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Information from books by Dr.
P. V. Vartak , Pune, INDIA
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In "Test
Tube Babies in Ancient INDIA", published in the 1979 edition of
Chikitsa, an Indian Ayurvedic magazine, researcher and journalist
P.V. Vartak speculates that the first real test tube babies were
created in INDIA at least 7,500 years ago. Describing a series of
experiments that are narrated in the Mahabharata, India's epic tale
of an ancient family feud that led to world war, Vartak suggests
that these stories are neither metaphors nor legends, but real
experiments that were conducted by the ancients using Ayurvedic
knowledge of what we in the modern era would call genetics and
embryology. Here we extrapolate the essence of P.V. Vartak’s theory
as presented in his fascinating article:
The
inspiration for P. V. Vartak’s article is a report on scientific
advances in England during 1978. At that time, doctors successfully
fertilized an egg in a test tube and then implanted it in a woman’s
uterus so that an infertile couple was able to have a child.
Pointing out
that in the modern experiment only fertilization was done in the
test tube and the embryo was then implanted in the mother’s womb,
Dr. Vartak compares this with more advanced research that was done
in ancient INDIA to create children outside the womb. Wishing to
establish precedence for embryology and the knowledge of chromosomes
in Vedic culture, P.V. Vartak outlines the situation that gave rise
to a genetic experiment in the royal family of King
Drupada.
King Drupada
had been defeated in battle by Dronacharya. Although the king had
several sons, none of them was strong enough to send out against the
invincible warrior, and so Drupada wanted to have a son who would
have the qualities and the power to defeat Dronacharya.
As it turns
out later, the reason Dronacharya could not be defeated was that he
himself had not had a normal birth and was not subject to a normal
death, having been created in a vessel by the sage Bharadwaja, but
more of that later.
King
Drupada’s desire was for an exceptionally strong male child. As P.V.
Vartak reminds us, even today (he is speaking in 1979) it is not
possible to choose the sex of an unborn child, let alone select his
character traits. So Drupada wandered throughout INDIA in search of
a sage who could help him to achieve his difficult goal.
Finally
he came across the sage Yaja and his brother Upayaja. They accepted
the challenge and the king paid them an advance of 80,000 cows, with
another 10 crores to come when they were successful.
The story
unfolds as the king follows the instructions of the sages and
receives treatment from them to improve the quality of his semen.
Later the sages collect the semen and process the sperm by some
secret method. Then they invite the queen to join in the
experiment.
Things take
a more interesting turn when the queen refuses to have anything to
do with it. The brother sages say they don’t need her anyway and
they proceed, as Vartak says, with creating their baby in a vessel,
or, another possibility is that they implanted the processed sperm
in the womb of a cow. All of which, he says, “show that the ancient
Indian sages had the knowledge of sperm, chromosomes and genes, and
they knew how to develop a baby outside the human uterus. They also
knew how to create a baby from only a sperm.”
According to
Vartak, the story in the Mahabharata fits well with the concepts of
modern science. He quotes descriptions of the characteristics and
functions of the X and Y chromosomes, giving the number as 24 and
the name as Gunavidhi, which translates as ‘characters’ and
‘functions’. In another text, Srimad Bhagavatam, they are numbered
as 23, but the Mahabharata adds the cell proper to make 24, and
Vartak finds this proof of knowledge as “the cell itself does take
part in controlling the functions and characters. . . . It is also
clearly stated that hereditary diseases and genetic diseases like
Asthma, Migraine . . . Epilepsy, Diabetes, etc., occur in the
individuals due to a defective gene.” And for more detailed
information he refers us to his books in the Marathi language,
Swayambhu and Vastava Ramayana.
According to
modern science, the sperm is mostly nuclear material and the ovum is
food material. So it is possible to create a human being only from
sperm if proper nourishment is supplied to it. Similarly, it is
possible, as in “parthenogenesis,” to create an animal only from an
ovum if that ovum is stimulated by some means. This phenomenon is
also described in the Mahabharata when the sage Vasishtha says that
an embryo can develop only from the female and, more emphatically,
that the whole body of an offspring can develop only from sperm
without the involvement of the female. And Vasishtha may say this
with conviction because he himself was born without the help of a
mother. The sage Agasti, his “twin,” was “born” at the same time out
of the same kumbha, or pot. In this, the first of such successful
experiments, the scientists Mitra and Varuna mixed their sperm and
processed it in a pot and produced human male twins in about 10,000
BC, in the age known as Satyayuga, the Age of Truth.
Five
thousand years later, in another series of experiments, the sage
Gautama produced Kripa and Kripi, who took their names from the
container, similar to a sheath of arrows and closer in shape to the
modern ‘test tube,’ in which they were created. And Bharadvaja
created the famous male child Dronacharya, named after the method of
his birth in a vessel known as drona. It was said that as Drona was
produced only from a sperm, there was no female element in him and
so he became undefeatable.
And so it
was, considering all of these aspects, that the sage Yaja selected
one sperm with an X chromosome and another with a Y chromosome and
created in a special vessel, yajna kunda, both a female and a male
child for King Drupada: the famous Draupadi, who features
prominently as the wife of Arjuna and his four Pandava brothers, and
her brother, the warrior Dhrstradyumna. Neither of them could die a
natural death.
The author
does not give us the end of the story; we do not hear of the fight
between Dronacharya and Dhrstradyumna, except to say that both
eventually were assassinated, and so did not die from natural
causes. Draupadi, he says, died of her own will. But he traces the
similarities and differences of the two experiments, ancient eastern
and modern western, and makes two observations: First, he finds the
older experiment to have been more efficient as the babies were
created outside the womb. Of perhaps even greater significance is
the similarity that he reports: In both cases, the children were not
shown to the public, and details of the process were kept secret as
both sages and scientists saw the great dangers involved in
continuing such experiments.
According to P.V. Vartak, the sages
decided not to indulge in such work or to teach these techniques to
their students, seeing the consequences as disastrous to mankind and
to the balance of nature.
The amazing
revelation of Dr. Vartak’s article is that such research into
advanced genetics was being carried out thousands of years ago, and
that Ayurveda has knowledge not only of this branch of science, but
possibly many others that are just being ‘discovered’ or
rediscovered today.
In their
work with Ayushakti Ayurveda, the Narams use the ancient knowledge
of their lineage to help couples who would otherwise be childless to
have the blessing of healthy normal children.
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