Jesus and Kashmir

by Nur Richard Gale

This article is about the Isa (Jesus) theories connected to Kashmir. I have researched and followed the literature pertaining to this in more than an amateur manner for the past eight years; much of it during frequent visits to Kashmir. In the body of texts available on this topic, you will find a vast array of reference sources of various degrees of historical authenticity.

A lot of the search really begins with British anthropologists and free-lance adventurers in the mid-19th century traveling with British troops. Their research, if we can really call it that today, concluded that many of the Kashmiri tribes were remnants of the Lost Tribes of Israel. George Moore's book, "Lost Tribes" and printed in the 1860s, starts things off. True, there are, among the Gujars in Kashmir, those who claim to be descendants of the Israelites although they are practicing Muslims. You can speak to many modern Kashmiris and they will confirm this. As Faber-Kaiser notes, there are also striking similarities to the etymologies of Kashmiri place names and those found in the "Torah" and the "Book of Chronicles." Fida Hassnain's book (discussed below) expands on this. The believed tomb of Moses above Wular Lake is one of these oddities and today is overseen by a chokyidaar, "guardian" family, tracing itself to the Rishi dervishes. The believed Staff of Moses was housed in the dargah (tomb of Sufi saint) complex of Nund Resh, Kashmir's patron saint, and displayed during his Urs (the date and commemorative celebration of the passing of a Sufi saint; sometimes referred to as the saint's "wedding day"). Some of us may recall that this dargah was burned down by fundamentalist mercenaries (no, there were only a couple of Kashmiris among them), two springs ago.

The theory of Isa in Kashmir has been primarily promoted by the Ahmadiyya Mission, a Pakistani quasi-messianic Muslim movement, with strong political motivations to discredit Christianity. Faber-Kaiser, as well as later authors, rely on their publications heavily.

The leading authority today on the Isa-Kashmir theory is without question Professor Fida Hassnain, retired Buddhist scholar from University of Srinagar, Director of State Archeology, and past head of the Kashmir Library and Archives. Today, Fida is a Sufi teacher and healer although his past teachers besides the Kashmiri dervishes include the late great Kashmir Shaivite saint Swami Lakshman Joo and a Ladhaki Buddhist shamaness. He is often invited to Germany and Austria to experiment with the use of Sufi dance at a psychiatric center there under Dr. Gunter Amon. His transmission received in the healing arts comes from Hazrat Inayat Khan via the late Dutch lady, Hayat Bouman, in New Delhi and much personal time spent at Inayat Khan's dargah. Fida and his family have since been a target of the Kashmiri fundamentalist militants. Some may recall the disturbing event in the late 80s of a Kashmiri woman catpured and held hostage by the militants as a bargaining chip for the Indian release of prisioners. It was an outrage throughoout India, Hindus and Muslims, and the story was followed by NPR. Al-hamdulliah (Arabic expression meaning "praise God"), she was safely released because the militants recognized they lost their credibility in the eyes of Kashmiris by kidnapping a woman. The woman was Fida's daughter. The assumed tomb of Isa is in the old quarter of Srinagar -- a very peaceful place, and wonderful to meditate in. There is also a smaller dargah inside the small building of a local Sufi saint. The family in charge of the tomb claim to be blood-descendants of Isa (I don't recall their name). I have asked a few pirs (kind of the Persian equivalent to the Arabic sheikh, but specifically a Sufi teacher since a sheikh doesn't necessarily have to be a Sufi) and sheikhs in Kashmir about their views on the tomb of Isa, and all say it is false but rather a tomb of a very early Kashmir dervish or some earlier non-Muslim prophet. Understandably so, because Isa, along with Khider, Idris/Enoch, and Elijah (as well as Melchizedek in Judaism and Christianity) are believed to have never died. Nevertheless, the locals love their saints dearly, and for many Kashmiris, especially of the older generation, it is believed to be Isa's tomb. Women are the most frequent visitors to pray for the welfare and education of their children. And I find Shiites frequent the tomb more than Sunnis.

Fida Hassnain conducted the archeological research on the tomb (as much as the guardian family and Islamic law would permit). What he did discover was that the underlying older crypt above the newer north-south Muslim structure was similar to early Hebrew burial crypts, being east-west direction. The more interesting find were raised-stone footprints at its base with apparent markings indicative of nail holes (more on that later).

In response to a request to procure Faber-Kaiser's "Jesus Died in India" book, I don't anticipate a re-publication (last printed in the mid-70s, I believe), because a few more recent publications have exceeded it in details and theories.

The first main work is "Jesus Lived in India" by Holger Kersten in 1986-7 (Element Books). It is in large part a lifting, with limited accreditation, of Hassnain's research that he then ties together with his own theories and sources. I find most of this work to be a free-form flight of the imagination. I have challenged Kersten on his theories and sources, but he has never responded. He has since published other books (one on the Shroud and another trying to prove Jesus as a Buddhist adept) that are popular in New Age circles with a kind of sensationalism that purports itself to be scholarly research.

Shortly after Kersten's book, Fida and a rabbi from Morocco, published their research and theory in India in 1989 under the title "The Fifth Gospel." In 1990, Fida sent me a copy to review and to request my assistance for an American publication. I was compelled to trash many of my friend's source references as being unsound (but not the theory itself that Isa did visit, live, and/or die and/or is buried in Kashmir), and said I would only help if he dramatically edited it. His book did finally appear a few years later by Gateway Books in the UK under the title "A Search for the Historical Jesus." Indeed, Fida has removed and toned down many of the dubious sources, and has made his argument far more compelling than before. Unlike Kersten's book, it poses new questions and is more sober rather than making absolute claims based on dreadful scholarship. But the book is not completely free of some star-reaching conclusions.

Among the dubious source references that Kersten and Fida rely upon to establish a Isa-Essene-Buddhist-India-Kashmir connection are the following: The Gospel of Bartholomew -- This is a work commonly found in Islamic bookstores and published by the Ahmadiyya Mission to prove that Isa did not die on the cross (describes some strange astral switch or something like that whereby Judas appears as Isa when arrested by the Romans, and thus it was Judas who was crucified), and that Isa continued on his merry way. The first immediate problem with its apostolic authority is that the work is only found in Latin (and very poor Latin at that). A European linguist and religious scholar did a thorough study of the text and found that much of the language suggests the existence of a hierarchical church that could only refer to a time period after AD 900. The more accepted theory of this gospel's origin is that it was written by an early middle age Latin-speaking monk who converted to Islam possibly during the first crusades. For Kersten, he also claims that the footprints are characteristic of early Buddhist iconography (which they are), except with the nail markings instead of the Wheel of Dharma. This form of Buddhist representation of their master slowly died out with the coming of the Mahayana doctrine after the third Buddhist Council at Taxila (in greater Kashmir) a few centuries earlier than Isa when Buddha's representation in full human form dramatically increased. Also, Kersten (and Fida) fail to recognize that this text conflicts with the nail markings if Isa wasn't crucified.

The Crucifixion by an Eyewitness -- This is a strange one. The privately published English translation has been out of print for a long time (first published in 1860s and last in 1907) and was popular among Freemasons in the early part of the century. The text is suppose to be an account of Isa's crucifixion by an eyewitness and seven years of his ministry after the resurrection.

It includes a lot of activities and travels of Isa not found elsewhere. From an academic point-of-view, the problem is that no one has seen the original document (Latin) which is purported to be held in a secret library somewhere. Other Mason groups say the original was destroyed by fire. The Aquarian Gospel -- Some of us may remember this one. A text channeled a while back by a person named Levi. The text does include Isa's travels to India but this during the so-called lost years before Isa's ministry in Palestine. It has been used by Kersten and Hassnain to base the Palestine-India connection and Isa's adolescent studies in India. At least this book doesn't purport itself to be anything other than channeled material -- in that respect it is more honest.

Works of Szekely (re: "Essene Gospel of Peace," etc.) -- These are some of the great forgeries of our century with an interesting history. But they are used by Kersten and Fida to make an Isa-Essene-India connection. The gospel first appeared in Europe before WWII when it was read by the German New Age of the time (by the way Jung very likely had connections with, cf. "The Jung Cult," Princeton U. Press) which was later adopted by the Nazi SS societies and health resorts in Austria and southern Germany (eg. vegetarianism, nudity, meditation, free-love, etc.). Szekely was part of this movement, and when the books first appeared under a different name, he claimed he translated them from Slavonic. Well, after the war, and with the coming 60s movement, Szekely remerged from anonymity and reproduced them again, but with the claim that he translated them from Aramaic texts that he found in the Vatican's secret library. A Swedish professor, Sodenberg I believe, tried to trace this. No such texts exist in the Vatican''s library and Szekely's name appears nowhere in the Vatican ledger for having visited it (required for entry after special permission is granted). The priest who was in charge then has no memory of Szekely nor his inquiries. So these are four of the main texts (there are others I don't have space for here) upon which Kersten bases his theory. But there are a few others which are more plausible, but not so much on Isa's last days in Kashmir, but his stay in India before his Palestinian ministry and not his final days in Kashmir, most notably Nicholas Notovich's "The Unknown Life of Christ" and other accounts of people being shown a text(s) in the Buddhist Hemis Monastery in Ladhak. There is some interesting spy-stories around these texts with Muslims and officials sent by the Church to try to steal them. Fida gives quite a few Asian sources to try to support Jesus in India. One is a Chinese text preserved in Tibetan (1800) called the "Glass Mirror" which mentions Yesu, "a teacher and founder of the religion who was born miraculously, proclaimed himself the Savior of the World." The text goes on to try to show that Jesus followed Buddhist principles. This tells us nothing because Nestorian monasteries were already given Imperial protection in the 7th c. Tang dynasty China. In fact Buddhist scribes from the monastic institutions were commissioned to help the Nestorians translate their gospels and texts into Chinese which took on such names as the "Jesus Messiah Sutra." On the other hand, many of the other sources Fida uncovers do make for some fascinating reading and offer some thought-provoking questions.

Hassnain and the Ahmadiyya have also identified 21 Muslim historical chronicles in Arabic, but mostly in Persian, with references to Isa (known as Yuz Asaph or various derivatives of this name) living and dying in Kashmir. From these, only two or three are original sources, the others relying on various portions of these 2/3. The earliest is the Persian "Kamal u-Din" (or an Arabic first name of a person) by Said-us-Saddiq in the late 9th c.

Finally, for me, the most interesting Isa reference is found in the Kashmiri Hindu text "Bhavishya Maha Purana" (circ. 2nd c., the name of a specific Sanskrit text of the "purana" category) about king Shalivahana (last mentioned circ. AD 80) meeting a foreigner calling himself Ishvara Putaram (Son of God), Isha Masih (Isha = Isa in Arabic = Jesus; Masih = Messiah), and Kanya Garbam (Born of a Virgin).

Nur Richard Gale lived and worked in India for about three years and belonged to a small Sufi order in Kashmir. He did his graduate work at the University of Chicago Divinity School.