Nexus - 0401 - New Times Magazine-pages

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UNKNOWN ALLOYS REVEALED IN ANCIENT PALM LEAF MANUSCRIPTS UNKNOWN ALLOYS REVEALED to finding, gathering and translating ancient IN ANCIENT PALM LEAF texts. One of these researchers, the writer MANUSCRIPTS and Sanskrit scholar Subramanyam lyer, has spent many years of his life decipher- by Robert Goodman ©1996 ing old collections of palm leaves found in the villages of his native Karnataka in | ntil the printing press came into use southern India. Several years ago, he dis- throughout the world, each culture covered some old texts which described had its own way of conserving the different alloys (with properties unknown knowledge passed on from one generation to modern science) and their application in to another. In India, the most common _ the building of fuselages of Vedic vimana method was to write on palm leaves. This _ aircraft. method was used for communicating Thinking about the possible application diverse subjects pertaining to all the differ- of these formulas in the modern aeronau- ent branches of wisdom. tics industry, S. Iyer wrote to C.S.R. In recent years, a highly qualified minor- Prabhu, the Technical Director of National ity of Hindu researchers has been dedicated Informatics Centre, the Indian Government department dedicated RU KMA VIMANA to translating ancient _ _ texts and searching for PROFILE applications of the technologies recorded in them. In his reply in May 1991, Prabhu informed Iyer that he had started a study of several Shastras (Vedic science texts) recorded on palm leaves and had already managed to prepare some of the materials described. They were metal alloys with very promising properties applicable to modern science and technolo- gy: o _ . - Hence, already by CONTROLLING PLATFORM 2 sz SS 1991, samples of these alloys were being test- ed and exhibited, and access to them was authorised for anybody interested in them. According to the ini- tial results, it seemed that most of the mate- A 1923 drawing of a vimana, by T. K. Ellappa of Bangalore, India,| rials were unknown, Bargalore "Note thet propellers were nat mentioned inte original | vee Srtics they coc angalore. a texts they were placed there by scholars who assumed they should be properties, they could somewhere. (Source: Vimana Aircraft of Ancient India & Atlantis, 1991) have applications in aeronautics, aerospace technology and defence. In September 1992, a national Indian newspaper published an article confirming that ancient texts written in Sanskrit had been found the year before in a village in Karnataka, and that, on translation, they were discovered to be a complete com- pendium of formulas for manufacturing super-alloys, with properties unknown in modern times. The article quoted C.S.R. Prabhu, of the National Informatics Centre, who stated that he had prepared five different alloys described in the texts and was currently working on others. Each alloy had unique characteristics, with definite applications in modern metallurgy. According to Prabhu, more was needed than a mere translation in order to understand the texts: they had to be deciphered. Part of the language used pre-dated clas- sical Sanskrit, but, as many of these words were to be found in Ayurvedic texts, it was possible to complete the interpretation. Prabhu assured that, up until then, texts of this class had not been found in any part of India, and, in fact, the information they contained came from a rich oral tradition, possibly extending over thousands of years, before being recorded on palm leaves. — PROFILE — Impossible Alloys The article went on to say that at a recent congress in India, C.S.R. Prabhu gave a paper on these alloys, claiming that sam- ples prepared according to the formulas described have the same properties as those stated, and that they were being tested not only in India but also abroad. For example, the University of San Jose (California) was performing tests with several products. Among these materials, tamogarbha loha, a lead alloy, absorbed up to 85 per cent of the light generated by a ruby laser. Pancha loha, an alloy of copper with lead and zinc, showed great malleability and an enormous corrosion resistance to salt water—a property not observed until now with any alloy containing copper, but hav- ing an obvious use in the construction of ships' hulls. Araara tamra, another anticorrosive alloy, was brittle and very light. Chapala 50 + NEXUS by Robert Goodman ©1996 DECEMBER 1996 - JANUARY 1997