Hey guys, in the year 1027 A.D, about a thousand years ago, a group of workers were digging the ground for water in a village called Khatu in the state of Rajasthan in India. After digging for more than 30 feet, they found a strange metal box which was sealed airtight. On the box, there was one word engraved: Barbarik. When they broke the box open, inside there was a skull, it was not a regular skull made of bones, but it was made of a shining metal. What’s even more strange, the skull had 2 eyeballs in the eye sockets. The workers immediately ran to the king who was ruling this place at that time. His name was Roopsingh Chauhan and he called all learned men to convene at his court to understand about this Barbarik’s Skull.
Who was Barbarik? How can his skull be made of metal? How did his eyes not decompose and disintegrate? The learned men searched many ancient texts and found nothing about Barbarik. Finally, a priest who came from the far south explained his story. Barbarik was a great warrior who lived 5000 years ago during the time of Lord Krishna. But there was something fundamentally different about Barbarik. He was not human, he possessed God-like strength. He was capable of handling multiple weapons at the same time, and could solve mathematical problems in lightning speed, but his speech was slow and he could not recognize faces. He was not intelligent like humans, he had artificial intelligence. What do I mean by this?
Let’s wind the clock back about 5000 years ago. Lord Krishna decides to meet Barbarik after hearing about his strength and intelligence. The great war of Mahabharata is about to begin soon, and Krishna wants to see which side Barbarik is going to support. Barbarik did not recognize Krishna, but demonstrates his extraordinary speed and precision in operating advanced weapons. Krishna is shocked and realizes that Barbarik would be the game changer in the upcoming war. However, Krishna observes that Barbarik’s intelligence is not human-like, he followed a robot like thinking and action. Krishna asks him about his position in the war. Barbarik replies that he would support the side which is weaker than the other side. He says it is his duty to save as many humans as he could.
At this point, Krishna poses a very simple question which completely bewilders Barbarik. Krishna says if Barbarik supports the weaker army and begins to destroy the stronger army, after a certain point, the stronger army would become the weaker army and the once weaker side would now become the stronger side. What would Barbarik do then? To a human being, this would not be a valid question, because human beings understand larger ideas, while robots and artificially intelligent machines look at events and are not able to grasp the bigger picture. But Barbarik then says he would switch sides and support the other army now because they have become weaker. Barbarik’s reply stuns Krishna because this means that Barbarik will keep switching sides between the 2 armies and destroy both sides completely.
Krishna concludes that even though Barbarik is capable of handling advanced weapons with extraordinary precision, with his unnatural intelligence he will cause harm to human beings, rather than help them. So Krishna decides to disable Barbarik’s physical activity so that he cannot use his arms or legs to attack or use weapons. Krishna asks Barbarik to cut his head from his body.
Here is the most interesting part: Barbarik removes his head and offers it to Krishna, but continues to talk. This clearly shows that he was not human, he was an artificially intelligent machine.
Some people claim that Barbarik was the grandson of Bhima, but this is highly unlikely because in that case ,he would have definitely been mentioned in the ancient text of Mahabharata. But Barbarik is not mentioned in the original text anywhere. Why did the author not even mention such a great warrior in the epic? Because Barbarik was not a living being, he was a Robot with artificial intelligence, this is why the author omitted this detail.
The name Barbarik itself points out that he is not human. It comes from the Sanskrit work Barbara which means inhuman, which is also related to the English word Barbaric in as well. The English word Barbaric originally means inhuman, one who does not understand human emotions and thoughts.