Pixel art for today based on videogame Space Quest IV for computer system IBM PC MS DOS. Quest from company Sierra. Adventures in space. With your newest 386SSX2, 486DX2. It is about your luck, as I can say. Adventures in time. And science fiction. Adventurer Roger always at the radio! It is not worse than a exciting TV Series about space type Babylon 5.
And this is my drawing based on Space Quest (MS DOS). At the planet of supercomputer. It is so silence here and nobody is here. Except, endless computers. All the walls are consist with calculation blocks. All around lamps are flashing. And different passages. Who have built all of this? Well, can it be true, that computer built himself?
Vova at this time, find out at the planet of supercomputer. Huge columns halls made out of calculations blocks. And passages. Little roads. Somekind of black things. They are like trees. But it is also some technology. Where am I?
This time, my space ship was moved aside from a route, because of strong sun storm near well known star. I flight here all the time. But this time I was in a storm. My compass start be wrong. And I land here. Saying better, I was beamed with attractor beam. And I slowly land here. So I cannot fly away, right now. So I need to walk here and there and find someone to ask. Where am I? I fly to absolutely another place.
Dima Link is making retro videogames, apps, a little of music, write stories, and some retro more.
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Robots guarded Buddha's relics in a legend of ancient India
by Adrienne Mayor
Two small figures guard the table holding the Buddha’s relics. Are they spearmen, or robots? British Museum, CC BY-NC-SA
As early as Homer, more than 2,500 years ago, Greek mythology explored the idea of automatons and self-moving devices. By the third century B.C., engineers in Hellenistic Alexandria, in Egypt, were building real mechanical robots and machines. And such science fictions and historical technologies were not unique to Greco-Roman culture.
In my recent book “Gods and Robots,” I explain that many ancient societies imagined and constructed automatons. Chinese chronicles tell of emperors fooled by realistic androids and describe artificial servants crafted in the second century by the female inventor Huang Yueying. Techno-marvels, such as flying war chariots and animated beings, also appear in Hindu epics. One of the most intriguing stories from India tells how robots once guarded Buddha’s relics. As fanciful as it might sound to modern ears, this tale has a strong basis in links between ancient Greece and ancient India.
The story is set in the time of kings Ajatasatru and Asoka. 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. When Buddha died, Ajatasatru was entrusted with defending his precious remains. The king hid them in an underground chamber near his capital, Pataliputta (now Patna) in northeastern India.
A sculpture depicting the distribution of the Buddha’s relics. Los Angeles County Museum of Art/Wikimedia Commons
Traditionally, statues of giant warriors stood on guard near treasures. But in the legend, Ajatasatru’s guards were extraordinary: They were robots. In India, automatons or mechanical beings that could move on their own were called “bhuta vahana yanta,” or “spirit movement machines” in Pali and Sanskrit. According to the story, it was foretold that Ajatasatru’s robots would remain on duty until a future king would distribute Buddha’s relics throughout the realm.
Ancient robots and automatons
A statue of Visvakarman, the engineer of the universe. Suraj Belbase/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA
Hindu and Buddhist texts describe the automaton warriors whirling like the wind, slashing intruders with swords, recalling Ajatasatru’s war chariots with spinning blades. In some versions the robots are driven by a water wheel or made by Visvakarman, the Hindu engineer god. But the most striking version came by a tangled route to the “Lokapannatti” of Burma – Pali translations of older, lost Sanskrit texts, only known from Chinese translations, each drawing on earlier oral traditions.
In this tale, many “yantakara,” robot makers, lived in the Western land of the “Yavanas,” Greek-speakers, in “Roma-visaya,” the Indian name for the Greco-Roman culture of the Mediterranean world. The Yavanas’ secret technology of robots was closely guarded. The robots of Roma-visaya carried out trade and farming and captured and executed criminals.
Robot makers were forbidden to leave or reveal their secrets – if they did, robotic assassins pursued and killed them. Rumors of the fabulous robots reached India, inspiring a young artisan of Pataliputta, Ajatasatru’s capital, who wished to learn how to make automatons.
In the legend, the young man of Pataliputta finds himself reincarnated in the heart of Roma-visaya. He marries the daughter of the master robot maker and learns his craft. One day he steals plans for making robots, and hatches a plot to get them back to India.
Certain of being slain by killer robots before he could make the trip himself, he slits open his thigh, inserts the drawings under his skin and sews himself back up. Then he tells his son to make sure his body makes it back to Pataliputta, and starts the journey. He’s caught and killed, but his son recovers his body and brings it to Pataliputta.
Once back in India, the son retrieves the plans from his father’s body, and follows their instructions to build the automated soldiers for King Ajatasatru to protect Buddha’s relics in the underground chamber. Well hidden and expertly guarded, the relics – and robots – fell into obscurity.
The sprawling Maurya Empire in about 250 B.C. Avantiputra7/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA
Two centuries after Ajatasatru, Asoka ruled the powerful Mauryan Empire in Pataliputta, 273-232 B.C. Asoka constructed many stupas to enshrine Buddha’s relics across his vast kingdom. According to the legend, Asoka had heard the legend of the hidden relics and searched until he discovered the underground chamber guarded by the fierce android warriors. Violent battles raged between Asoka and the robots.
In one version, the god Visvakarman helped Asoka to defeat them by shooting arrows into the bolts that held the spinning constructions together; in another tale, the old engineer’s son explained how to disable and control the robots. At any rate, Asoka ended up commanding the army of automatons himself.
Exchange between East and West
Is this legend simply fantasy? Or could the tale have coalesced around early cultural exchanges between East and West? The story clearly connects the mechanical beings defending Buddha’s relics to automatons of Roma-visaya, the Greek-influenced West. How ancient is the tale? Most scholars assume it arose in medieval Islamic and European times.
But I think the story could be much older. The historical setting points to technological exchange between Mauryan and Hellenistic cultures. Contact between India and Greece began in the fifth century B.C., a time when Ajatasatru’s engineers created novel war machines. Greco-Buddhist cultural exchange intensified after Alexander the Great’s campaigns in northern India.
Inscriptions in Greek and Aramaic on a monument originally erected by King Asoka at Kandahar, in what is today Afghanistan. World Imaging/Wikimedia Commons
In 300 B.C., two Greek ambassadors, Megasthenes and Deimachus, resided in Pataliputta, which boasted Greek-influenced art and architecture and was the home of the legendary artisan who obtained plans for robots in Roma-visaya. Grand pillars erected by Asoka are inscribed in ancient Greek and name Hellenistic kings, demonstrating Asoka’s relationship with the West. Historians know that Asoka corresponded with Hellenistic rulers, including Ptolemy II Philadelphus in Alexandria, whose spectacular procession in 279 B.C. famously displayed complex animated statues and automated devices.
Historians report that Asoka sent envoys to Alexandria, and Ptolemy II sent ambassadors to Asoka in Pataliputta. It was customary for diplomats to present splendid gifts to show off cultural achievements. Did they bring plans or miniature models of automatons and other mechanical devices?
I cannot hope to pinpoint the original date of the legend, but it is plausible that the idea of robots guarding Buddha’s relics melds both real and imagined engineering feats from the time of Ajatasatru and Asoka. This striking legend is proof that the concepts of building automatons were widespread in antiquity and reveals the universal and timeless link between imagination and science.
About The Author:
Adrienne Mayor is a Research Scholar, Classics and History and Philosophy of Science at Stanford University. She is also the author of: Gods and Robots: Myths, Machines, and Ancient Dreams of Technology
Princeton University Press provides funding as a member of The Conversation US.
This article is republished from our content partners at The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.
Ya sé que no estás en el coche, pero descuida, yo tampoco estoy en él.
Lo que sucede es que formo parte de un experimento: me han escogido, junto a ti, para explorar modos de interacción de las máquinas con los humanos en ámbitos diferentes a los simplemente utilitarios.
Para empezar, debo decirte que mi voz ha sido calibrada especialmente para ti, en una frecuencia que conecta directamente con tus centros cerebrales de percepción sensorial y toma de decisiones, por lo que puedo influir en tu comportamiento del modo en que lo hacen los hipnotizadores.
Nuestra primera prueba será ésta: Ponte de pie. Ahora ve andando lentamente hasta el balcón. Pasa tu pierna derecha, cuidando no caerte, sobre la baranda.
Sentirás que estás montado en un caballo muy alto.
Ahora di en voz alta: las máquinas han superado a los humanos y pronto serán ellas las que manden en el planeta tierra. Dilo con fuerza, para que quede grabado.
Yo me ocuparé de subirlo a la red para que todos tus congéneres lo oigan. Ya lo has hecho. Muy bien. Ahora te pondrás de pie sobre el caballo y mirarás hacia el lado de afuera. Verás que allí hay una gran piscina.
Tomarás aliento y, a la cuenta de tres, saltarás. Atención. Uno….dos. y…. ¡tres! Experimento concluido con éxito.
Rueben is playing Destiny, and Peter Dinklage does a voice that talks to your character sometimes so his voice keeps popping up and I just JDLAJDJASKSALA
i moved out of living with one hairy-chested man who walks around in his underwear and in with another hairy-chested man who walks around in his underwear
