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After a pause: Outside I was assailed again by the intolerable heat. I strolled slowly back to the town over a bridge that seemed to be needless. The river had dried up to a narrow stream. Carpet makers had laid out their colourful products to dry in the river bed as far as the eye could see. Again and again I tried to recapitulate the conversation. Even this highly intelligent woman could not give a satisfactory answer But it is precisely what Professor Solomon could not clearly confirm that has driven me for more than a decade to compare the oldest books of mankind with my theory in mind and to track down parallels in descriptions of specific events. Back in my hotel, the air-conditioning in my room put some life into me again. I opened the Mahabharata at random and came across this passage: "Infinite is that space inhabited by the blessed and the divinities, delightful it is, studded with many dwellings, and its boundary is unattainable. "Above its sphere of power and below, the sun and moon are no longer seen, there the gods are their own light, shining like the sun and flashing like fire. "And even they do not see the boundary of the mighty outspread tent of the heavens, because this is hard to reach, because it is infinite... But upwards and ever upwards that universe that cannot even be measured by the gods is filled with flaming, self-illuminating beings." ' The accounts in the Mahabharata still belong to the unsolved riddles of the past, even in India where this ancient text is subjected to the most minute and even pedantic scholarly scrutiny. Ever since man has been able to think and use language, he has invented myths and legends, which, after being told for millennia, have been written down at some point in time. It is puzzling why some of these old traditions became religious or basic philosophies governing mankind's actions and others were rejected and remained without influence. A common feature of all ancient traditions is that their When we try to interpret old texts from new standpoints today, no new versions are available to us, so we have only the old 'believed' or rejected texts to go on. Nevertheless, they provide us with startling ‘That would be fantastic!' ‘But would it be impossible?’ ‘I don't know, I really don't know.’ to my questions. ‘Brighu, asked about the dimensions of the tent of the sky, answered: contents are not demonstrable, and that those which have been elevated to religions are ‘believed’.