Andhra University vice-chancellor G Nageshwar Rao has claimed that Dashavatar, which talks about ten avatars of Lord Vishnu in Hindu scripture Bhagavad Gita, has a more developed theory of evolution than the one proposed by 17th century English scientist Charles Darwin.
During his presentation at the 106th Indian Science Congress here, Rao said while Darwin's Theory spoke about evolution of life from a marine animal to a man, Dashavtars went a step further by showing a transformation from "Ram" to "politically nuanced" Krishna.
"Dashavatras starts with 'Matsya avatar', a marine animal. Then 'Kurma avatar', an amphibian which lives in water as well as on land. The third avatar is a 'Varaha avatar' in which Vishnu becomes a boar to save the earth. The fourth avatar is 'Narismha', a half-lion and half-human. The fifth avatar is 'Vaman', the drawf, a complete human being with little maturity.
"Finally comes Rama, a perfect human being and then Krishna, a more knowledgeable, logical.. he is more of a politician. We believe Krishna is a politician, but not Rama. This (the evolution) goes on," he said..
The western thought revolved around the evolution of the man, he asserted. "But in our science, it is not just making of human beings to marine animals, it is beyond. By the time of 'Vaman avatar', we became human beings, but beyond that (we) matured (into) human beings, we thought beyond.
"Our sages and saints thought beyond. That is why they proposed Dashavatar, which is a better theory than the theory of evolution proposed by Charles Darwin," he said.
In his presentation, he also claimed Kauravas were born due to stem cell and test tube technologies and India possessed the knowledge on this as well as guided missiles thousands of years ago.
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Lord Rama used 'astras' and 'shastras' (weapons) while Vishnu sent 'sudardhan chakra' to chase targets and after hitting them they would come back to its true possessor, Rao said during the presentation.
This states that the science of guided missiles was not new to India and it was prevalent thousands of years ago, the vice-chancellor said.
Rao also said the Ramayana states that Ravana did not just have the 'Pushpak Viman', but had 24 types of aircraft of varying sizes and capacities.
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