Jesus in India

If you're looking for Jesus' supposed family tomb in Talpiot, the subject of the March 2007 Discovery Channel special, that's over here.

THIS PAGE addresses the idea that Jesus travelled through India in his youth, or that he was later buried there, has appeared in a variety of books and websites.

Page Contents

Ahmad: Buried in Kashmir
Notovitch: 'Secret Life' in India, Tibet and Persia
Dowling: 'Akashic Records'
Where else?

1. Ahmad: Buried in Kashmir

The view that Jesus survived crucifixion, married, had children, lived to be 120, and is buried in Kashmir is mostly propagated by Ahmadiyya Muslims, a rationalist Islamic sect established in the late 19th century in India by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad. The sect is regarded as unorthodox by both Shia and Sunni Muslims. A recent Orthodox Christian analysis of this tradition is Paul Pappas 1991 book Jesus' Tomb in India: Debate on His Death and Resurrection. The whole idea depends to some extent upon the swoon theory which was popular at the time of composition.

Kolkata filmmaker traces Christ's 'India trail' — A 2005 Indian documentary explores the subject.: http://www.telegraphindia.com/1050922/asp/calcutta/story_5267480.asp
Jesus in India — Being an account of Jesus' escape from death on the cross and of his journey to India, by Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad of Qadian, founder of the Ahmadiyya movement in Islam.: http://www.alislam.org/books/jesus-in-india/index.html
Jesus in India — My great, great Grandfather visited the supposed tomb of Jesus, in the late 1830's! Thus,it cannot be, that a 'myth' grew-up in the late 19th, century...the 'myth' or whatever, existed long before that!: Jesus in India
Jesus--Last King of Kashmir — Website for the 2006 book by Suzanne Olsson (NZ).: http://www.jesus-kashmir-tomb.com/
Mirza Abu Bakr leaves Jamaat Ahmadiyya — The webmaster of the 'Tomb of Jesus' site has recently converted to the Bah'ai faith, according to an Islamic anti-Ahmadiyya site.: http://alhafeez.org/rashid/abubakr.html
Tomb Of Jesus — The website of Jesus' alleged tomb in Kashmir.: http://www.tombofjesus.com

2. Notovitch: 'Secret Life' in India, Tibet and Persia

The first book to gain widespread attention for the view that Jesus spent time in India (and Persia and Tibet) during his early life was Nicolas Notovitch's 1894 work The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ. The author claimed to have discovered monastery texts showing that Jesus had travelled through India and Tibet during his teens and early twenties. This view has recently been taken up by Holger Kersten in Jesus Lived in India. Notovitch's book itself in still in print.

Edgar Goodspeed's 1931 book Strange Gospels described the rise and fall of Notovich's claims in the decade following the publication of his book. He outlines some discrepancies which were found in Notovich's account, and its rejection by the academic community at the time. A more up-to-date analysis can be found in Per Beskow's 1983 book Strange Tales about Jesus: A survey of unfamiliar gospels.

Articles on the Notivich Hoax — Scanned from The Nineteenth Century magazine.: http://www.tertullian.org/rpearse/scanned/notovitch.htm
Jesus in Tibet - A Modern Myth — By Robert M. Price in the Westar Institute's 'Fourth R' journal; a fairly representative liberal response.: http://www.westarinstitute.org/Periodicals/4R_Articles/Tibet/tibet.html
Jesus of the New Age Movement, The: Part 2 — By Ron Rhodes, Christian Research Institute. A fairly representative evangelical response.: http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/cri/cri-jrnl/web/crj0057b.html
Jesus, The Teenage Years — A fairly representative example of a site which places Jesus 'lost years' in India.: http://www.ycsi.net/users/reversespins/teenageJesus.html
Life of St. Issa; Best of the Sons of Men, The — In 1894 Nicolas Notovich, claiming to have found a Tibetan monastery text concerning Jesus' early life, published this translation in The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ.: http://reluctant-messenger.com/issa1.htm
New Ecumenism Based upon a Re-Examination of the 'Lost Years' Evidence, A — By James Deardorff, Oregon State University. A recent (1994) defense of Notovitch against his detractors.: http://www.proaxis.com/~deardorj/ecumensm.htm
Strange New Gospels — By Edgar Goodpseed (1931). Chapter 2 concerns Nicolas Notovich's claims concerning the Unknown Life. Müller expressly disclaimed any merit for having shown the Unknown Life to be a mere fiction, as no serious Sanskrit or Pali scholar, and no serious student of Buddhism, was taken in by it. Relatedly, chapter 3 addresses the 'Aquarian Gospel' of Levi Dowling.: http://www.tertullian.org/articles/goodspeed_strange_new_gospels.htm

3. Dowling: 'Akashic Records'

Ostensibly psychic variations on the Jesus-in-India theme have been advanced by Levi H. Dowling, Edgar Cayce and Rudolph Steiner. Their views of Jesus' travels to India were allegedly transcribed from the Akashic Records, a telepathically accessed universal library of ideas, thoughts and events. Arild Romarheim gave one recent assessment of these ideas in his 1992 book The Aquarian Christ: Jesus Christ as Portrayed by New Religious Movements.

Akashic Records - The Book of Life — from the Edgar Cayce website.: http://www.edgarcayce.org/about_ec/cayce_on/akashic/
Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ, The — Translated from the Akashic records by Levi Dowling.: http://www.fatherhurley.com/ag/
Occultopedia: Akasha — Akasha, in Hinduism and Buddhism, is an all-pervasive life principle, or simply space itself.: http://www.occultopedia.com/a/akasha.htm

4. Where else?

Tomb of Jesus in Japan — In 1935, Kiyomaro Takeuchi discovered 1900 year old document stored in Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan, containing evidence, that Jesus (Joshua) born in Bethlehem to virgin Mary is buried in Herai Village in Aomori district of Japan...: http://www.thiaoouba.com/tomb.htm