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‘Ravana’s airports’, ‘Modi waves’ leave science congress stunned
“拉瓦纳机场”、“莫迪波”在科学大会上留下一片愕然
NEW DELHI/ JALANDHAR: Two lectures at the Indian Science Congress in which sci
entists, including the vice-chancellor of a state university, made cms about a
chievements of ancient Indians have created a new controversy. These cms have
highlighted a fundamental problem for the congress: in the past few years, wha
t had once been a gathering of the country’s most reputed scientific minds ha
s become a platform for numerous such statements based on mythology.
新德里/贾朗达尔：在印度科学大会上，包括一所邦立大学的副校长在内的科学家们就古
代印度人的成就所做的两场演讲引发了新争议。这些演讲凸显了国大党面临的一个根本问
题：过去几年，这个曾经汇聚了全印度最有声誉的科学家的大会，已经变成了发表许多诸
如此类神说迷思的平台。
On Friday, Andhra University vice-chancellor G Nageswara Rao, a professor of i
norganic chemistry, cmed that Kauravas from the Indian mythological epic Mahab
harata were born using stem cell technology and that Ravana from the Ryana had
24 types of aircraft and that Sri Lanka at that time had airports. Rao then e
xpned evo tion and human civilization while talking about the Dasavatara or 10
incarnations of Vishnu. He said this at a session which included children in
the audience.
At the same session, K J Krishnan, a scientist at a centre in Tamil Nadu, cmed
that the theories of Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein were wrong and would be
disproved. He said gravitational waves would soon be renamed as ‘Narendra Mo
di waves’, while the gravitational lensing effect in physics would be renamed
as ‘Harsh Vardhan effect’. He went on to cm that ricity and magnetism were
the same phenomena.
上星期五，安得拉邦大学副校长、无机化学教授G Nageswara Rao声称，印度神话史诗《
摩诃婆罗多》中的俱卢族就是通过干细胞技术诞生的，《罗摩衍那》中的Ravana有24种飞
机，当时斯里兰卡也有机场。Rao接着谈到了进化论和人类文明，同时谈及毗瑟奴的十种
化身。他是在一个有儿童参加的会议上说这番话的。
在同一会议上，泰米尔纳德邦一个中心的科学家KJ克里斯南声称，艾萨克牛顿和阿尔伯特
爱因斯坦的理论是错误的，会被人们*。他说，引力波将很快被重新命名为“纳伦德拉莫
迪波”，而物理学中的引力透镜效应将被重新命名为“哈什瓦尔丹效应”。他还声称电和
磁是同一现象。
This was not the first time that the congress has witnessed such cms. In the M
umbai session in January 2015, Anand J Bodas, principal of a pilot training sc
hool in Ker and Ameya Jadhav, lecturer at a Mumbai junior college, presented a
paper within a symposium titled ‘Ancient Sciences Through Sanskrit’. Bodas
and Jadhav cmed that ancient Indians had invented aircraft that could fly in m
ultiple directions and had even reached other planets. They cited as reference
a text known as the ‘Vaimanika Shastra’, which has descriptions and some di
agrams of what have been cmed to be ancient aircraft. The text, cmed to have b
een written by the Vedic sage Bharadwaja is, however, dated to 1904 and scient
ists earlier had concluded that the designs in it were unrealistic and such ai
rcraft could not have achieved flight. Prior to the congress, ned scientists h
ad objected to the paper being presented because of its pseudo-scientific natu
re.
这并不是第一次在科学大会上听到这样的说法。在2015年1月的孟买会议上，喀拉拉邦一
所试点培训学校的校长阿南德汇岁桯F斯和孟买一所专科学院的讲师阿米亚毓捆F夫在一场
名为“梵文中的古代科学”研讨会上发表了一篇论文。博达斯和博达斯声称，古代印度人
发明了可以多方向飞行的飞机，去到过其他星球。他们引用了“Vaimanika Shastra（航
空科学）”中的内容作为参考，书中有对据称是古代飞机的描述和图片。这本书是吠陀圣
贤巴拉德瓦贾所著，可以追溯到1904年，科学家们早先曾得出结论，书中的设计是不现实
的，这种飞机不可能飞上天。在大会召开之前，一些著名科学家因为这篇论文的伪科学性
质反对该论文的发表。
At the same symposium, other papers were presented on ‘Engineering applicatio
ns of ancient Indian botany’,‘Neuro-science of yoga’ and ‘Advances in surg
ery in Ancient India’, all of which cmed ancient Indians had made fantastic i
nventions predating ideas in the West in the Early Modern period. Addressing d
elegates at the session, Union science and technology minister Harsh Vardhan c
med that ancient Indian mathematicians had discovered the Pythagoras theorem
“but very gracefully allowed the Greeks to take the credit”.
At the 105th Indian Science Congress at Imphal in March 2018, Vardhan had cmed
that the late British astrophysicist Stephen Hawking had stated that the Veda
s contained a “theory superior to that of Einstein’s e equals mc squared equ
ation”.
在这个研讨会上，还发表了“古印度植物学的工程学应用”、“瑜伽的神经系统科学”和
“古印度外科医学的先进之处”等论文，所有这些论文都声称，在近代早期，古印度人在
西方思想出现之前就已经有了了不起的发明。欧盟科技部长哈什‧瓦尔丹在会上向代表们
发表讲话时声称，古代印度数学家发现了毕达哥拉斯定理，“但非常优雅地让希腊人抢得
了功劳”。
在2018年3月于印帕尔举行的第105届印度科学大会上，瓦尔丹声称，已故的英国天体物理
学家斯蒂芬‧霍金曾表示，《吠陀》里就有“比爱因斯坦的e = mc平方方程更先进的理论
”。
Mainstream scientists have expressed displeasure over these cms. Regarding the
latest lecture by the Andhra University VC, the Indian Science Congress Assoc
iation has expressed shock. “I feel very sad about the type of things he pres
ented before the children. I had told our team to keep a check and that nothin
g unscientific should be spoken about from the stage. It is shocking when a pe
rson of the stature of a state university VC speaks like this,” said ISCA gen
eral presi nt Manoj Kumar Chakrabarti, a biologist.
“All the abstracts of the papers to be presented at the sessions were scrutin
ised properly. The research papers were all above board and had no unscientifi
c cms. However Rao came just for a talk at the Children’s Congress. The was n
ot vetted as it must have been assumed that a vice-chancellor could give an in
spiring talk to the children. I will now have to check how Rao got invited to
give the lecture and whether there was a hint of what the contents of it would
be,” Chakrabarti added.
主流科学家对这些说法表达了不满。对于安得拉邦大学副校长最近发表的演讲，印度科学
大会协会表示震惊。“我对他在孩子们面前展示的东西感到非常难过。我告诉我们的团队
要谨慎，不能在台上说任何不符合科学的东西。国立大学的副校长这样有声望的人居然说
出这样的话，真是令人震惊。”ISCA主席，生物学家Manoj Kumar Chakrabarti说道。
“所有提交会议的论文摘要都经过了合规审查。这些研究论文都没有不科学的说法。Rao
只是在儿童大会上做了一次演讲。这篇演讲没有经过审查，我们都以为副校长肯定会给孩
子们一个鼓舞人心的演讲。我现在得查一查Rao为何会被邀请来做讲座，是否提前了解过
讲座的内容。”查克拉巴蒂补充说。
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ISCA general secretary Premendu P Mathur said, “Science is based on citation,
logical explanation and experimentation. Had I been there, I would have quest
ioned him about it. One should have asked him for evidence.”
However, on Saturday Rao stood by his cms. “Ryana and Mahabharata are not myt
hology, but history. Because we don’t understand it today, we can’t say that
it’s not science,” he told TOI over the phone.
“I stated that now test tube baby and stem cell technology are known and prob
ably Kauravas were born through a similar mechanism. I am relating present-day
science with what happened during the Mahabharata period. Otherwise how could
there be 100 sons from a single mother. About Ravana, if he had aircraft ther
e must have been infrastructure and fuel for it,” Rao added.
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ISCA秘书长Premendu P Mathur说:“科学是建立在引证、逻辑解释和实验的基础上的。如
果我当时在场，我肯定会向他提问。应该有人让他给出证据的。”
然而，Rao星期六仍坚持自己的主张。他在电话采访中告诉印度时报：“罗摩衍那和摩诃
婆罗多不是神话，是历史。不能因为我们今天不理解，就说它不是科学。”
“我那天说，如今试管婴儿和干细胞技术已经为人所知，可能俱卢族也是通过类似的技术
诞生的。我把今天的科学与摩诃婆罗多时期发生的事情关联起来。否则，一个单身母亲怎
么可能会有100个儿子呢?关于拉瓦纳，如果他有飞机，那么就一定有所需的基础设施和燃
料。”
Such cms have led to ned scientists staying away from sessions of the congress
in the past. In 2016, Indian-born Nobel laureate V Rkrishnan, a biologist at
Cambridge University, had objected to re gious ideas being mixed with science.
“I attended the congress once and very little science was discussed. I will
never attend it again. The idea that Indians had aircraft 2000 years ago sound
s almost essentially impossible to me.
在过去，此类说法让著名科学家不愿参加大会。2016年，出生于印度的诺贝尔奖得主、剑
桥大学生物学家V Rkrishnan反对将思想与科学混为一谈。“我参加过一次大会，会上并
没有进行多少关于科学的讨论。我再也不会参加了。那种2000年前印度人就拥有飞机的说
法在我听来几乎是不可能的。”
有没有印度科学家的八卦？