Ancient Hindus created test tube babies and artificial wombs?

[Ben_Sinner]

scienceinhinduism.com/2015/06/test-tube-babies-in-hinduism.html

It is written in the Vedas apparently that the wise sages knew how to make test tube babies and artificial wombs.

From the article:

Here it should be noted that the above mentioned were all born in the artificial wombs that is far beyond the technology of the present generation. According to the famous scientist Stephen Hawking – scientists could get the technology of artificial wombs - still after 80 years, NOT now! But, these technological feats were all available in the Vedic India in one of the other form, of course as a luxury to very few blessed people!

How can this be? Why doesn’t Christianity have any advanced scientific knowledge like this?

 

[SyroMalankara]

Cause it doesnt exist; much of Hindu mythology explains creation or philosophy using allegory

 

[TheAtheist]

scienceinhinduism.com/2015/06/test-tube-babies-in-hinduism.html

It is written in the Vedas apparently that the wise sages knew how to make test tube babies and artificial wombs.

From the article:

Here it should be noted that the above mentioned were all born in the artificial wombs that is far beyond the technology of the present generation. According to the famous scientist Stephen Hawking – scientists could get the technology of artificial wombs - still after 80 years, NOT now! But, these technological feats were all available in the Vedic India in one of the other form, of course as a luxury to very few blessed people!

How can this be? Why doesn’t Christianity have any advanced scientific knowledge like this?

And here…on this board… I never in a million years thought I’d see this pop up.

Almost snorted out my coffee to be honest.

Its something that, being Indian, I tend to argue with the Hindus who tend to push the whole “Vedic Sciences” agenda.

But i’m going to sit back on this one for a bit… because I usually have to compose myself before dealing with this canard…

I’ll allow your Christian brethren to to take all their swings at this one, but suffice it to say… you might want to take several grains of salt with this one.

 

[TheAtheist]

OK… now that I’ve stopped laughing – lets be critical shall we?

First a few points that must be made, given that I’m sure that the vast majority of CAF hasn’t the foggiest idea about things that go down in India.

1.) Hinduism refers not to a single religion, but a whole set of religious beliefs and practices that can often agree or conflict with each other. The term would have the same equivalence of me taking Christianity + Judaism + Islam + Ba’hai + Druze + Yazidi + Zoroastarianism + etc and calling it all “Semitism.”

2.) So there is a strand (notice I said Strand) of Hindu belief that likes to think that all the worlds knowledge is contained within the Vedas (and sometimes other great epics like the Mahabharata and the Ramayana). This shouldn’t be too alien to you guys, given that at various points in history you can find people advocating for the same thing for the Bible, the Koran, and the Torah.

3.) This strand gained a lot of currency for the followers of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, who wrote a very intriguing pamphlet back in the 1920s called Hindutva: Who is a Hindu? which stands as the cornerstone for a rather aggressive form of “Hindu Nationalism” if you want to call it that. Ironically Savarkar was an atheist, although Hindutva as it stands in the current time frame is essentially an ethno-religious movement. It is a far-right wing ideology, akin to a bit of “Blood and Iron” German style nationalism.

4.) So there is a kind of push to portray India as possessing the advances of Modern Science back in the pre-Axial Age – because it serves a nationalistic purpose.

One of the biggest proponents of this is the….”historian” Y. Sudershan Rao who among other things has claimed:

1.) Indians had Flying Aircraft before the Wright Brothers (called Vimanas – UFO theorists like to jump on this one as well)

2.) India had access to stem cell research and was conducting genetic research during the Bronze Age. Actually, the current sitting president Narendra Modi, made a claim by referring to the events of the Mahabharata:

We all read about Karna[wp] in the Mahabharata. If we think a little more, we realise that the Mahabharata says Karna was not born from his mother’s womb. This means that genetic science was present at that time. That is why Karna could be born outside his mother’s womb.

3.) Rao also claims that all the events in the Mahabharata and Ramayana must be true and should be treated like history books since the art of fictional writing wasn’t invented till a few centuries later.

Still another Hindutva writer, Dinanath Batra, actually goes so far as to claim that the car and the Television existed during the time of the ancient Indians……

And how is this all validated? To quote Rao

Western schools of thought look at material evidence of history. We can’t produce material evidence for everything. India is a continuing civilization. To look for evidence would mean digging right though the hearts of villages and displacing people. We only have to look at the people to figure out the similarities in their lives and the depiction in the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. For instance, the Ramayana mentions that Rama had traveled to Bhad¬ra-chalam (in Andhra Pradesh). A look at the people and the fact that his having lived there for a while is in the collective memory of the people cannot be discounted in the search for material evidence. In continuing civilisations such as ours, the writing of history cannot depend only on archaeological evidence. We have to depend on folklore too.

This kind of thinking also cracked open the way for the so-called “Vedic Sciences” - where things like Astrology should be taken as truth.

The justification for this line of logic?

Western scientific thought draws on the traditions of Greek rationalist thinking according to which only what is within the purview of the five senses is taken cognisance of. Scientific methods follow some kind of closed scientific reasoning which insulates itself against facts that its methods cannot account for. How else can they [scientists] dare dismiss Jyotisha [astrology] which sees a level of existence beyond the purview of the five senses?" (Vasudev 2001

Again I want to emphasize - there are a lot of Hindus (notice the word, Hindu…not Hindutva) who look at all of this and shake their heads in disapproval.

Its all well and good to write about some golden age in the past…but i think common sense informs the people to just take a look around at the conditions of Indian society…

To believe in such things is both self-delusion and smacks of luxury…

 

[ProdglArchitect]

How can this be? Why doesn’t Christianity have any advanced scientific knowledge like this?

Because the claims are based in a fantasy world, whereas the Church likes to inhabit reality…

 

[patrick457]

Okay, TheAtheist has already covered the necessary background in a thorough way, so I’ll just add in this:

Nowadays there’s this vogue amongst certain Hindutva adherents / Indian nationalists to present Hinduism as a ‘scientific’ and ‘historical’ (in the Western sense) religion. As such, they spend their time trying to ‘prove’ that figures like Rama and Krishna really existed a long time ago, that ancient Hindu literature like the Ramayana or the Mahabharata actually contain descriptions of advanced scientific knowledge, so on.

They’re pretty much doing this approach in order to demonstrate the validity of Hinduism over against ‘the West’ and Abrahamic religions like Christianity or Islam (both of which lay a stress on history); to prove that Indians are not a race of savages and that Hinduism (often equated with ‘Indian culture’) is not, as many pre-modern Westerners usually dismissed it, a backwards idolatrous superstition.

A number of Hindu writers (for example Devdutt Pattanaik - whose works I admire BTW) have actually expressed their opinion that this recent mentality is actually foreign to historical Indian thought, which is very different from the Western worldview. They point out that ironically, these nationalists, in trying to stand up to the West, are actually adopting Western notions of ‘history’, ‘truth’, and ‘orthodoxy’/‘heresy’. They’re adopting Western ideas of what ‘religion’ is supposed to be, even though Hinduism actually doesn’t really fit Western notions (as do other non-Western belief / philosophical systems).

 

[TheAtheist]

Thanks for the Contributions Patrick. Just some further thoughts

They’re pretty much doing this approach in order to demonstrate the validity of Hinduism over against ‘the West’ and Abrahamic religions like Christianity or Islam (both of which lay a stress on history); to prove that Indians are not a race of savages and that Hinduism (often equated with ‘Indian culture’) is not, as many pre-modern Westerners usually dismissed it, a backwards idolatrous superstition.

A few complications to consider.

1.) Most of what i’ve read about British Colonialism over the country of my birth tends to display two different images.

a.) if your some 18th-19th century linguistic academic genius learning Sanskrit and pouring over the collective and conflicting wisdom of Indian philosophy, chances are you are pretty much like the French Philosophes a century before who were praising Confucian learning without having any real experience with China.

India probably looks like this spiritual sagely wonderland.

b.) if your that poor sap who signed up with the British military/East India Company and got shipped to one of the more unruly states - i’m sure being tossed into that sort of environment you would probably think the whole continent is filled with savages. Nevermind the fact that as essentially a representative of a foreign power, you are probably not being treated that well either.

a + b are IMHO, gross misrepresentations. Both are rather strong Orientalist projections if i may borrow Edward Said’s line of thinking. Of course, to be absolutely fair - the “East” whether that’s my neck of the woods or the East Asians, tend to suffer from “Occidentalism” and have some rather strange/odd notions of what life in the West is like.

The Hindu Nationalist sentiment (of which the Hindutva is probably one of the more extreme iterations) feels the need to answer these stereotypes. Although their targets are not you guys.

As I’ve always stated, Christianity is a blip, a dot, an almost nothing to the history of India. I don’t mean that as an insult by the way, its just that how things have panned out. I’m sure a similar statement can be made about Christianity in say Malaysia, or China, or Japan. Whereas a country like the Philippines or Korea have taken to your religion quite strongly.

No, the Hindutva targets are
1.) Western Secular Elites
2.) Islam

The second one might not make much sense to many of you, so i’ll put it in this context.

I’m sure a lot of you know who Gandhi is right? Bapu (meaning Father, you might hear that nickname applied to him) was assassinated by a radical Hindu Nationalist because they thought he was selling out the nation by negotiating with the Islamic elements that eventually became Pakistan,

As i’ve often mentioned to my Jewish colleagues, the tit-for-tat business in the middle East seems to have started with the generation of the Israeli state. So what, thats circa 1950s right?

India has much older grievances against Islam, dating at minimum to the time when the Mughals invaded.

 

[openmind77]

Okay, TheAtheist has already covered the necessary background in a thorough way, so I’ll just add in this:

Nowadays there’s this vogue amongst certain Hindutva adherents / Indian nationalists to present Hinduism as a ‘scientific’ and ‘historical’ (in the Western sense) religion. As such, they spend their time trying to ‘prove’ that figures like Rama and Krishna really existed a long time ago, that ancient Hindu literature like the Ramayana or the Mahabharata actually contain descriptions of advanced scientific knowledge, so on.

They’re pretty much doing this approach in order to demonstrate the validity of Hinduism over against ‘the West’ and Abrahamic religions like Christianity or Islam (both of which lay a stress on history); to prove that Indians are not a race of savages and that Hinduism (often equated with ‘Indian culture’) is not, as many pre-modern Westerners usually dismissed it, a backwards idolatrous superstition.

A number of Hindu writers (for example Devdutt Pattanaik - whose works I admire BTW) have actually expressed their opinion that this recent mentality is actually foreign to historical Indian thought, which is very different from the Western worldview. They point out that ironically, these nationalists, in trying to stand up to the West, are actually adopting Western notions of ‘history’, ‘truth’, and ‘orthodoxy’/‘heresy’. They’re adopting Western ideas of what ‘religion’ is supposed to be, even though Hinduism actually doesn’t really fit Western notions (as do other non-Western belief / philosophical systems).

I agree that Hindu/Indian idea of history is totally different from the Western idea which relies on accuracy of dates and places and people. The Mahabhartha is mythology rather than history and an allegory from beginning to end (although there may have been an actual battle of Kurukshetra and an actual person name Krishna).

This idea of test tube babies and a woman having a hundred sons is clearly not true whatever these Hindutva people may claim (the hundred Kaurava sons allegorical represent the inner addictions/vices/habits of a person - ‘vasanas’).

However, it is very curious that the epic mentions flying machines. No other epic written in any other language (at least as far as I know) has considered the possibility of machines that can fly. Greek mythology has persons with wings who can fly, but I don’t believe anyone else has thought of the possibility of creating flying machines so much before their time.

 

[SyroMalankara]

Doesn’t the Tanakh mention Elijah flying firey chariot?

 

[openmind77]

Doesn’t the Tanakh mention Elijah flying firey chariot?

Interesting! Someone should mention that to Modi.

However, Elijah’s chariot was I believe sent by God to take him to heaven (correct me if I am wrong) - so it was a miraculous occurrence curtsey of God.

The planes in the Mahabharat and Ramayana are mentioned in a rather matter-of-fact way - they are not common, but belong to someone important (maybe like Trump) - even a villain like Ravana.

 

[patrick457]

Interesting! Someone should mention that to Modi.

However, Elijah’s chariot was I believe sent by God to take him to heaven (correct me if I am wrong) - so it was a miraculous occurrence curtsey of God.

The planes in the Mahabharat and Ramayana are mentioned in a rather matter-of-fact way - they are not common, but belong to someone important (maybe like Trump) - even a villain like Ravana.

Are you talking about the vimanas like the Pushpaka? It’s not really a ‘plane’ or ‘machine’ - more like a flying chariot or palace. And the Pushpaka was originally owned by the god Kubera before Ravana (his half-brother) nabbed it along with his island kingdom of Lanka (which was originally also Kubera’s). I mean, it’s the gods that own and drive those flying chariots in the epics, don’t they?

 

[patrick457]

Thanks for the Contributions Patrick. Just some further thoughts

A few complications to consider.

1.) Most of what i’ve read about British Colonialism over the country of my birth tends to display two different images.

a.) if your some 18th-19th century linguistic academic genius learning Sanskrit and pouring over the collective and conflicting wisdom of Indian philosophy, chances are you are pretty much like the French Philosophes a century before who were praising Confucian learning without having any real experience with China.

India probably looks like this spiritual sagely wonderland.

b.) if your that poor sap who signed up with the British military/East India Company and got shipped to one of the more unruly states - i’m sure being tossed into that sort of environment you would probably think the whole continent is filled with savages. Nevermind the fact that as essentially a representative of a foreign power, you are probably not being treated that well either.

a + b are IMHO, gross misrepresentations. Both are rather strong Orientalist projections if i may borrow Edward Said’s line of thinking. Of course, to be absolutely fair - the “East” whether that’s my neck of the woods or the East Asians, tend to suffer from “Occidentalism” and have some rather strange/odd notions of what life in the West is like.

I had this impression (based on reading such sources) that early modern Christian (usually Protestant) missionaries to India romanticized ancient Indian literature like the Vedas or the Bhagavad-gita.

The missionaries would praise ancient Hindu literature (the Vedas and the Upanishads) claiming that they really represent a sort of proto-Christian - more specifically, proto-Protestant - worldview (belief in one God, a simpler form of worship without all those ‘idols’ and smells and bells), and then accuse modern Hinduism as being a corruption of that ‘pristine’ philosophy using rhetoric familiar if you’ve read anti-Catholic works: corrupt, power-hungry clergymen (in this case, Brahmins) misleading and manipulating the innocent flock by turning the pure and simple ‘ol’ time religion’ into meaningless pomp and ritual.

There’s this old 19th-century book about Hindu deities I’ve been reading, and in the book’s preface, the author lambasts modern Hinduism, accusing it of the usual ‘polytheistic superstition’ and ‘idolatry’ charge and then, claiming that the reason why it became that way is due to the Brahmins’ "priestcraft. Supposedly, originally Hinduism was essentially like a proto-Christianity - or rather, a Protestant fantasy of what ‘pure’ Judaeo-Christianity is:

There is reason to believe that, in the earlier periods of time, before the Priests of the Hindoos (sic) had found it expedient for the firmer establishment of their sway over the minds of the people, to raise a huge superstructure of emblematical worship; the temples erected to the Supreme Being were plain and void of personification, dedicated to the Creator of the world, in which the prayers of those who entered, were addressed to the Deity, without supplicating the intercession of an intermediate agent; when no image, or symbol of Divine power, had a place.

No, the Hindutva targets are
1.) Western Secular Elites
2.) Islam

The second one might not make much sense to many of you, so i’ll put it in this context.

I’m sure a lot of you know who Gandhi is right? Bapu (meaning Father, you might hear that nickname applied to him) was assassinated by a radical Hindu Nationalist because they thought he was selling out the nation by negotiating with the Islamic elements that eventually became Pakistan,

As i’ve often mentioned to my Jewish colleagues, the tit-for-tat business in the middle East seems to have started with the generation of the Israeli state. So what, thats circa 1950s right?

India has much older grievances against Islam, dating at minimum to the time when the Mughals invaded.

Oh yeah, it reminds me: the Ayodhya/Babri Mosque riots. I think you might have heard that one.

BTW, just a question: are you from India?

 

[GKC]

OK… now that I’ve stopped laughing – lets be critical shall we?

First a few points that must be made, given that I’m sure that the vast majority of CAF hasn’t the foggiest idea about things that go down in India.

1.) Hinduism refers not to a single religion, but a whole set of religious beliefs and practices that can often agree or conflict with each other. The term would have the same equivalence of me taking Christianity + Judaism + Islam + Ba’hai + Druze + Yazidi + Zoroastarianism + etc and calling it all “Semitism.”

2.) So there is a strand (notice I said Strand) of Hindu belief that likes to think that all the worlds knowledge is contained within the Vedas (and sometimes other great epics like the Mahabharata and the Ramayana). This shouldn’t be too alien to you guys, given that at various points in history you can find people advocating for the same thing for the Bible, the Koran, and the Torah.

3.) This strand gained a lot of currency for the followers of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, who wrote a very intriguing pamphlet back in the 1920s called Hindutva: Who is a Hindu? which stands as the cornerstone for a rather aggressive form of “Hindu Nationalism” if you want to call it that. Ironically Savarkar was an atheist, although Hindutva as it stands in the current time frame is essentially an ethno-religious movement. It is a far-right wing ideology, akin to a bit of “Blood and Iron” German style nationalism.

4.) So there is a kind of push to portray India as possessing the advances of Modern Science back in the pre-Axial Age – because it serves a nationalistic purpose.

One of the biggest proponents of this is the….”historian” Y. Sudershan Rao who among other things has claimed:

1.) Indians had Flying Aircraft before the Wright Brothers (called Vimanas – UFO theorists like to jump on this one as well)

2.) India had access to stem cell research and was conducting genetic research during the Bronze Age. Actually, the current sitting president Narendra Modi, made a claim by referring to the events of the Mahabharata:

3.) Rao also claims that all the events in the Mahabharata and Ramayana must be true and should be treated like history books since the art of fictional writing wasn’t invented till a few centuries later.

Still another Hindutva writer, Dinanath Batra, actually goes so far as to claim that the car and the Television existed during the time of the ancient Indians……

And how is this all validated? To quote Rao

This kind of thinking also cracked open the way for the so-called “Vedic Sciences” - where things like Astrology should be taken as truth.

The justification for this line of logic?

Again I want to emphasize - there are a lot of Hindus (notice the word, Hindu…not Hindutva) who look at all of this and shake their heads in disapproval.

Its all well and good to write about some golden age in the past…but i think common sense informs the people to just take a look around at the conditions of Indian society…

To believe in such things is both self-delusion and smacks of luxury…

Plus nuclear weapons, IIRC.

 

[openmind77]

Are you talking about the vimanas like the Pushpaka? It’s not really a ‘plane’ or ‘machine’ - more like a flying chariot or palace. And the Pushpaka was originally owned by the god Kubera before Ravana (his half-brother) nabbed it along with his island kingdom of Lanka (which was originally also Kubera’s). I mean, it’s the gods that own and drive those flying chariots in the epics, don’t they?

Ravana’s flying chariot (I am not sure what the difference is between a flying chariot and a flying machine - the shape maybe? the former has horses?) belonged to Kubera (who is not really a ‘God’). I don’t think all of them belonged to Kubera. For instance someone named Salva had his own flyng ‘chariot’ Supposedly there is an ancient text called ‘Vaimanika Shastra’ which talks of different types of flying ‘chariots’.

 

[patrick457]

Ravana’s flying chariot (I am not sure what the difference is between a flying chariot and a flying machine - the shape maybe? the former has horses?) belonged to Kubera (who is not really a ‘God’).

Sure, not ‘God’ in the sense of bhagavan or ishvara, but ‘god’ in the sense of deva. Yaksha-raja.

And in the stories themselves, the vimanas are clearly not ‘machines’, in that they aren’t shown to function using gadgetry or human technology. Instead, their magical properties - flying, shooting missiles - are due to them being ‘divine’ (either devic or asuric) in origin.

I don’t think all of them belonged to Kubera.

For instance someone named Salva had his own flyng ‘chariot’

According to the Bhagavata Purana, King Shalva acquired his magic vimana (Saubha) as the result of a boon from Shiva. Just like Pushpaka, it was also made by Maya (Mayasura, Mayadanava), architect of the asuras and danavas.

Thus the foolish king worshiped the god Paśupati Śiva], eating a handful of dust each day. At the end of a year bhagavan Āśutosha Śiva], the master of Umā, gave Śālva, who had approached him for shelter, the choice of a benediction. He chose a vehicle (yānam) which would be indestructible to devas, asuras, humans, gandharvas, the celestial serpents and rakṣasās, that could travel anywhere he chose and that would be terrifying to the Vṛṣṇis.

The Lord of the Mountain Śiva], having said, “So be it,” ordered Maya, conqueror of enemy cities, to construct an iron fortress (puraṃ … ayas) named Saubha and present it to Śālva. When he obtained the unassailable vehicle that was filled with darkness and moved at his will (kāma-gaṃ yānaṃ tamo-dhāma durāsadam), Śālva went to Dvārakā, remembering the enmity shown by the Vṛṣṇis.

Śālva, besieging the city with a large army, O best of the Bharatas, laid in ruins the parks, the gardens and all the towers, gateways, mansions, outer walls, outlook posts and recreational areas surrounding it. From that finest vimāna of his there fell torrents of weapons, stones and trees as also thunderbolts, snakes and hailstones, while a fierce whirlwind arose and blanketed all directions with dust. Kṛṣṇa’s city thus terribly tormented by Saubha could find no peace, O King, just as the earth with Tripura.

The interesting thing is that the vimana Saubha is described as being both a yāna (‘vehicle’) and a pura (‘fortress’ / ‘city’ / ‘castle’).

Just my imagination here, but rather than a kind of airplane or spaceship, it seems to me more that either the story envisions a kind of floating city a la Laputa, or maybe the ‘fortress’ description is symbolic and a flying magic chariot was meant.

Supposedly there is an ancient text called ‘Vaimanika Shastra’ which talks of different types of flying ‘chariots’.

Doesn’t seem to be ancient though.

 

[patrick457]

Plus nuclear weapons, IIRC.

Those divine weapons that could obliterate entire armies and destroy the world if used improperly (e.g. the Brahmastra)? Nuclear missiles.
The immortal Ashvatthaman? Some kind of android.
The 101 Kauravas? Test-tube babies or clones.

I’m not kidding - I’ve seen people rationalize the Hindu epics like that.

As a non-Hindu (no offense to Hindus here), I also kind of doubt the claims made by some people that certain Hindu rituals like yajna actually have ‘scientific’ environmental or health benefits. Seriously, this obsession with ‘scientific’ …

 

[GKC]

Those divine weapons that could obliterate entire armies and destroy the world if used improperly (e.g. the Brahmastra)? Nuclear missiles.
The immortal Ashvatthaman? Some kind of android.
The 101 Kauravas? Test-tube babies or clones.

I’m not kidding - I’ve seen people rationalize the Hindu epics like that.

As a non-Hindu (no offense to Hindus here), I also kind of doubt the claims made by some people that certain Hindu rituals like yajna actually have ‘scientific’ environmental or health benefits. Seriously, this obsession with ‘scientific’ …

As to the “weapons”, so have I.

 

[openmind77]

Those divine weapons that could obliterate entire armies and destroy the world if used improperly (e.g. the Brahmastra)? Nuclear missiles.
The immortal Ashvatthaman? Some kind of android.
The 101 Kauravas? Test-tube babies or clones.

I’m not kidding - I’ve seen people rationalize the Hindu epics like that.

As a non-Hindu (no offense to Hindus here), I also kind of doubt the claims made by some people that certain Hindu rituals like yajna actually have ‘scientific’ environmental or health benefits. Seriously, this obsession with ‘scientific’ …

As mentioned before if the Mahabharata is read as an allegory instead of history, it is easy to see that the 100 Kauravas represent evil tendencies (which are supposed to be many) in all humans, rather than actual sons. Even if they were naturally born, I don’t think any woman can give birth to a 100 sons.

The flying ‘chariot’ or ‘palaces’ similarly could not have been actual real ones. However, it is interesting that the writers of the myths imagined such things to be possible. A flying ‘palace’ almost sounds like a jumbo jet or something.

As for a ‘yajna’ not having ‘scientific’ value - belief in its benefits is similar to the belief in the ‘real’ presence - it is a matter of faith (so no offense taken).

 

[patrick457]

As mentioned before if the Mahabharata is read as an allegory instead of history, it is easy to see that the 100 Kauravas represent evil tendencies (which are supposed to be many) in all humans, rather than actual sons. Even if they were naturally born, I don’t think any woman can give birth to a 100 sons.

Well, those 100 sons (and one daughter) were originally a single ball of flesh that was cut up and placed in jars, so …

The flying ‘chariot’ or ‘palaces’ similarly could not have been actual real ones. However, it is interesting that the writers of the myths imagined such things to be possible. A flying ‘palace’ almost sounds like a jumbo jet or something.

Or …

As for a ‘yajna’ not having ‘scientific’ value - belief in its benefits is similar to the belief in the ‘real’ presence - it is a matter of faith (so no offense taken).

Are you familiar with the Agnicayana (aka the Athiratram) - an elaborate and complex Vedic ritual that was thought to have been lost for centuries until the scholar Frits Staal found a community of Brahmins (the Nambudiri) in Kerala who have preserved its performance during the 1970s?

Here’s an excerpt from a report on a recent (2011) performance of the ritual.

§ 5. “Scientific interpretation”

This brings me to the so-called “scientific interpretation” of the ritual. Ever since the 1870s, some Hindu sects (Arya Samaj, etc.) have tended to interpret the Vedic texts and rituals in modernist fashion. Whatever the current science of 1870 or 1900 or 2011 told us about the nature of the universe had to be rediscovered in the ancient texts. Therefore, it was only natural that following the 1870+ interpretations one looked for effects of the fire ritual on nature and humans. People have more and more tended to believe that the performance of the fire ritual cleanses the air, kills bacteria, and establishes good relations between various groups of people.

The Pravargya ritual was repeated in the morning and evening of every day. It attracted not just the local visitors, but also some scientists. There were quite a number of then who wanted to measure the effects that the ritual had on the surroundings, nature, plants and humans. There was one group with the large spectrometer, actually put on the table inside the offering ground; it was to measure the explosion of milk. True enough, they reported that when the milk exploded their instruments showed a major deviation from normal. There was another scientist who had planted some seeds and measured how well they grew with exposure to the ritual or not. And so on.

Some of this was even broadcast on a Telugu website dedicated to this particular ritual. It goes into quite some detail regarding the scientific measurements. However, it mentions the “Harvard” group visiting the offering ground.

As a matter of fact, we were frequently asked about the ‘scientific effects’ during these 12 days. People automatically assumed that we wanted to study these effects. When we told them that we were interested in the performance as such, as we had read it, they insisted: but what about the effects?

It is quite an interesting aspect to study the underlying belief system at hand, and the development of this belief, and to see how the intrusion of so-called scientific measurements in the margins of the ritual took place. As mentioned, when I asked Frits Staal whether scientists had been present in the 1975 ritual, he said: just one Dr. Raghavan. Over the last few decades, the scientific interest in these ancient rituals has exploded. One can observe this also in the performance of similar, though much smaller rituals, often present on the Internet and on YouTube. In the commentaries accompanying such internet presentations usually all the beneficial effects of the ritual are underlined on the surroundings and on people in general.

Some of our students have had longer discussions with the scientists (see their testimony). With the scientists, too, it did not help that we pointed out that we were just interested in the ritual as such, its performance, its recitation, and its singing. They always reverted back to the question of the ‘effects’ of the ritual?

 

[openmind77]

…
Are you familiar with the Agnicayana (aka the Athiratram) -…

Interesting! No I am not familiar with this ritual. Hindus are pretty conservative about sticking to the traditions within their own community, so a Hindu from another part of India would not participate in such ritual from Kerala (unless it was part of a academic exercise or he was Westernized enough to be curious about other communities)

§ 5. “Scientific interpretation”…
​

All these rituals are supposed to have supernatural effects. It is quite silly to give them scientific value or expect measurable results. It is makes much more sense to interpret the stories as myths and the rituals as symbolic with psychological effects rather than tangible, physical ones.​