Flying devices are commonplace in many religions, and Hinduism is no exception. According to ancient Sanskrit texts found a few years ago by Westerners in a South Indian temple, Vimanas were open topped flying devices, not strictly UFOs since they were restricted to the Earth's atmosphere. Dr Roberto Pinotti is an Italian scientist, and on the 12th of October 1988 was a speaker in the World Space Conference in Bangalore, India. He referred to several Hindu texts and pointed out that Indian gods and heroes fought in the skies using piloted vehicles armed with weapons. These weapons consisted of seven different types of mirrors and lenses which were used for offensive and defensive purposes. The "Pinjula Mirror" offered a form of"visual shield" preventing the pilots from "evil rays", and the weapon named "Marika" was used to shoot enemy aircraft.

Dr Pinotti said that these weapons "do not seem to be too different from what we today call laser technology." The vehicles themselves were made of special heat absorbing metals, called "Somaka, Sound alike and Mourthwika". According to Dr Pinotti, the "principles of propulsion as far as the descriptions were concerned, might be defined as electrical and chemical, but solar energy was involved as well." Other scientists have put forward the theory that the craft were driven by some sort of mercury ion propulsion system. Dr Pinotti concluded that the fact that Vimanas were written about hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of years ago, plus that they resembled modern UFOs would suggest that India had a "...superior but forgotten civilization. In the light of this, we think it will be better to examine the Hindu texts and subject the descriptive models of Vimanas to more scientific scrutiny."

any flying machines, but these Vimanas did exist, along with a mercury ion propulsion system and a form of laser technology, so where could they get the ideas for these devices from? Enter some ET influences and you're away. But that leads us to the question of "where did all this new technology go?" We don't know, but since the texts exist and the properties of the Vimanas have been proved to be possible by scientists, we know that they did exist.