Automata in the Indian Cultural Imagination

Mechanical constructs, or robots, have existed in the South Asian imagination for thousands of years; in India, this comprises stories and inventions which reflect the surrounding socio-cultural and geographical contexts of which the imagination is centered. In this way, the automata have taken various forms, such as animated wooden dolls, throughout India’s history. Yantras, a kind of sacred geometry that has been prominent to Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist religions, also means machine (or contraption) in Sanskrit and represents divine consciousness through tangible geometric forms. Sanskrit “robot tales”, as author Signe Cohen had put it, form a substantial subset of ancient India’s literary tradition. Currently, mentions of automata can be seen in televised, online, and print, among other kinds, of media. One prominent example, includes the Tamil film Enthiran which was the highest grossing Indian film of 2010. In India, mentions of automata are often intertwined with spiritual and metaphysical questions of consciousness, creations, and human autonomy.

Historical context

Yantra

Main article: Yantra

Depiction of Sri Yantra

According to the Encyclopedia of Hinduism, yantra is a Sanskrit term for a device, particularly a harness or support mechanism, and often refers to a geometric diagram used to hone the divine as a means to focus during meditation. The verbal root, yam, means to control or harness. Yantras are often used within the tantric tradition, with one of the earliest discoveries of the yantra being the Banghor stone, which was excavated in the terminal upper paleolithic site of Banghor I in the Sidhi District of Madhya Pradesh, India. The stone is dated to approximately 11,870 years old (± 120 YBP) and is thought to represent the goddess, or female principle, Shakti through patterns. Flat or 3-dimensional shapes, symbols, and numbers are contained by yantras which each carry distinct meaning. For example, the Sri Yantra, a yantra used in the Shri Vidya school of Hinduism, (also known as the Shree Yantra or Shree Chakra) depicts triangles radially emanating from a bindu, which represents the supreme consciousness.  In "The Comparative Study of Quantum Theory and Shree Yantra", a paper published in the International Journal of Information Technology, author Tushar Bhatt expresses that the "Shree Vidya is the abstract intelligence where from the cosmos originates, where on it flourishes and where in it dissolves, like the images in a mirror". when describing the Shree Yantra as a window into the cosmos.

As tools of worship and divine invocation, yantras are also categorized by use. In Vedic astrology, one example are planetary yantras which are used to ward off the negative energy associated with the planets. The combined representation of these planetary yantras is known as the Navagraha Yantra, where each also has a magic square representation which may be translated into matrices as demonstrated in 2012 by George P. H. Styan in his presentation on yantra magic squares and Agrippa-type magic matrices for the International Workshop and Conference on Combinatorial Matrix Theory and Generalized Inverses of Matrices

Puppet Theatre

Rajasthani puppet show

In I, Yantra Exploring Self and Selflessness in Ancient Indian Robot Tales, author Signe Cohen distinguishes mentions of human automata in ancient Indian literature from those in ancient Greek literature by describing how the former were often described as being made of wood while the latter were depicted as being made of metal. She attributes this to the longstanding tradition of puppet theatre in India, where wooden dolls were controlled by strings. One of the earliest mentions of puppetry is in the Mahabharata, an Indian epic which has an oral history dating to the 9th century BCE, which draws comparisons between human beings and wooden puppets. Thiruvalluvar, a Tamil poet, expressed "the movements of a man who has not a sensitive conscience are like the simulation of life by marionettes moved by strings” in the 2nd century BCE. From 100 to 1000 CE, in classical Sanskrit theatre, the sutradhara, translated to "string-holder", oversaw the play's direction and introduction.

Puppetry in India has taken various forms depending on the region, including West Bengal's danger putul nach rod puppets, Assam’s putala nach string puppets, Karnataka’s yakshagana gombeyata string puppetry, and Kerala’s pavakathakali glove puppetry. In his 2001 account of Indian Gombeyata, or string and rod, puppetry in the Asian Theatre Journal, professional puppeteer Michael Schuster describes the manifestation of the divine through puppets, following common themes in Hindu folk religion. Yantra were placed in the head or under the arm gaurd of these puppets, three of which were passed down from the 17th century. One puppeteer from Aggalakote, Ramaiah, in a 1993 interview described a figure of Satyabhama which could move without assistance. "Only after the puppeteer has danced the puppet for fifty performances can he begin to feel the shakti [female divine energy]. Then the puppet begins to dance the man" Ramaiah had claimed.

Literary Tradition

Lokapannati

The Lokapannati was a Buddhist text written in Burma around the 11th century, possibly with South Indian influences. According to legend, King Ajatasatru, a king of the Haryanka Dynasty (an ancient polity in modern-day eastern India), was entrusted with protecting the remains of the Buddha upon his death, which he hid in an underground chamber guarded by autonomous, mechanical guards, known as bhūtavāhanayantra (roughly, “spirit movement machines”). These beings were described as being able to move on their own, and wielded swords, with which they would ward off any potential invaders. The origin of these automata were sometimes attributed to the Hindu craftsman god Visvakarma, though one account placed their origins with Greek-speaking societies in the Mediterranean region, where their craftsmanship was a closely guarded secret, brought to India by an artisan who married the daughter of a craftsman of automata, learned the secrets of how to construct them, and attempts to return to India. While he is intercepted and slain by the robotic mercenaries of the craftsman, he stitched a set of instructions for the construction of automata into his side, and ensured through his son the return of his body to his city in India, allowing the secrets of the technology to spread. The automata were to remain dutifully guarding the hidden spot of Buddha’s remains until a future king would come to disperse them. This future king proved to be Ashoka, who discovered the hidden spot protected by the autonomous guards two centuries after Ajatasatru’s reign only to be repelled by the guards until weaknesses in their construction could be found. Interaction with the Greco-Roman world is key to this story–sources seem to differ as to whether this took place near the reign of Ajatasatru or much later, when these regions would be under the Byzantine Empire; which version is true would have significant implications for the veracity of different aspects of the legend, as there is more credence given to examples of mechanical technology in the latter era, especially those powered by water.

Modern

Tholpavakoothu (shadow puppetry)

Tholpavakoothu

Tholpavakoothu is a traditional form of shadow puppetry performed in South India, especially Kerala. While the art form has shrunk massively in popularity in recent years due to the proliferation of other forms of more modern entertainment, a push has been made to keep the art form alive by way of automation. By automating the leather puppets traditionally used in the art form by making them robotic, some have sought to imbue a modern twist into an ancient art form to give it new life and appeal in the modern age, to a considerable degree of success.

Enthiran

Main article: Enthiran

The 2010 Tamil movie Enthiran (meaning “Robot” in Tamil) also takes influence from the Western cultural imagination surrounding robots and automata, with critics observing similarities to the stories of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and the Terminator franchise, but incorporating Indian narrative elements as well, with perceived influence from the Ramayana, one of the most prominent Hindu epics. The storyline is much more influenced by modern high-tech science fiction and cyberpunk aesthetics, with the storyline primarily following an artificial intelligence and android robotics researcher. While little in the way of conceptual linkage is apparent between this much more modern robot story and the bhūtavāhanayantra of ancient India, one subtle connection can be drawn in the martial application of robotic technology; just as the Greek craftsman possessed robotic mercenaries, the original purpose of Chitti, the eponymous robot in Enthiran, was to be used as a replacement for a human soldier.