Jesus of the East
Although Jesus’s death on the cross, resurrection and ascension to Heaven are fundamental to the Christian faith, a number of stories persist that He travelled in the East and is buried there. Simon Price reviews the claims for the Saviour’s final resting place.
By Simon Price
Fortean Times | May 2004

The interior of the Roza Bal, showing the ornate wooden sepulchre which once covered the tomb.
The final resting places of the holy and the revered have always been popular attractions, inspiring pilgrimage and drawing those who wish to pay homage to sacred figures. Which isn’t to say that all such tombs contain the relics of the saintly or pious; after all, Red Square and Graceland receive their annual complement of visitors, intent on paying their respects to the departed souls of Lenin and Elvis.
But there is one tomb, in Srinagar, capital of Kashmir, the contested northern province of India, which has never become such a centre – although there are millions of people around the world for whom its purported occupant is the holiest of all holy men.
--------------Central to Ghulam Ahmad’s treatise is the notion that, after the crucifixion, Christ travelled towards India in search of the lost tribes (rather than, as in Notovitich’s version, during his so-called ‘lost years’). Ahmad also states vociferously, and provocatively, that Buddhism owes a specific debt to Jesus’s journey. Some have argued that there are, indeed, perceptible similarities between the teachings of Christ and Buddha, similarities that go beyond any mere notion of the world’s religions sharing certain underlying precepts or worldviews. While some people may have been convinced that elements of Buddhism crept into Christ’s teachings in some form or another, Ghulam Ahmad turned this idea on its head, stating that after Christ taught extensively throughout India and neighbouring countries his teachings were appropriated and approximated by Buddhist monks and then passed on as the words of the Buddha. It is only, perhaps, when compared to other religions that the common elements we find in the philosophies of Buddha and Christ take on a very distinct form that might lend credence to such an idea.
Most notably though, what Ghulam Ahmad’s treatise tackles head-on is the most controversial element of the whole ‘Jesus in India’ theory – that if we accept that Jesus died at the age of 120 in India, then there arises inevitably a fundamental question about Christ’s crucifixion and death. This, as the very cornerstone of Christianity, cannot easily be glossed over. Ghulam Ahmad was not the first to challenge the idea of Christ’s death and subsequent resurrection, but he was the first to do so in a relatively far-reaching publication.
...more - http://www.forteantimes.com/features..._the_east.html
Bookmarks