Vyānika Śāstra (Vaimānika Śāstra) manuscript tradition

Record summary

The Vaimānika Śāstra is presented in some modern UFO literature as an ancient Indian manual describing aircraft, but the surviving Sanskrit manuscript is generally associated with Subbaraya Shastry’s early twentieth-century dictation and was published later. A 1974 Indian Institute of Science study concluded that its aircraft descriptions were not technologically viable and that the work was a modern composition or compilation. It matters because it illustrates how textual transmission, nationalist historiography and retroactive “ancient astronaut” interpretation can transform a literary or occult text into alleged evidence of prehistoric aviation.