Yantras or Mechanical Contrivances in Ancient India c2.119

c2.119

Bypassing chronology a little, I shall now take up three available Sanskrit versions of the *Bṛhatkathā*. The story thesaurus called *Bṛhatkathā* is on a par with the two epics, and can very well be called the great epic of popular life. The version of Budhasvāmin is the earliest, belonging probably to the 9th-10th centuries, and coming from and based on a non-Kashmirian area and source. Budhasvāmin has important information on aerial vehicles, *Ākāśa-yantras*, as he expressly calls them; it is also to be noted that he explicitly mentions the Yavanas as the knowers of these Ākāśa-yantras, and the geographical area where he locates the architect and his exploits is also the part of the country where the foreign tribes had settled. The names of the architects too bear a strange complexion, suggesting their foreign origin.²⁷