Scroll down beyond the images below to read some of the evidence collected by Abubakr Salahuddin, whose marvelous, tender, scholarly website, The Tomb of Jesus Christ, is devoted to evidence that Jesus died, not on the cross, but in Kashmir many years later as a revered healer and teacher. He writes:
Please go to Abu's website, because there you will find far more evidence in support of this historically earth-shaking discovery - namely, that Jesus survived the crucifixion, traveled to India and died there as an old man and is buried in the above tomb (the Rozabal) in Srinagar, Kashmir - than I have included here.
I have visited this tomb twice, and can personally attest to the holiness and yes, rose-scented fragrance of the atmosphere within this building which houses the mausoleum of Jesus Christ, to which Srinagar residents come often to pray and leave their offerings. I have no axe to grind in offering this information, nor does the webmaker of the Tomb - only devotion to truth, and to the significance of the life of our Lord.
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I described my experience in the following poem that burst out of me in a trance-like state in which I was transported back to the time it happened, exactly as though I had been there - although clearly I had never nursed him as a baby, so the image must have been mixed with my mothering of my own children.
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...-- From the Gospel of the Essenes......
It is very
important to realize, at the outset, that this is a subject that is
NOT limited to the "New Age" movement. This site is devoted to
serious consideration of the theory [and it is a theory, though
evidence appears to be mounting in its favor] that Jesus Christ
physically survived the crucifixion as an "ordinary" human being,
then traveled eastwards to join Jewish tribes that had been scattered
to the northern tier of Afghanistan and also Kashmir, Northern India.
Was it possible to survive a crucifixion? Read the following account
from the ancient historian, Flavius Josephus:
"I was sent by Titus Caesar with Ceralius and a thousand riders to a certain town by the name of Thecoa, to find out whether a camp could be set up at this place. On my return I saw many prisoners who had been crucified, and recognized three of them as my former companions. I was inwardly very sad about this and went with tears in my eyes to Titus and told him about them. He at once gave the order that they should be taken down and given the best treatment so they could get better. However two of them died while being attended to by the doctor; the third recovered." (Vita, IV, 75)
He continues:
After surviving the crucifixion, Jesus Christ arrived in Kashmir, where he took up residence for the remainder of his life. There he ministered to Israelite tribes of the area, continuing to preach. He eventually married a woman named Maryan, who bore him children, and, so the theory states, he died at the age of 120 years. His tomb [see picture of his tomb on our home page] is located in the Mohala Kan Yar district of the capital city of Srinagar, Jammu & Kashmir, Northern India, and is called the Roza Bal (Prophet's Tomb). The photograph on the homepage is provided courtesy Holger Kersten. A more current photograph will be added, hopefully, before October, 2000.
Throughout his travels, it is claimed, he assumed the name, Yuz Asaf (Yus Asaph), a name which, some believe, meant, "Jesus the Gatherer," and he is said to be buried in the Roza Bal under that name.
Please understand the following: This site, and the information it contains, is NOT the property of any particular belief or ism or organization, nor is the idea of a post-crucifixion life of Jesus the invention of any ONE individual. From St. Irenaeus (125 A.D. to 202 A.D.) all the way to Dr. Fida Hassnain, a living scholar, there have been many people who have contributed information concerning the idea that Jesus was seen in "Asia" or India long after the crucifixion.
The Q and Jesus the Buddha--The Sources
As proof that Jesus Christ was a student of Buddhism, proponents of the Jesus in India/Jesus as Buddhist theory cite sayings of Buddha which appear to be identical to sayings of Jesus Christ as recorded in the canonical Gospels as well as non-canonical Christian scriptures. This is a large subject, and, as such, we're going to give just some examples of these comparisons. If the reader wishes to delve deeper into this subject, we suggest that you obtain the book, The Original Jesus: The Buddhist Sources of Christianity, and, of course, be sure to follow his references if you wish. The reader will have noted that we do not exclude non-canonical Christian scriptures in our analysis. This is for a simple reason. The majority of the population of the world are non-Christians. As such, we feel that they have the right to examine whatever Christian scripture or document exists. Though official Church authorities have dismissed some of these Christian scriptures as unacceptable, we have to admit, at the risk of appearing biased, that the history of the compilation of the current canonical Gospels does not seem to be one free of doctrinal subjectivity (we're being as polite as we can). Christianity's own scholars--such as the crack scholars of the Jesus Seminar--routinely quote from non-canonical Gospels and include them in their evaluation of the message of Jesus Christ. This shows that they do not necessarily accept the authority of Church fathers in determining exactly which books of Christianity are true or false.
We do not say that the Christian doctrine is false. But we are faced with a dilemma and a reality that we cannot turn away from. Perhaps had these other scriptures, such as the Gospel of Thomas, never been discovered; perhaps had there always existed only one revealed scripture of the Christian experience, then the matter would be simple. But that is not the case. For the Christian who has faith that the Church fathers were inspired by the Holy Ghost to remove certain scriptures and declare them "non-canonical", we respect their right to proclaim any non-canonical references at this site as "false" or somehow flawed. But since, as we stated before, we realize that non-Christians (simply by virtue of their having a different faith and belief-system ) will not view Church fathers as specially guided spiritual men, then we must respect their right to have access, even if only by way of mention, of the non-canonical sources, so that they can make their own decision.
This is brought powerfully home by the discovery amongst Christian scholarship of what is now commonly accepted as a Christian source document called "Q" that dated before the compilation of the canonical Gospels. The label, "Q", comes from the German word, Quelle, which means "source." Christian scholars "found" this document not through archaeological discovery, but by careful scrutiny of the contents of the Gospels that led them to conclude with confidence that the Gospel writers, though they wrote a different times, had worked from some common source. When researchers had been working to determine which of the Gospels was oldest, they made some startling discoveries. First of all, they recognized that it would be impossible to actually track down the real authors of the Gospels through historical research. So, any information would have to be gotten from the Bible itself.
It was noted that Matthew, Mark and Luke were related. They then noted that passages in Matthew and Luke corresponded only when they happen to follow a story that was also located in Mark. This led to the conclusion that Matthew and Luke must have gotten their accounts from Mark, and that Mark was the oldest between the three. On the other hand, Matthew and Luke, which were believed to have been recorded about 95 AD, contain a good number of sayings of Jesus that are not found in Mark. So although Matthew & Luke had Mark as a source, there must have also been some other source available to them which they used to compile and write their Gospels. Christian scholars have labeled this source the Q, and many of them, as well as non-Christian historians and theologians, strongly belief that Q must be the oldest source that circulated amongst Jesus' followers, perhaps even written accounts by Jesus' followers that were written down after the crucifixion. Similarities are also found between canonical sayings of Jesus and sayings found in the non-canonical Gospel of Thomas. [See, The Lost Gospel: The Book of Q and Christian Origins, Element Books, Shaftsbury, 1993]. We presented the above short explanation of the Q to demonstrate that since we do not know what that source document was, we cannot rely only on the canonical Gospels, as there can be no way to verify whether the canonical Gospels contain additions or omissions.
The following are references that compare scriptural [canonical or otherwise] sayings of Jesus Christ to sayings of the Buddha. Since scholars have taken the time to compile the sayings of Jesus Christ that are identical, and discovered that this Q source document exists, rather than cite the various scriptural references where these sayings can be found (whether canonical or otherwise), we will do as these scholars do: use the label Q to mean the sayings of Jesus as found in various Christian source documents that, because they are found in various sources, must have come from the common Q Gospel. Therefore, the right side of the chart below that lists sayings of Jesus has the heading Q rather than, "Matthew," or "Mark" or "Gospel of Thomas," since these are sayings that can be found in more than one Gospel. The left side of the chart will name the Indian scriptural source (Buddhist or otherwise) where a similar saying can be found. This chart is compiled from the discussion of this matter that can be found in Holger Kersten's book, The Original Jesus: The Buddhist Sources of Christianity, pages 117-167, although we have rearranged some of the verses from the order in which Mr. Kersten covered them. The two principal Indian sources will be the Dhammapada and the Undanavarga. Christians and those familiar with the sayings of Jesus will readily recognize many of them.