Life of Ahmad — Page 683
as JESUS as IN INDIA 683 Mr. R a m Haray, M. A. , writes in his book, ' History of India ' (p. 140, Benares, 1890): 'Once I happened to go walking into the Gorakhpur territory. There stands a temple, about which it is said that when Bhagw a n Isa came to India, he stayed there. ' John Noel, in his article entitled The Heavenly High Snow Peaks of Kashmir , published in the Asia Magazine of October 1930, says: 'Immensely strong are these picturesque, broad- shouldered Kashmiri peasants, and yet docile and meek in temperament. One thing about them strikes you with enormous force. They seem more perfectly Jewish than the purest Jews you have ever seen—not because they wear a flowing, cloaklike dress that conforms to your ideas of Biblical garments, but because their faces have the Jewish cast of features. The curious coincidence, or is it a coincidence?—is that there is a strong tradition in Kashmir of connection with the Jews. For a good many years there have been afloat in this land rumours that Christ did not really die upon the cross but was let down and disappeared to seek lost tribes, and that he came to Kashmir, Ladakh and Little Tibet and died and was buried in Srinagar. Kashmir legend, I have been told, contains references to a prophet who lived here and taught, as Jesus did, by 'parables'— little stories that are repeated in Kashmir to the