Yantras or Mechanical Contrivances in Ancient India c2.223

c2.223

"the first scientific inventor of such objects" as are mentioned in the *Kathāsaritsāgara*, "was probably Archytas (c. 428-347 B.C.), the Greek phil-osopher of Tarentum .... He constructed a kind of flying machine, consisting of a wooden figure balanced by a weight suspended from a pulley, and set in motion by "hidden and enclosed air." The tenth book of the *De Architectura Decem* by Vitruvius, the Roman architect of the time of Cæsar, is wholly devoted to mechanical inventions of all kinds: water-raising contrivances, various enter-taining things like birds singing by means of water-works, figures that drink and move and so on.³⁸ Hero of Alexandria of c. 100 A.D. invented numerous complicated drinking animals and wrote also treatises on them, like *Catoptrica*, *Pneumatica* and *Automatopoietica*.