Brahmastra

Not in a wild way.

The text says he looked at the bird and he took a blade of kusha grass, the plain, sharp grass that is used in every ritual, and he charged it with the Brahmastra, the most terrible weapon, and he loosed it at the crow.

The crow fled, and the weapon followed.

It went into the sky and to the heavens and to the world of the gods.

Source.

Label scripture with a tradition note.

The crow that wounded Sita, Rama's Brahmastra on a blade of darbha grass, the crow's flight, his surrender, and the loss of his right eye are told by Sita to Hanuman in the Valmiki Ramayan, Sundara Kanda, Sarga 38, roughly verses 15 to 40, which I checked in the Sanskrit on the valmikiramayan.net edition.

Thank you for listening to Dharma Katha.

And the Vedas, if you read the Vedas, they describe nuclear, what sounds exactly like nuclear war.

They call it Brahmastra, which is incredibly powerful weapons having extremely destructive capability.

And it sounds like they're describing nuclear war and look how old those are, right?

Right.

To defeat him, you must use the ultimate weapon.

Strike now with the Brahmastra.

The Brahmastra was a cosmic arrow created by Brahma himself and the sage Vishwamitra had taught Rama its secret invocation.

Rama drew a shimmering arrow and closed his eyes.

Oh Lord Brahma,

It grows back very quickly, like a hydra.

So in the final battle, Ram used the great Brahmastra weapon, which is the most powerful weapon.

The sacred mantra is invoked.

And he shot the heart, the ultimate seat of the unfulfilled self.

One astra is repeatedly presented as evidence that the Mahabharata described an atomic explosion.

The Brahmastra, the Brahmastra, the name itself sounds final.

Not the fire weapon, not the water weapon, not a storm called from the sky.

The Brahmastra is associated with Brahma, the creator god, and in the epic imagination it stands near the top of the hierarchy of destructive power.

It is the weapon used when ordinary weapons have failed, when the rules of war are collapsing, when a warrior decides that defeat, humiliation or revenge matters more than the safety of the world around him.

That is why it became the centre of the nuclear theory.

Not because the Mahabharata gives a technical description of uranium, radiation, fission, reactors or manufactured bombs.

It does not, but because the Brahmastra is described with consequences that sound, to modern readers, terrifyingly familiar.

Not a single soul moved.

Hanuman and Vibhishana were amongst the very few who had survived the mighty weapon, the Brahmastra, unleashed by Indrajith.

As the pair surveyed

the silent landscape looking for survivors, their thoughts turned to Rama and Lakshmana.

They are alive.

Let us try to revive them.

The effects of the Brahmastra cannot be reversed so easily, said a weak

voice from behind them.