Jesus In India — Page 141
J e s u s i n I n d i a 141 given to them in India. They trace their origin to Saul, King of Israel, calling themselves, Ben-i-Israel. According to Sir A. Burnes, their tradition is, that they were transplanted by the King of Babylon from the Holy Land to Ghoré, lying to the N. W. of Cabool, and lived as Jews till A. D. 682, when they were converted to Mahometanism by an Arab chief, Khaled-ibn-Abdalla, who had married a daughter of an Afghan chief. No historical evidence has ever been adduced in support of this origin, and it is perhaps a mere invention, founded upon the facts mentioned in 2 Kings xviii. 11. However this may be, all travellers agree that the people differ strikingly from the neighbouring nations; and have, among themselves, one common origin. They are said, by some, to resemble Jews very much in form and feature; and they are divided into several tribes, inhabiting separate territories, and remaining almost unmixed. ’ History of Afghanistan , from the Earliest Period to the Outbreak of the War of 1878, by Colonel G. B. Malleson, C. S. I. (W. H. Allen & Co. London, 1878) Page 39. ‘I turn now to the people of Afghánistán, to the tribes who occupy the country, and who command the passes. The subject has been treated at great length by Mountstuart Elphinstone, by Ferrier—who quotes largely from Abdúllah Khán, of Herát,—by Bellew, and by many others. Following Abdúllah Khán and other Afghán writers, Ferrier is disposed to believe that the Afgháns represent the lost ten tribes, and to claim for them descent from Saul, King of Israel. Amongst other writers concurring in this view may be mentioned the honoured name of Sir William Jones. On the other hand, Professor Dorn, of Kharkov, who examined the subject at length, rejects this theory. Mountstuart Elphinstone classes it in the same category as the theory of the descent of the Romans from the Trojans. The objections to Abdúllah Khán’s view have been recently expressed, fittingly and