Nicolas Notovitch

Nicolas Notovitch

Nicolas Notovitch (1858-?) was a Russian aristocrat, Cossack officer^[1], spy^[2][3] and journalist known for his contention that during the years of Jesus Christ's life missing from the Bible, he followed travelling merchants abroad into India and the Hemis Monastery in Ladakh^{[4][5][6][7][8]}, India, where he studied Buddhism.

Life of Saint Issa

Notovitch claimed that, at the lamasery or monastery of Hemis, he learned of the "Life of Saint Issa, Best of the Sons of Men." His story, with the text of the "Life," was published in French in 1894 as La vie inconnue de Jesus Christ. It was translated into English^[9], German, Spanish, and Italian.

Notovitch's account of his discovery of the work is that he had been laid up with a broken leg at the monastery of Hemis. There he prevailed upon the chief lama, who had told him of the existence of the work, to read to him, through an interpreter, the somewhat detached verses of the Tibetan version of the " Life of Issa," which was said to have been translated from the Pali. Notovitch says that he himself afterward grouped the verses " in accordance with the requirements of the narrative." As published by Notovitch, the work consists Of 244 short paragraphs, arranged in fourteen chapters.

The otherwise undocumented name "Issa" resembles the Arabic name Isa (عيسى), used in the Koran to refer to Jesus and the Sanskrit "īśa", the Lord.

The "Life of Issa" begins with an account of Israel in Egypt, its deliverance by Moses, its neglect of religion, and its conquest by the Romans. Then follows an account of the Incarnation. At the age of thirteen the divine youth, rather than take a wife, leaves his home to wander with a caravan of merchants to India (Sindh), to study the laws of the great Buddhas.

Issa is welcomed by the Jains, but leaves them to spend time among the Buddhists, and spends six years among them, learning Pali and mastering their religious texts. Issa spent six years studying and teaching at Jaganath (Juggernaut), Rajagriha, and other holy cities. He becomes embroiled in a conflict with the Kshatriyas (warrior class), and the Brahmins (priestly class) for teaching the holy scriptures to the lower castes (Sudras and Vaisyas, laborers & farmers). The Brahmins said that the Vaisyas were authorized to hear the 'Vedas' read only during festivals and especially not to be read to the Sudras at all who are not even allowed to look at them. Rather than abide by their injunction, Issa preaches against the Brahmins & Kshatriyas, and aware of his denunciations, they plot his death. Warned by the Sudras, Issa leaves Jaganath and travels to the foothills of the Himalayas in Southern Nepal (birthplace of the Buddha).

At twenty-nine Issa returns to his own country and begins to preach. He visits Jerusalem, where Pilate is apprehensive about him. The Jewish leaders, however, are also apprehensive about his teachings yet he continues his work for three years. He is finally arrested and put to death for blasphemy, for claiming to be the son of God. His followers are persecuted, but his disciples carry his message out over the world.

In the Notovich translation, the section regarding Pontius Pilate is of particular note; in this version of the events around the death of Jesus, the Sanhedrin go to Pilate and argue to save the life of Jesus, and they are the ones who 'wash their hands' of his death, instead of the Roman Pilate. Another point is the role of women that appear to be more free than what most historians think.

Controversy

Edgar Goodspeed describes the debunking of Notovitch's claims as a hoax.

Notovitch's writings were immediately controversial. The German orientalist Max Mueller, professor of indian philosophy in Oxford who'd never been to India himself, published a letter he'd received from a British colonial officer J.Archibald Douglas, which stated that the presence of Notovich in Ladakh was "not documented". The head of the Hemis community signed a document that denounced Notovitch as an outright liar.^[10]

The story of his visit to Hemis seems to be taken from H.P. Blavatsky's Isis Unveiled.^[11] In the original, the traveler with the broken leg was taken in at Mount Athos in Greece and found the text of Celsus' True Doctrine in the monastery library. But in fact there were found proof that Notovitch was in Leh and Hemis. A german dentist residing there had treated him extracting one of his teeth.^{[citation needed]} There is the written record in his diary which is shown in the book of Holger Kersten.

The idea that Jesus was in India was also inspired by a statement in Isis that he went to the foothills of the Himalayas.^[12]

Today there is not a single recognized scholar on the planet who has any doubts about the matter. The entire story was invented by Notovitch, who earned a good deal of money and a substantial amount of notoriety for his hoax.^[13]

—Bart D. Ehrman, Forged: Writing in the Name of God—Why the Bible’s Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are

Other authors on the life of Jesus in India

While Notovitch is the first author known to claim Jesus traveled to India, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (d.1908), who proclaimed himself the awaited Messiah, wrote a more detailed account of Jesus's time in South Asia. Unlike Notovitch, he claimed that Jesus had traveled towards India post-crucifixion in search of the lost tribes of Israel and there he died a natural death. Ghulam Ahmad founded the Ahmadiyya sect. Others claim to have seen the same manuscripts.

Many other authors have taken this information and incorporated it into their own works. For example, in her book "The Lost Years of Jesus: Documentary Evidence of Jesus' 17-Year Journey to the East", Elizabeth Clare Prophet asserts that Buddhist manuscripts provide evidence that Jesus traveled to India, Nepal, Ladakh and Tibet.^[14]

During his stay in Ladakh, Notovitch collected several Mani stones on which were engraved sacred Tibetan words which were later donated to the Trocadero Museum in Paris. Also in the Musée de l'Homme in Paris there is a piece of Kashmiri fabric registered under his name. The night between the 3 and 4 November 1887 Notovitch suffered severe toothache for which he sought the assistance of a German missionary who had studied medicine in Edinburgh, and that had been working as the director of the Leh hospital since 1866. The missionary was Dr. Karl Rudolph Marx and belonged to the Morovian brothers. The diary of Dr. Marx correctly reports having treated Notovitch for his toothache.

In 1893, Notovitch's work was first presented at an international forum in Chicago by Shri Virchand Gandhi, an important delegate to the First Parliament of the World's Religions. And Shri Virchand Gandhi is credited for originally translating & publishing same in English in 1894 from an ancient manuscript found in Tibet and this version is available online.

One of the skeptics who personally investigated Notovich's claim was Swami Abhedananda, who journeyed to the monastery determined to either find a copy of the Himis manuscript or to expose it as a fraud. His book of travels, entitled Kashmir O Tibetti, tells of a visit to the Hemis gompa and includes a Bengali translation of two hundred twenty-four verses essentially the same as the Notovitch text^[15], corroborating the existence of the documents.

In 1925, the Russian philosopher Nicholas Roerich also journeyed to the monastery. He apparently saw the same documents as Notovitch and Abhedananda.

There is a documentary and a book on this subject, by Richard Bock, who seems to believe Notovitch's claims (book and film 1976-77, DVD released 2007).^[16]

An extended publication regarding the years spent by Jesus in India with extremely detailed historical accounts and pictures are contained in the best seller book "Jesus lived in India" by Holger Kersten.

Other works

Notovitch published a book in Russian and French, pleading for Russia's entry into the Triple Entente with France and England. It is entitled in French: La Russie et l'alliance anglaise: étude historique et politique, and was published in 1906. He also wrote biographies of Tsar Nicolas II and Alexander III. (Sources: worldcat.org, books.google.com.) He had also written "Mariage Ideal"; A Travers L'Inde" "La Femme à Trvers le Monde" He had the dubious honour of being quoted by Adolf Hitler in his "Mein Kampf"

Further reading

H. Louis Fader, The Issa Tale That Will Not Die: Nicholas Notovich and His Fraudulent Gospel (University Press of America, 2003). ISBN 9780761826576

A. Paratico "The Karma Killers" New York, 2009.

References

1. ^ Theosophie, „Meister K.H.” und die Dalip-Singh-Verschwörung, 2. Teil, Kommentar http://www.anthroposophy.com/anthro/blava2.html
2. ^ India Office Records: Mss Eur E243/23 (Cross)
3. ^ Public Record Office: FO 78/3998
4. ^ The unknown life of Jesus Christ by Nickolai Notovich (1894)
5. ^ The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ by Nicholas; Translated from the French By Virchand R. Gandhi; Revised By G. L. Chistie Notovich and Black/white Illus (1907)
6. ^ The unknown life of Jesus Christ by Nicolas Notovich (1974)
7. ^ The Unknown Life of Jesus: The Original Text of Nicolas Notovich's 1887 Discovery by Nicolas Notovich, J.H Connelly, and L Landsberg (2004)
8. ^ The Vedic Prophecies: A New Look into the Future by Stephen Knapp (1998) p.12
9. ^ Notovitch, Nicolas (1890). The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ. 
10. ^ Goodspeed, Edgar J. (1956). Famous Biblical Hoaxes or, Modern Apocrypha. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House. http://www.tentmaker.org/books/FamousBiblicalHoaxes.html. . See also [1]
11. ^ H.P. Blavatsky. Isis Unveiled, Vol. II, part 2, ch. 1, page 52, footnote** http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/isis/iu2-01.htm
12. ^ H.P. Blavatsky. Isis Unveiled, Vol. II, part 2, ch. 3, page 164 http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/isis/iu2-03.htm
13. ^ Ehrman, Bart D. (February 2011). "8. Forgeries, Lies, Deceptions, and the Writings of the New Testament. Modern Forgeries, Lies, and Deceptions" (EPUB). Forged: Writing in the Name of God—Why the Bible’s Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are. (First Edition. EPub Edition. ed.). New York: HarperCollins e-books. pp. 282-283. ISBN 978-0-06-207863-6. http://www.scribd.com/doc/55685655/Forged. Retrieved September 8, 2011. 
14. ^ Prophet, Elizabeth Clare. The Lost Years of Jesus: Documentary Evidence of Jesus' 17-Year Journey to the East. p. 468. ISBN 0-916766-87-X. 
15. ^ Ramakrishna Vedanta Math website
16. ^ http://www.amazon.com/Lost-Years-Jesus-William-Marshall/dp/B000TAPCCC

External links

• The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ, at Google Books
• The Life of Saint Issa, Best of the Sons of Men
• The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ Notovitch manuscript with historical introduction.
• http://home.swipnet.se/corbie/Fuskwww/notov.html
• http://essenes.net/sstibetg.html
• http://www.tertullian.org/rpearse/scanned/notovitch.htm
• Robert M. Price, "Jesus in Tibet - A Modern Myth": http://web.archive.org/web/20080621040307/http://www.westarinstitute.org/Periodicals/4R_Articles/Tibet/tibet.html
• Norbert Klatt, Jesus in Indien. Nikolaus Alexandrovitch Notovitchs „Unbekanntes Leben Jesu“, sein Leben und seine Indienreise. Zweite Auflage.Göttingen 2011. Elektronische Ressource. ISBN 978-3-928312-32-5. VIII, 76 Seiten, 1 Illust. http://d-nb.info/1009467662.

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Name	Notovitch, Nicolas
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Date of birth	1858
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