people more aged than he expected. When he
asked for explanation scholars told him that the time on earth was
different from the time of the place he visited. Even now we read in the
Puranas about Deva’s day, Manu’s day and Brahma’s day. They have different
durations. No other religion in the world described ‘Time’ this way. The
concept of time and the way we use adjectives like ‘Surya Koti
samaprabha’/light equivalent to million suns show that our forefathers were
aware of the modern concepts.
> Futurology and Nuclear Winter
> Vanaparvam of Mahabharata describes the end of the world. It says how the
world will end at the end of Kaliyuga. It says that all the planets will be
aligned in a single line. It also describes the climatic changes at the
time. One cant miss the similarity between the nuclear winter (What will
happen in the aftermath of a nuclear explosion) and this changed climate.
Before reading about the nuclear winter I thought the epic describes some
natural catastrophe. Now it is very clear that they describe only the
nuclear winter.
> Light and Sound in Tamil
> We now know that the light and sound are different wave lengths of the
same electro magnetic spectrum. If you look at the words for light and
sound in Tamil it is oli and oliIs it a sheer coincidence or our
forefathers knew the connection between the two.There is a proverb in Tamil
‘pulikku piranthathu poonaiyaguma? (Will a cub born to a tiger be a cat?
).The modern zoological classification says that both the animals belong to
the same cat family. Did Tamils group both the animals in the proverb by
sheer coincidence or did they know a scientific classification. Even the
oldest Tamil book Tolkappiyam classifies all the living beings into six
groups.
> Brahmastra- a Nuclear Missile?
> Whenever the use of Brahmastra is mentioned  in our scriptures ,the
devastation it caused was also described in detail. They allowed it to use
only once, that too only as a last resort. When they gave reason for it,
they said that it kills the good and bad together and other living beings
also. And we know that it was the most powerful weapon of the epical
period. What is this weapon? Is it just a fire weapon or more than that?
When we compare this with other weapons of Mahabaharata period such as the
Shakti missile used by Karna, the Nagastra (Biological weapon?),
Pasupatastra  etc it is very different from them. When Aswaththama and
Arjuna released their Brahmastras, Krishna foreseeing the end of the world
by such terrible weapons asked both to recall their weapons. When Arjuna
did so, Aswaththama was unable to do it as he did not possess the requisite
knowledge. At last Krishna had to use his power to save the child
(Parikshit) in the womb of Uttara (from the radioactive fallout?) by using
his special powers.
> Bhagiratha- a Great Engineer
> The story of the descent of river Ganges to the ‘earth’ through
Bhagiratha’s several thousand year penance is nothing but a marvellous
engineering feat. Three decades ago when engineers wanted to build a dam
across
> river Nile in Egypt, they removed the massive Abu Simbel statues from the
banks of the river and then a bomb explosion diverted the river Nile. The
story of Bhagiratha bringing river Ganges to the earth clearly says that
several of his forefathers also tried and failed in the mission. That is to
say several kings tried to divert the Ganges which was running mostly on
the Himalayan mountain but failed.  Bhagiratha with great ingenuity,
diverted the river by breaking certain point in the Himalaya and the mighty
river descended to the present Gangetic plains of North India. We must
remember several thousand years agothere were no people on the Gangetic
plains. This is what we read as the ‘descent of the river from sky to
earth’. Population slowly spread eastward from the Indus plains. So we may
call Bhagiratha the greatest engineer of the ancient world.
> Did Agastya drink ocean?
> Agastya was one of the greatest travellers of ancient India. He was
mentioned in Rig Veda and the Ramayana. He slowly moved southward and
established an ashram at the western ghats-Pothya malai. There are lot of
myths
> about him. All this can be explained scientifically. He did divert the
river Cauvery to the present Chola mandala like Bagiratha. But in thousands
of years it became a myth and we read a crow tilted the kamandalam of
Agastya and thus came Cauvery.
> Another story told about Agastya is that he travelled to south at the
behest of Lord Siva. It is
> true that either Siva or a Saivaite saint requested him to go to the
south to disperse the population. The story of Siva’s(Menakshi)
Tirulkalyanam makes it clear by  saying theovercrowding of the earth tilted
the balance and Siva requested Agastya to go south. Our fore fathers were
such a great planners that they did what we are doing today-building
satellite cities! This story is in Tiruvilayadal puranam and other books.
> Did Agastya drink the ocean? Agastya was the first person to cross the
Indian ocean for the first time to establish a great Hindu civilisation in
South East Asia.  We now knew that there was a flourishing Hindu colony in
Laos,Vietnam,Cambodia (Angor vat temple) Malaysia,Singapore and Indonesia
(Borobudur Stupi) for 1300 years. Now they are all converted as Muslims.
Like Columbus and Magellan, he crossed the ocean- that is he ‘drank’ the
ocean! It is a symbolic story. Agastya’s statues are displayed through out
South East Asian monuments even today.
> One another myth about Agastya is that he made the Vindhya Hill not to
grow again. This is another
> symbolic story to say that he crossed the Vindhyas for the first time
through the ‘land route’. Before him North and South Indians used coastal
sea routes. Tamil literature also makes it very clear in several places
that Agastya came
> to the south with 18 groups of people and he was the one who codified a
grammar for Tamil.
> Jarasandhan-Siamese Twins?
> Jarasandhan was born to two mothers and he came as two balls of flesh.
The left and right     sides (child) were thrown into a dustbin by the
queens in disgust and fear and a rakshasi (wild woman) by name Jara picked
> it up and gave it to the king after joining both the parts .The fact is
one woman gave birth to a Siamese twins (two children joined together
physically) and  threw it in to the bin. Somebody did some surgery
successfully and gave the child in good condition back to the king.
> I have counted and listed more than 20 abnormal children in the
Mahabjharata. Several of them are
> stories of cloning. Mandhata was born out of his ‘father’ says the epic.
Another story says that Vaidharbi gave birth to a squash fruit and it was
divided into several parts and kept in urns. They became sons. The stories
of
> Shisupala, Sikandi and Sthunakarna talk about organ changes. Vashista and
Agastya were born in ‘pots’(Kumba Muni or Kumba Yoni). If we remove all the
myths about all these miracle children we see clear medical treatment or
operation
>
> Who discovered Boomerang?
> All of us knew that the Australian aboriginals had a weapon called
Boomerang which will come back to
> the person who shoots it. But Krishna’s Sudarsana charka also did the
same .Whenever Lord Krishna used it, it came back to him. Was it the first
boomerang weapon? Did Krishna teach this art to the world?
> Miracle or Solar eclipse?
> On the fourteenth day of the 18 day Mahabharata war, Arjuna vowed that he
would kill Jayadrathan  before sunset or commit suicide. Unfortunately
Arjuna couldn ‘t kill him. But the story is that Krishna created false
sunset using his Sudarsana charka. If we look closely at this event it is
nothing but a solar eclipse. The sun light faded for some time because of
the eclipse. When all prepared for the withdrawal of the army for the day,
the sun came out and Arjuna killed the unguarded Jayathrathan. In those
days they didn’t fight after sunset.
> What I have given here is only very little. If we take the fields of
Medicine, Mathematics,
> Psychology  ,The power of mind/brain, Extra Sensory perception etc. we
may write volume after volume. But I wish
> someone analyses all such events and publish their findings well before
the western scientists reveal them. No one will appreciate if we keep on
comparing every new invention with the writings in our old literature.