Sat­narayan Ma­haraj

Some years ago, on a tour of north­ern In­dia, I vis­it­ed Kash­mir which is lo­cat­ed in the Hi­malayas. Kash­mir is one of the most beau­ti­ful places on earth with unique peo­ple and a cul­ture that re­flects the grace and beau­ty of the land. Sur­round­ed by snow-capped moun­tains, this land is an­cient and holds many of the se­crets of man and his civil­i­sa­tion.

I stayed in the cap­i­tal city of Sri­na­gar and lived part of my va­ca­tion on a house­boat in the Dal Lake. Dur­ing my stay, the tour guide en­cour­aged me to vis­it an an­cient tomb on the out­skirts of the city. This tomb, my guide point­ed out is the spot where Je­sus Christ was buried af­ter a long and pro­duc­tive life in one of the val­leys of Kash­mir. Some claim it to be the his­tor­i­cal fact that the re­li­gious per­son around whom Chris­tian­i­ty was found­ed, Je­sus of Nazareth did not die on the cross but was suc­cess­ful­ly smug­gled out of his tomb and made his way in­to Kash­mir where he lived un­til old age.

When I vis­it­ed this tomb I met many bus­loads of pil­grims, some of whom were Chris­tians from Spain and Por­tu­gal. My guide in­formed me that all dur­ing the sum­mer months these re­li­gious vis­i­tors pi­ous­ly pay homage at the site where Je­sus was buried. I wish not to pass judg­ment on the truth or fic­tion of this tomb but on­ly to point to an abun­dance of ev­i­dence that dur­ing his “miss­ing years”, be­tween the ages of 12-30, Je­sus trav­elled through In­dia vis­it­ing many holy Hin­du sites and even hav­ing de­bate and dis­cus­sions with Swamis and Sad­hus.

The book “JE­SUS LIVED IN IN­DIA” was writ­ten by Hol­ger Ker­sten whose fam­i­ly lived in the Fed­er­al Re­pub­lic of Ger­many. Hol­ger stud­ied to be­come a teacher of re­li­gion in a col­lege of the Protes­tant Church in Freiburg Ger­many, and up to 1982, he was a teacher of re­li­gious ed­u­ca­tion. In his re­search­es, the au­thor trav­elled ex­ten­sive­ly in In­dia.

In the in­tro­duc­tion of his book Hol­ger writes: “When the most cen­tral and fun­da­men­tal teach­ings of a church are no longer ac­cept­ed as the pure truth even among the church­es’ elite and ad­min­is­tra­tors, the end of tra­di­tion­al Chris­tian­i­ty is un­de­ni­ably at hand. The mes­sage of the emp­ty pews is quite clear.”

In de­tail­ing Je­sus’ jour­ney through In­dia, Hol­ger draws many par­al­lels be­tween the life and teach­ings of Je­sus and the Hin­du Lord Kr­ish­na who, ac­cord­ing to his­to­ri­ans was born 4,000 years be­fore Christ.

Hol­ger writes: “Al­most every­thing that has ever been said about Je­sus has par­al­lels in an­cient In­di­an leg­ends. Wide­spread ig­no­rance of the sim­i­lar­i­ties be­tween the In­di­an and Chris­t­ian tra­di­tion can part­ly be at­trib­uted to the in­abil­i­ty of al­most all Eu­ro­peans to read the San­skrit an­cient tests; not un­til re­cent­ly have trans­la­tions be­gun to arouse in­ter­est in the West­ern world.

“In the In­di­an trin­i­ty, the son of God is called Kr­ish­na, whose very name shares its roots with that of Christ. Christ de­scends from the Greek word chrestos, mean­ing “anoint­ed with oil.” Chris­tos can be traced back to the San­skrit word Krsna (Kr­ish­na=at­tracts all), which is col­lo­qui­al­ly pro­nounced “Kr­ish­to.” “Kr­ish­to” means “at­trac­tion”.

“There have been many ac­counts of Kr­ish­na’s youth, po­et­ry glo­ri­fy­ing his pow­er and qual­i­ties. Just like the ba­by Je­sus in the apoc­ryphal gospels, Kr­ish­na was able to per­form all man­ners of mir­a­cles as a child. He thus sur­vived many dan­gers pre­pared for him by his un­cle Kansa. At one point, a snake crawled in­to his crib to stran­gle the child but was killed by the lad with his bare hands (cf the myth of young Her­cules). The hero­ic deed of the In­di­an child won­der would fill en­tire vol­umes.

“When he was six­teen, Kr­ish­na left his moth­er to spread his new teach­ing through­out In­dia. He spoke out against the cor­rup­tion of the peo­ple and the princes and said that he had come to earth to of­fer all peo­ple re­demp­tion from orig­i­nal sin, to dri­ve out un­clean spir­its, and to re­store the king­dom of good. He over­came mon­strous dif­fi­cul­ties, fought en­tire armies by him­self, per­formed man­i­fold mir­a­cles, awak­ened the dead, healed lep­ers, and gave sight to the blind and hear­ing to the deaf.

“Kr­ish­na, like Christ, did not wish to prop­a­gate a new re­li­gion, but sim­ply de­sired to re­new the re­li­gion that al­ready ex­ist­ed and cleanse it of all its odi­ous abus­es and im­pu­ri­ties. His teach­ings are in the form of po­et­ic para­bles and apho­risms rem­i­nis­cent of those of Je­sus. The ac­counts and dis­cours­es have been record­ed in the Bha­gavad-Gi­ta.”

Hin­dus in Trinidad have in­stalled im­ages (mur­tees) of Lord Kr­ish­na in their tem­ples, their homes, and their hearts. To­geth­er with the in­car­nat­ed Lord Ra­ma, Lord Kr­ish­na is wor­shipped and revered. In fact, the “Ba­by Kr­ish­na is dear­er to the Hin­du woman be­cause it arous­es the ma­ter­nal in­stincts in our ladies.”