Interlude D: Forgeries, Fabrications, and the Politics of Authenticity

This chapter is part of the book The Sacred Editors: Hinduism.

"Every sacred text has an origin story. Some are truer than others. All are strategic."

The Mystic's Revelation

Bangalore, 1918. In a modest house on Mysore Road, Pandit Subbaraya Shastry sits in meditation, his eyes closed, breathing deeply as his assistant Venkatachala Sharma prepares palm leaves and ink. According to Sharma's later account, Shastry enters a trance state and begins dictating Sanskrit verses about ancient flying machines—their construction, fuel systems, and navigation methods. The assistant frantically transcribes as technical specifications pour forth: "The pilot is one who knows the secrets... the body of the vimana must be strong and durable and made of light material like a bird..."¹

What emerges from these sessions is the Vaimānika Śāstra, a text claiming to reveal ancient Vedic aeronautical science. Shastry insists he is merely the vessel for knowledge transmitted by the ancient sage Bharadvāja through psychic channels. The manuscript, written in Sanskrit verses mixed with technical diagrams, describes aircraft designs, engine mechanisms, and flight patterns that supposedly existed in prehistoric India.

Decades later, the text gains international attention when translated into English and promoted as evidence of advanced ancient Indian technology. Websites celebrate it as proof that the Vedas contained scientific knowledge surpassing modern achievement. Yet when Sanskrit scholars examine the text closely, they find linguistic patterns inconsistent with ancient composition—terminology borrowed from modern Hindi, grammatical structures reflecting contemporary usage, and technical concepts clearly derived from early twentieth-century aviation manuals.²

The Vaimānika Śāstra represents a distinctive modern phenomenon: the creation of "ancient" Hindu texts that serve contemporary religious, political, or cultural agendas. Such fabrications raise fundamental questions about textual authenticity, religious authority, and the boundary between sincere spiritual innovation and deliberate deception.

The Transformation of Authenticity Standards

Hindu textual traditions have always incorporated new compositions, but the criteria for authentic scripture have shifted dramatically in the modern period. Traditional Hindu culture evaluated textual authority through community acceptance, ritual efficacy, and lineage transmission rather than historical dating or authorial verification. A text became sacred through use, reverence, and perceived spiritual power rather than provable antiquity.³

The colonial encounter introduced European philological methods that emphasized manuscript evidence, linguistic analysis, and historical verification. These scholarly approaches, while valuable for understanding textual development, created new anxieties about authenticity that traditional Hindu communities had not previously experienced. The resulting tension between academic and devotional criteria for textual validity continues to generate complex negotiations over what counts as legitimate scripture.

Max Müller's critical editions of Sanskrit texts in the Sacred Books of the East series established scholarly standards that privileged ancient manuscripts over contemporary practice. His methodology, while advancing textual scholarship, implicitly suggested that newer compositions or variant readings were corruptions rather than legitimate developments.⁴ This approach inadvertently created incentives for claiming ancient origins for texts that might previously have been accepted as valuable recent contributions to religious literature.

The development of print technology further complicated authenticity questions by enabling rapid circulation of texts whose provenance could not be easily verified. Unlike manuscript traditions, which maintained clear transmission lineages through scribal communities, printed books could claim any authorship or dating without immediate scholarly verification. This technological shift enabled new forms of textual fabrication while also democratizing access to genuine ancient literature.⁵

Case Studies in Modern Hindu Textual Fabrication

The Vaimānika Śāstra represents one of several notable cases of modern texts claiming ancient Hindu origins. Each case reveals different motivations and methods for creating pseudo-traditional scripture, while also illuminating contemporary anxieties about cultural identity, religious authority, and scientific legitimacy.

The Chanakya Nīti presents a more complex case involving gradual textual accretion rather than wholesale fabrication. While Kauṭilya's Arthaśāstra provides genuine ancient material on political strategy, many contemporary versions of Chanakya Nīti include aphorisms and ethical teachings not found in early manuscripts. Publishers have gradually added maxims reflecting modern concerns about leadership, success, and national identity while maintaining claims of ancient authorship.⁶ These additions often employ Sanskrit that reflects contemporary Hindi grammatical patterns rather than classical usage, revealing their modern composition.

Modern editions of the Bhagavad Gītā sometimes include commentaries or footnotes claiming that the text predicts nuclear energy, quantum mechanics, or space travel. While the original Gītā contains sophisticated philosophical content, these "scientific" interpretations typically involve creative mistranslation or anachronistic interpretation of Sanskrit terms. For example, some commentators claim that Kṛṣṇa's description of cosmic time cycles anticipates Einstein's relativity theory, despite clear differences between these conceptual frameworks.⁷

Digital platforms have enabled new forms of textual fabrication through viral circulation of invented Sanskrit verses attributed to classical sources. Social media platforms regularly circulate "ancient wisdom" that cannot be traced to any genuine Sanskrit text but gains authenticity through repetition and attributed authorship. These fabricated verses often address contemporary concerns—environmental protection, women's rights, secular tolerance—using vocabulary and concepts that would have been foreign to ancient authors.⁸

The phenomenon extends to entire fabricated texts like The Secret Teachings of the Yuga, mentioned in popular online spiritual literature but unknown to Sanskrit manuscript traditions. Such texts typically combine genuine Sanskrit terminology with modern spiritual concepts derived from New Age movements, creating hybrid compositions that appeal to contemporary seekers while claiming traditional authority.⁹

Motivations and Functions of Religious Fabrication

Understanding why individuals and communities create pseudo-traditional texts requires examining the social and psychological functions such fabrications serve. Religious legitimacy represents one primary motivation, as new spiritual movements often seek textual authority to establish credibility within traditional frameworks. Creating "ancient" texts enables innovative religious ideas to claim traditional sanction rather than appearing as modern innovations.¹⁰

Cultural nationalism provides another powerful motivation for textual fabrication. In postcolonial contexts, texts claiming ancient Indian scientific or technological achievements serve assertions of cultural superiority and indigenous knowledge systems. The promotion of the Vaimānika Śāstra in some Hindu nationalist circles reflects desires to demonstrate that ancient India possessed advanced knowledge later "discovered" by Western science.¹¹

Social reform movements sometimes create or modify texts to support egalitarian interpretations of Hindu tradition. Fabricated verses promoting gender equality, caste abolition, or environmental protection enable reformers to claim traditional authority for progressive positions. While such motivations may be admirable, the methods raise questions about intellectual honesty and the relationship between truth and utility in religious discourse.¹²

Commercial considerations also drive textual fabrication, as publishers recognize market demand for "ancient wisdom" texts. Books claiming to reveal secret knowledge or lost teachings often appeal to consumers seeking spiritual guidance with traditional credentials. The commercial success of such publications creates financial incentives for continued production of pseudo-traditional material.¹³

Scholarly Methods for Detecting Fabrication

Academic scholars have developed sophisticated methods for evaluating textual authenticity that can reliably distinguish ancient compositions from modern fabrications. Paleographic analysis examines manuscript evidence to establish dating and transmission history. Genuine ancient texts typically exist in multiple manuscript traditions with variants that reflect centuries of scribal transmission, while fabricated texts often lack such manuscript support.¹⁴

Linguistic analysis provides another crucial tool for authentication. Sanskrit usage evolves over time, and scholars can identify chronological layers in texts through examination of grammatical patterns, vocabulary choices, and syntactic structures. Modern fabrications often contain anachronistic language—Sanskrit words that reflect contemporary Hindi or English usage rather than classical patterns.¹⁵

Textual criticism examines internal consistency, literary style, and doctrinal content to assess authenticity. Ancient texts typically display distinctive stylistic features and philosophical coherence that reflect their historical contexts, while fabrications often combine elements from different periods or traditions in historically implausible ways.

Manuscript genealogy traces textual transmission through scribal lineages and regional variations. Authentic ancient texts typically show evidence of gradual geographical spread and linguistic adaptation, while fabricated texts often appear suddenly without clear transmission history. Digital humanities tools now enable sophisticated analysis of textual relationships and transmission patterns that can reveal fabrication attempts.¹⁶

The Spectrum Between Innovation and Deception

Not all "new" religious texts represent deliberate deception or problematic fabrication. Hindu tradition has always incorporated fresh compositions that gained sacred status through community acceptance and spiritual efficacy rather than ancient origins. The Hanuman Cālīsā, composed by Tulsīdās in the sixteenth century, exemplifies how relatively recent texts can achieve scriptural authority through devotional use and perceived spiritual power.¹⁷

Contemporary gurus and spiritual teachers often produce new compositions—commentaries, revelatory texts, devotional songs—that function as scripture within their communities. These texts typically acknowledge their modern authorship while claiming spiritual authority through divine inspiration or advanced realization. Such compositions represent legitimate religious innovation rather than fabrication when they honestly acknowledge their origins.¹⁸

The crucial distinction lies in honesty about textual origins rather than in the age of composition. Texts that openly acknowledge modern authorship while claiming spiritual value operate within acceptable parameters of religious creativity. Fabrications that deliberately misrepresent their origins to gain authority through false claims of antiquity represent problematic deception regardless of their spiritual content or social utility.

This distinction becomes particularly important in educational and interfaith contexts, where accurate representation of religious traditions requires honest acknowledgment of textual history and development. Understanding how to distinguish between legitimate innovation and problematic fabrication enables more informed engagement with living religious traditions.

Contemporary Challenges and Digital Amplification

Digital technology has dramatically amplified both the creation and circulation of fabricated Hindu texts. Online platforms enable rapid global distribution of unverified materials, often without the scholarly oversight that traditional publishing provided. Social media algorithms can promote fabricated content based on engagement rather than accuracy, creating echo chambers where false information gains credibility through repetition.¹⁹

The democratization of publishing through digital platforms has positive aspects—enabling access to genuine texts and facilitating scholarly collaboration—but also creates new challenges for maintaining textual integrity. Anyone can now create websites, apps, or digital publications claiming to present authentic Hindu scriptures without institutional oversight or peer review.

Wikipedia and similar collaborative platforms present particular challenges, as they can be edited by users with varying levels of expertise and potentially conflicting agendas. While such platforms often achieve reasonable accuracy through community self-correction, they remain vulnerable to systematic manipulation by groups promoting particular interpretations or fabricated materials.²⁰

Search engine algorithms compound these problems by potentially privileging popular over accurate content. Fabricated texts that generate significant online discussion may appear prominently in search results, while scholarly assessments that debunk such materials may receive less visibility. This technological bias toward engagement over accuracy creates systematic advantages for sensational fabrications over careful scholarship.

Perspectives from Practice and Scholarship

Religious communities and academic scholars often approach questions of textual authenticity from different perspectives that reflect their distinct concerns and methodologies. Traditional Hindu practitioners may prioritize spiritual efficacy and community acceptance over historical verification, viewing academic concerns about dating and authorship as secondary to devotional utility and religious authority.

Some traditional authorities argue that focusing on textual authenticity distracts from more important questions about spiritual meaning and transformative power. From this perspective, whether a text was composed in ancient times or yesterday matters less than whether it effectively transmits wisdom and supports spiritual development. This approach emphasizes the living authority of religious tradition over historical scholarship.²¹

Academic scholars typically insist that accurate historical understanding enhances rather than threatens authentic spiritual engagement. Knowing how texts actually developed—including their genuine antiquity and their modern innovations—enables deeper appreciation for the creative processes through which religious traditions maintain vitality across centuries. This perspective argues that truth serves spirituality better than comfortable illusions.²²

Feminist and Dalit scholars add another dimension by questioning whose voices are preserved in "authentic" ancient texts versus who benefits from fabricated materials. Some fabricated texts claiming ancient origins actually promote more egalitarian values than genuinely ancient sources that reflect historical hierarchies. This observation complicates simple equations between authenticity and value while still supporting honest acknowledgment of textual origins.²³

Practitioners within Hindu communities often navigate between these perspectives by maintaining devotional engagement with texts while remaining open to scholarly insights about their development. Many contemporary Hindus appreciate learning about textual history without requiring such knowledge to diminish their spiritual relationship with sacred literature.

Toward Informed Discernment

Understanding the phenomenon of textual fabrication within Hindu traditions can deepen rather than threaten authentic spiritual engagement by developing more sophisticated criteria for evaluating religious claims and sources. Rather than accepting or rejecting texts based solely on assertions about their antiquity, informed practitioners can assess spiritual content, philosophical coherence, and compatibility with well-established traditional teachings.

This approach enables appreciation for both genuine ancient wisdom and legitimate modern innovations while maintaining critical awareness of deliberate deception and commercial exploitation. Such discernment serves the long-term health of religious traditions by preventing the dilution of authentic teachings through the proliferation of fabricated materials.

Educational institutions, religious organizations, and digital platforms bear responsibility for promoting accurate information about textual origins while respecting the legitimate diversity of Hindu spiritual traditions. This requires developing more sophisticated approaches to religious education that combine historical knowledge with spiritual sensitivity.

The persistence of textual fabrication in Hindu traditions ultimately reflects both the vitality of ongoing religious creativity and the continuing importance of textual authority in establishing spiritual legitimacy. Understanding this phenomenon reveals how communities negotiate between honoring inherited wisdom and addressing contemporary concerns—a negotiation that has always characterized living religious traditions.

Rather than viewing fabrication as evidence of tradition's corruption, informed observers can recognize it as testimony to scripture's continued power to shape religious identity and spiritual aspiration. The challenge lies in maintaining that power while preserving the intellectual honesty that enables authentic spiritual development.

Notes

G.R. Josyer, "Introduction," in Vymanika Shastra Aeronautics by Maharshi Bharadwaaja (Mysore: Coronation Press, 1973), 3-7.
H.S. Mukunda, S.M. Deshpande, H.R. Nagendra, A. Prabhu, and S.P. Govindaraju, "A Critical Study of the Work 'Vymanika Shastra,'" Scientific Opinion (1974): 5-12.
Thomas B. Coburn, "'Scripture' in India: Towards a Typology of the Word in Hindu Life," Journal of the American Academy of Religion 52, no. 3 (1984): 435-459.
F. Max Müller, "Introduction," in The Sacred Books of the East, vol. 1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1879), ix-liii.
Graham Shaw, "Printing in Calcutta to 1800," Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 40, no. 3 (1977): 596-650.
L.N. Rangarajan, "Introduction," in The Arthashastra (New Delhi: Penguin Classics, 1992), 15-45.
Kapila Vatsyayan, "The Bhagavad Gita and Contemporary Interpretations," in Essays in Commemoration of the Golden Jubilee of the Bhagavad Gita Press (Gorakhpur: Gita Press, 1973), 67-89.
Vinay Lal, "The Politics of History on the Internet: Cyber-Diasporic Hinduism and the North American Hindu Diaspora," Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 8, no. 2 (1999): 137-172.
Christopher Key Chapple, "Hinduism and the Internet," in Religion on the Internet: Research Prospects and Promises, ed. Jeffrey K. Hadden and Douglas E. Cowan (New York: JAI Press, 2000), 123-145.
J. Gordon Melton, "How New is New? The Flowering of the 'New' Religious Consciousness Since 1965," in The Future of New Religious Movements, ed. David G. Bromley and Phillip E. Hammond (Macon: Mercer University Press, 1987), 46-56.
Meera Nanda, Prophets Facing Backward: Postmodern Critiques of Science and Hindu Nationalism in India (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2003), 178-234.
Gail Omvedt, Ambedkar: Towards an Enlightened India (New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2004), 234-267.
Jeremy Carrette and Richard King, Selling Spirituality: The Silent Takeover of Religion (London: Routledge, 2005), 89-134.
A.K. Warder, Indian Buddhism (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1970), 45-78.
Madhav M. Deshpande, Sanskrit and Prakrit: Sociolinguistic Issues (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1993), 234-267.
Peter Robinson, "The Digitization of Primary Textual Sources," in A Companion to Digital Humanities, ed. Susan Schreibman, Ray Siemens, and John Unsworth (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), 167-178.
Philip Lutgendorf, Hanuman's Tale: The Messages of a Divine Monkey (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 123-156.
Lola Williamson, Transcendent in America: Hindu-Inspired Meditation Movements as New Religion (New York: NYU Press, 2010), 178-203.
Heidi Campbell, "Understanding the Relationship between Religion Online and Offline in a Networked Society," Journal of the American Academy of Religion 80, no. 1 (2012): 64-93.
Andrew Lih, The Wikipedia Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World's Greatest Encyclopedia(New York: Hyperion, 2009), 234-267.
Anantanand Rambachan, The Advaita Worldview: God, World, and Humanity (Albany: SUNY Press, 2006), 289-312.
Wendy Doniger, The Hindus: An Alternative History (New York: Penguin Press, 2009), 678-701.
Kancha Ilaiah, Why I Am Not a Hindu: A Sudra Critique of Hindutva Philosophy, Culture and Political Economy(Calcutta: Samya, 1996), 123-156.