The Gospels included in the New Testament describe in detail the story of the birth of Jesus Christ, there are several references to his childhood, and then we see him as a mature man. And where was he, what did he do between the ages of 15 and 30? We do not find the answer to this question in the canonical texts of Holy Scripture.
Unlucky lucky Notovich
In 1887, Nikolai Notovich, a Russian war correspondent, a Jew who converted to Orthodoxy, was sent to India. By whom? According to the official version, by the military department. As you might guess, for intelligence gathering. But another interesting fact is revealed. Notovich was closely associated with the Theosophical Society, an international public organization founded by Helena Blavatsky. It is possible that one of the influential members of this society, and besides having considerable weight in military circles, contributed to sending Notovich on this expedition. And he definitely knew what information he should look for.
In the north of India, in the Himalayas, Notovich visits remote monasteries, ashrams, communicates with their inhabitants. In the Buddhist monastery of Hemis, located 25 miles from Leh, the capital of Ladakh, the elder lama told an inquisitive traveler that there was a sacred scroll describing the life of the prophet Issa. This holy man allegedly preached in India the same doctrine that later in his homeland, Palestine. The lama showed Notovich the manuscript, explaining that it was just a copy of the Pali translation into Tibetan. And the original is kept in the library of Lhasa in Tibet - the residence of the Dalai Lama. This scroll was brought there from India around 200 AD.
Notovich asked the lama for permission to familiarize himself with the contents of the manuscript, but was firmly refused. He had no choice but to thank the hosts for their hospitality and hit the road, not losing hope of coming back here someday.
And it had to happen that a few days later Notovich fell from his horse and broke his leg! The travelers who picked him up, since there were no other settlements nearby, took him back to Hemis.
As they say, there would be no happiness, but misfortune helped. During his forced stay in the monastery, Notovich, possessing a natural charm, managed to win over the elder lama. He persuaded the monk to read this priceless manuscript to him, and since he did not know the Tibetan language, he had to resort to the help of a translator. It was not easy. According to Notovich, the literal translation of this manuscript was "incoherent and intermixed with descriptions of other events of the time that were not related to the topic." Therefore, he took the liberty of arranging "all the fragments related to Issa's life in chronological order and tried to give them a holistic character, which was completely absent in them." Notovich worked hard to put in order and reconstruct what he heard. This reconstruction became known to Europeans as the Apocrypha (non-canonical version) "The Life of Saint Issa", which is also called the Tibetan Gospel. This document was first published in the book by Nikolai Notovich, The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ (Tibetan Legend). The Life of Saint Issa, the Best of the Sons of Men”, published in Paris in 1894. And in 1910, a translation of the French edition into Russian was published in St. Petersburg.
Promotional video:
Tibetan Gospel
This apocrypha states that Jesus went to India and Tibet as a young man before starting his ministry in Palestine. The beginning of this journey is described as follows: “When Issa reached the age of thirteen, the time when an Israelite must take a wife, the house where his parents earned their living … became a meeting place for rich and noble people who wanted to see young Issa, already famous for his wise speeches during the glory of the Almighty, your son-in-law. And then Issa secretly left the parental home, left Jerusalem and, together with the merchants, went to Sindh in order to improve in the Divine Word and study the laws of the great Buddhas.”For six years, the young prophet studied with the Brahmins in Juggernaut, Rajagrih, Benares and other sacred Indian cities. The priests of Brahma “taught him to read and understand the Vedas, to heal through prayer,to preach, explain the scriptures to people and drive out evil spirits from the bodies of people, restoring their sanity."
Issa's sermons were popular with the Indians, but soon aroused the discontent of the Brahmins. The fact is that he tried to convey God's Word to all the people, including the lower castes. Recall that Hindu society is divided into four castes, or hereditary class classes: the highest - the brahmanas (priests) and kshatriyas (warriors); the lower ones are vaisyas (farmers, herders, artisans, traders) and sudras (laborers and servants). Brahmins and kshatriyas opposed Issa and told him that it was forbidden for sudras to read or even contemplate the Vedas. Issa rebuked them: “Those who deprive their brothers of divine happiness will themselves be deprived of it. Brahmins and kshatriyas will become sudras, and with the sudras the Eternal will abide forever."
Then the higher castes conspired to kill Issa. But the sudras warned him in time and he left the Juggernaut. Issa settled in Gautamides, the homeland of Buddha Shakya Muni, and studied the scriptures of the Sutras.
Pilgrims at Hemis Monastery
Then he left Nepal and the Himalayas and went west, bringing the light of Truth to different peoples. After that Issa lived for some time in Persia, where he preached to the Zoroastrians. At the age of twenty-nine, he returned to Palestine.
Issa's sermons aroused extreme concern among the Roman authorities, headed by Pilate. On trumped-up charges, he was arrested and thrown into an underground dungeon, where he was tortured. But, contrary to the New Testament writings, the Jewish priests found Issa innocent, tried to defend him, but could not do anything. Pilate passed a death sentence.
Several Palestinian merchants who witnessed this atrocity went to India, met there people who knew Issa as a young disciple, and told them about his death at the hands of Pilate. Three or four years later, an unknown author (s) compiled a scroll "The Life of Saint Issa".
Was Christ in India?
Notovich's book caused violent controversy in the scientific and religious world. The version of Jesus' stay in India had many both supporters and opponents.
Among the first was Nicholas Roerich - the great Russian artist, philosopher and mystic. While traveling in the northern regions of India and Kashmir, he discovered a large number of stories, legends, telling about how Issa (Jesus Christ) lived and was educated in ashrams. It is not known for certain whether the Himalayan teachers showed Roerich the original manuscript, which tells the story of Jesus. It is only known that the Russian philosopher referred to the fact that such information exists, without providing the public with more accurate evidence.
Swami Abhedananda is a well-known thinker and religious figure who organized an expedition to Kashmir in the early 1920s. He was able to personally get acquainted with the ancient texts describing the life of Jesus Christ in India. Perhaps, it was this ancient text that Nikolai Notovich studied thirty years earlier.
The famous Indian yogi Paramahansa Yogananda, in his commentaries on the New Testament, also confirmed the information that Jesus Christ spent the period of his life from 15 to 30 years in India.
Among the opponents of this version was the eminent orientalist Max Muller of the University of Oxford. In 1894, he published a critical review of Notovich's book in the scientific journal The Nineteenth Century. Müller argued that an ancient document like the one Notovich allegedly found would have been included in the Kangyur and Tangyur, catalogs listing all Tibetan literature. Further, he wondered how Jewish merchants managed to meet among the multimillion population of India the very people who knew Issa, and, moreover, “how those who knew Issa in India as a simple student immediately recognized him as the very person who was executed under Pontius Pilate. " Müller then refers to a woman who visited the Hemis abode and made inquiries about Notovich. Here is an excerpt from her letterdated June 29, 1894: “There is not a single word of truth in this whole story! There was no Russian here. Over the past fifty years, no one has been brought to the seminary [monastery] with a broken leg! There is no trace of the life of Christ there!"
Notovich immediately responded to Mueller's arguments in the preface to the 1895 London edition of the Biography of Saint Issa. But his response in no way satisfied critics. For example, Notovich explains the refusal of a monk from the monastery of Hemis to give a positive answer to the question of the existence of the manuscript by the fact that "Eastern peoples usually look at Europeans as robbers who infiltrate their midst in order to rob them in the name of civilization." He connects his own success with the ability to use Eastern diplomacy, which he learned during his travels.
The question of whether Jesus Christ was in India remains open to this day.
Magazine: Secrets of the 20th century №20. Author: Valery Nikolaev