Pushpaka Vimana

Also Known As: Sanskrit Puṣpaka vimāna, from puṣpa, “flower”; rendered “little flower”; also Pushpak, and called simply the Pushpaka Car or Pushpaka Chariot in translation
Region/Culture: South Asia
Mythos: Hindu Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Mythological Objects
Mythical Attributes: A self-moving aerial palace that goes anywhere its master wishes at the speed of thought, holds however many passengers board it, and keeps a mild temperature in every season.
Role in Mythos: It passes from Kubera to Ravana to Rama, and each transfer marks the moment its holder is judged master of the world.
Relation to Humans: No mortal builds one or bargains for one, and the only human ever to ride it is Rama, who receives it as spoil and then gives it back. When he dismisses it he pays it homage with roasted grain, flowers and perfume, which is how one treats a guest rather than a possession.

Gold does not normally travel at the height of the clouds. This did. It had doors of emerald and pillars of gold, strings of pearls swinging in the wind of its own passage, stairways going up through its tiers, and trees planted aboard that carried fruit in every season of the year. Swans were painted along its flanks. It was not a chariot in any way a chariot is usually meant. It was a house, and it went wherever its owner wanted, as fast as he could want it.

The Ramayana gives its making twice in a single breath, and the two accounts sit together without strain. Brahma handed it over as a gift; Vishvakarma, the architect of the gods, did the actual work at Brahma’s command. The recipient was Vaishravana, a young ascetic who had spent a thousand years living on air and water in a forest until Brahma came to the hermitage with the whole host of the gods behind him and offered a boon. Vaishravana asked to be a protector of the world. He was made the fourth guardian alongside Indra, Varuna and Yama, given the dominion of wealth and the name Kubera, and told to take this chariot, bright as the sun, as his vehicle. His father sent him south to an abandoned city on the summit of Mount Trikuta, with golden walls and archways of gold and emerald, which the rakshasas had fled and left empty. The city was Lanka.

For a long while nothing dramatic happened to it at all. The Lord of Wealth simply used it. He would leave the sea-ringed city and go up to visit his mother and father, and the gods and gandharvas sang while he travelled and the apsaras danced, and the whole gleaming apparatus moved across the sky like a second sun going the wrong way. That is the ordinary life of the Pushpaka, and it lasted until his half-brother came for it.

Ravana wanted Lanka and he wanted the car. The fight on Mount Kailasa went badly for the yakshas. Manibhadra lost his diadem to a blow that knocked it permanently askew, four thousand yakshas broke, and Kubera, who had come out with a mace and a short speech about poison and consequences, took a blow to the head from that same mace and went down covered in blood like a felled ashoka tree. Sages carried him off through the air. Ravana took the chariot as a trophy, climbed aboard, and decided he had beaten the three worlds.

The Pushpaka disagreed. Flying north over a golden fen of reeds, it stopped. Ravana asked the obvious question, why a vehicle built to follow its master’s will was refusing to go anywhere, and Marica gave him the wrong answer with total confidence: the car can serve only Kubera, and away from the Lord of Wealth it has simply gone dead. The real reason was standing on the peak above them, a short, thick, yellow-and-black dwarf with a shaved head and a trident, telling them all to leave because Shiva was at play on that mountain. Ravana laughed at him, was cursed with the monkeys who would one day tear his line apart, tried to uproot the mountain, and spent a thousand years pinned under it screaming until Shiva let him out, named him for the scream, and gave him a sword. Then he climbed back into the Pushpaka and carried on.

It is a house that flies. That is the plain fact underneath all the gold.

When Rama killed him, the car changed hands again, and Valmiki uses it to bring the whole epic home. It went up with a great sound, and from its deck Rama named the world to Sita as it passed beneath them: Lanka on its triple peak, the battlefield still muddy with flesh and blood, the causeway that Nala had built across the salt sea, the golden mountain that rose out of the water to give Hanuman somewhere to rest, Kishkindha with its coloured groves, the lotus river Pampa where he had wept, the tree in Janasthana under which Jatayu died, the leaf hut at Panchavati where she had been taken, the Godavari, the hermitages, Chitrakuta, the Yamuna, the Ganges, the Sarayu, and then Ayodhya with its white palaces. They stopped at Kishkindha so that Sugriva and Tara and the wives of all the monkey chiefs could come too. Every one of them walked round the car clockwise and climbed aboard, and it lifted again without complaint.

Then, in the last book, the object opens its mouth. Rama is at home one noon when a melodious voice speaks out of the sky and introduces itself. It is the Pushpaka. Kubera has sent it back, on the grounds that Rama won it fairly by killing Ravana, and it has come to place itself at his service. Rama welcomes it, honours it with parched grain and flowers and fragrant perfumes, and lets it go: travel where you like, come when I think of you, take the road of the siddhas, and do not collide with anything out there. It says “so be it” and leaves. Valmiki calls it a chariot of pure soul.

Its three owners make a pattern that is hard to unsee. Kubera holds it as wealth, Ravana as appetite, Rama as duty, and each of them is the thing the previous one was not. Possessing it is never really about transport. It is the visible receipt for having become, briefly, the master of the world.

A more recent claim needs stating plainly, because it circulates widely and is not in the epic. The idea that the Pushpaka was a machine of engineered flight leans on the Vaimanika Shastra, a Sanskrit text on aircraft attributed to the sage Bharadvaja but dictated by Pandit Subbaraya Shastry of Anekal between roughly 1900 and 1922 and published in English by G. R. Josyer in 1973. When five researchers at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore examined it in 1974, they dated it no earlier than 1904, called its craft poor concoctions whose geometries and propulsion would resist flight rather than assist it, and noted in passing that the Pushpaka of the Ramayana, as the Ramayana actually describes it, has no flying qualities at all except by invocation.

What it does have is will. It answers to whoever holds it, goes anywhere at any speed, cannot apparently be broken, expands to take on an entire city’s worth of passengers without anyone noticing the strain, and stays pleasantly temperate whatever the season outside. Everything a rider could want is already aboard. Its limits are stranger than its powers. It can be taken by force, and was. It stops dead when a greater god objects to where it is going, and no amount of ownership overrides that. It is loyal to possession rather than to any person, which is why it served a demon for an age and a prince afterwards with the same indifference. And in the end it is not really property at all: it goes back to Kubera on its own, comes when it is called, and can be sent away with a blessing and a warning about what it might hit.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Pushpaka Vimana?

The Pushpaka Vimana is a flying palace from the Ramayana, made of gold and emerald and hung with pearls, that moves through the air wherever its owner wills. It is large enough to carry an entire retinue and comfortable in any weather, with fruit trees growing aboard it. In the epic it belongs in turn to Kubera, Ravana and Rama.

Who built the Pushpaka Vimana?

Vishvakarma, the architect of the gods, built the Pushpaka at Brahma’s command, and Brahma then gave it to the ascetic Vaishravana when he made him Kubera, guardian of wealth and fourth of the world protectors. The Ramayana treats the gift and the craftsmanship as parts of the same act.

How did Ravana get the Pushpaka Vimana?

Ravana took it by force. He fought his half-brother Kubera and the yakshas on Mount Kailasa, struck Kubera down with a mace, and seized the chariot as a sign of victory. Shortly afterwards the Pushpaka refused to move over a mountain where Shiva was at play, which led to Ravana being pinned under the peak and given both his name and the sword Chandrahasa.

What happened to the Pushpaka Vimana after Ravana died?

Rama used it to fly from Lanka back to Ayodhya with Sita, pointing out the places of his exile as they passed over them, and stopping at Kishkindha to take the monkey chiefs and their wives aboard. Later Kubera sent it back to Rama as his by right of conquest, and Rama honoured it with offerings and released it to travel wherever it wished, telling it to return whenever he called it to mind.

Was the Pushpaka Vimana an ancient aircraft?

Not as the Ramayana describes it. The epic gives it no mechanism, only will, and the modern engineering reading rests on the Vaimanika Shastra, a text dictated by Pandit Subbaraya Shastry between about 1900 and 1922 and published in English in 1973. A 1974 study at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore dated that work to no earlier than 1904 and found its aircraft unflyable.