Nivatakavachas
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In Hindu mythology, the Nivatakavachas are a celestial race of Asura demons, living deep under the oceans.
Extremely powerful in magic and mysticism, warfare and possessors of powerful weapons, the demons are perpetrators of evil, but also glorious and legendary beings. The Devas under Indra are unable to overcome them despite repeated battles.
In the Ramayana, they strike an alliance with Ravana, after Ravana is unable to defeat them.
They are finally vanquished and destroyed entirely by Arjuna, the hero of the epic Mahabharata, who is asked to do so by his father Indra.
One Indian source says that they came from a "land in the sky". This prompted a mistranslation of their name as nir-vata-kavacha = "no-air-garment" and from that an idea that this referred to aliens in spacesuits. But their name translated correctly as ni-vata-kavacha without the spurious R means "of practical application - layer - garment", and a theory that that the Nivatakavacha legend originally referred more sensibly to an invasion from Tibet, which is 2 to 3 miles above sea level and thus "in the sky" as seen by people in the Indus-Ganges plain.
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