Hindu and Buddhist texts describe the automaton warriors whirling like the wind, slashing intruders with swords, recalling Ajatasatru’s war chariots with spinning blades. Suraj Belbase/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA
The king hid them in an underground chamber near his capital, Pataliputta (now Patna) in northeastern India.Ī statue of Visvakarman, the engineer of the universe. When Buddha died, Ajatasatru was entrusted with defending his precious remains. Ajatasatru, who reigned from 492 to 460 B.C., was recognized for commissioning new military inventions, such as powerful catapults and a mechanized war chariot with whirling blades.
The story is set in the time of kings Ajatasatru and Asoka. As fanciful as it might sound to modern ears, this tale has a strong basis in links between ancient Greece and ancient India. One of the most intriguing stories from India tells how robots once guarded Buddha’s relics. Techno-marvels, such as flying war chariots and animated beings, also appear in Hindu epics. Chinese chronicles tell of emperors fooled by realistic androids and describe artificial servants crafted in the second century by the female inventor Huang Yueying. In my recent book “ Gods and Robots,” I explain that many ancient societies imagined and constructed automatons. And such science fictions and historical technologies were not unique to Greco-Roman culture. By the third century B.C., engineers in Hellenistic Alexandria, in Egypt, were building real mechanical robots and machines. As early as Homer, more than 2,500 years ago, Greek mythology explored the idea of automatons and self-moving devices.
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