Did Jesus Live In India? III

(1) The belief seems to be that there should be some information about Jesus' first 27 or 28 years and because there isn’t the information that was there must have been 'lost.' The reality is that there probably never was any information about Jesus' early life, undoubtedly because he did nothing during that time but hammer in nails, saw logs and plane planks. The situation is similar with the Buddha. Other than a few details about his birth, the fact that he was from a privileged background and the names of some of the members of his family, we know almost nothing about the Buddha until he renounced the world to become a monk. Nearly everything we do 'know' about those 30 years is legends from a later period. The first, second and third generation of Buddhists were mainly interested in what the Buddha taught, not what he did before he became a monk. Incidentally, we know almost nothing about Shakespeare for the same reason. People only became interested in the man several generations after he died, by which time all the people who knew him were dead. We know nothing about Fred Smith of No 32 Railway Cuttings, East Cheam either - quite simply because he did never did anything of any significance beyond his own family (if he had one). If he had shot the prime minister, invented the can opener or painted a masterpiece someone would have taken some notice of him and recorded some facts about him. There are no 'lost years' of Jesus.
(2) During Notovitch's time it was already known that there was some contact between the Roman Empire and India and it was assumed that most of this was by land. Consequently Notovitch claimed that Jesus went to India by land. Now we know that most direct Roman-Indian contact was by sea. Many of the books about the 'Jesus lived in India' myth have maps showing the supposed route Jesus took to India. Such maps prove nothing. A map showing the Buddhas route up the east coast of Australia may well look 'official' or 'authentic' but it is not evidence that the Buddha made such a trip.
(3) Notovitch claims to have traveled through Ladakh/Tibet in 1885. That the British India Secret Service has no record of him having done so is very strong evidence that he never did. The last decades of the 19th century were the height of the Great Game, the imperialist competition between Britain and Russia. The North-west Frontier Agency, Gilgit/Swat/Kashmir/Ladakh, was perhaps the most sensitive and closely watched border in the world at that time. It was said that a third of the population were spies for the British and the other two thirds spied on the spies. The presence of a Russian 'journalist' (read 'spy') snooping around Ladakh, which was under British suzerainty, would have set off alarm bells in Calcutta and Simla. It is highly unlikely that Notovitch would have been given permission to enter Ladakh and if he was he would have been followed every inch of the way. And yet his name does not appear in any official British documents.
(4) Some later versions of the 'Jesus lived in India' myth say that Jesus studied Buddhism at Hemis Monastery, no doubt a detail originating in a careless reading of Notovitch's claim that he heard about Issa while convalescing at this monastery. The problem with this claim is that Hemis Monastery was only founded 1672, quite a few centuries after Jesus. In 1989 I stayed at Hemis as the guest of a senior monk there and had the good fortune to witness the famous Hemis Festival. I asked my host about the Jesus story. He groaned, rolled his eyes upwards and told me that Westerners often come to the monastery and ask about Jesus and that some of the younger monks string them along for both fun and profit - mainly for profit.
(5) Notovitch claimed that the document about Jesus which was read to him was written in Pali, probably because he knew enough about oriental studies to know that it was the oldest Buddhist language. Had he known just a little more he would have claimed the book was in Sanskrit which was by far a more widely used language. And if it were in Pali it is virtually impossible that a monk in Ladakh or Tibet in the 19th century would have known or even known about this language.
(6) Despite Notovitch's claim that the Issa story was well-known in the Himalayan region, no copy of this text has ever been found, nor are there any quotations from it or even a mention of it in other ancient writings. The famous Blue Annals (Deb-ther sngon-po) for example, chronicles the early history of Buddhism in India and Tibet and refers to hundreds of scriptures and hundreds of teachers but makes no mention of Issa or his biography.
(7) Those who accept the 'Jesus lived in India' myth usually make much of the supposed tomb of Jesus in Kashmir. According to the original 1894 tale, Jesus came to India and then returned to Palestine where he was executed. A later expanded version of the story (myth have a tendency to grow) says that he survived the crucifixion, decided that the Jews weren't worth the effort, and returned to India where he lived happily ever after and finally died. Now I have not been able to find any archaeological account of Jesus' tomb so I'm going to give you my conjectures on it. It is hardly surprising that there should be such a tomb. Muslims have always considered Jesus to be one of the prophets of God, at least at some period there may have been a desire to have or visit some 'relic' of this prophet, and as it the case of pilgrimage in all religions, the law of demand and supply operates. When the devote want a relic or a holy site, one inevitably emerges. The inscription on the supposed tomb mentioning Jesus proves nothing. It is in Arabic script so it must date from after the 14th century when Kashmir became Islamic, although its probably much later and likely rather recent. Further, judging by from the photos of the inscription it looks more like graffiti. The great gate at the entrance of the Taj Mahal in Agra has the names of all the prophets revered in Islam carved on it, including the name of Jesus. This does not prove that Jesus visited the Taj.
(8) The other evidence that Jesus went to India and studied with Buddhist masters is the supposed similarities between some passages in the Buddhist scriptures and the Bible. Perhaps it's just because I'm out-of-step with current trends but I have always considered this to be the weakest of all the 'evidence' that Jesus did go to India and have contact with the Dhamma. If Jesus knew the Dhamma you would expect there to be some reference to Buddhism's most characteristic teachings - the Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path, etc. Instead, we have a few vaguely similar similes, sayings and parables, most of which are found in other religious traditions too and which could have been borrowed from a common source. On the other hand, when we compare Jesus' parables, similes, theology and sometimes phrases or even whole sentences, they look very like a continuation of the great Jewish sages and teachers who preceded him. Almost everything he said fits well with the Jewish world-view and Jewish spirituality from around the first millennium. His few ideas which do deviate from Jewish tradition (in the John's Gospel 'I am God') have no parallel in Buddhism. And his beloved Kashmir and the Himalayas? Why didn’t he make at least one or two references to them? If Jesus had studied with Buddhist masters the Bible would contain much more wisdom than it does.
Years ago I happened to be in a remote Sri Lankan village and amongst the supplies I had was a few cans of food and one of those can openers with a sharp disk which you put on the rim of the can and turn with the handle. An old Sinhalese govitang who must have never seen such a can opener before, looked at and said, 'Meka carika vage' (Like a car). At first I laughed at this; a can opener doesn't look anything like a car. But then I became intrigued and asked the old man what he meant. He said, in affect, that both have wheels, both have moving parts, both are made of metal and both perform a task. He mentioned how like turning the handle of the can opener and having the wheel go round was to putting a key in the ignition and having the car's wheels move. An interesting way at looking at it! In my opinion, the similarities between Buddhism and Christianity are like the similarities between a can opener and a car.

The picture is of the supposed tomb of Jesus in Kashmir.