The scriptures written in Sanskrit, if deciphered, could open new avenues of understanding the traditional knowledge. And Kavya Vaddadi, a researcher and design engineer working in a company based in New Delhi, is the one who truly believes in it. She has been working to decode Vaimanika Shastra written by Maharsi Bhardwaj. At GITAM University to deliver a lecture on Vaimanika Shastra , she spoke to The Hindu on her research. Here are the excerpts:
What made you take interest in a field like this?
From my childhood, I used to observe the designs of the temples and had interest in aero-space travel and Vedic vimans (flying chariots). Even when I heard bedtime stories by elders, there used be a mention of vimans that caught my imagination. That prompted me to pursue aeronautical engineering. Even before I graduated, I started researching on the subject. I even developed a three dimensional model and conducted CFD analysis and structural analysis as well.
How do you think your research is going? Are you happy with its pace?
So far, I have written two books— Vimanas and Wars of the Gods and Reverse Engineering in Vedic Vimanas .
The first book has details on vimanas based on the stories told to children and the second one explains reverse engineering in aeronautics which was written with the help of scientists like former ISRO Chairman G.M. Nair and Prahlada Rama Rao from NASA.
I am doing the research on my own, but with the guidance of some of the scientists.
What do you aim for? Is it possible to do reverse engineering in Vimanika Shastra ?
I want Vimanika Shastra to be implemented in India. I even met a Union Minister in this regard. We can definitely go for reverse engineering provided there is a huge team of Sanskrit scholars, scientists and engineers working in this direction with required funding from the government. We need the right persons to interpret the slokas and mechanical engineers to understand them and make it a reality.
