The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ

Nicolas Notovitch

J.H. Connelly

Jesus's missing life - did he really live in India?

One of the mysteries of the Bible remains the huge gap in the biography of Jesus Christ from his puberty until about three years before his crucifixion. A rumour that has circulated for years is that Christ travelled to India during this time. This book is the source of that rumour.

In the late nineteenth century, Nicolas Notovitch, a Russian traveller, published a travelogue of a trip through India, into Kashmir, eventually reaching Ladakh in Tibet. At this point his account took a sensational turn. He wrote about a lama who informed him that Jesus was revered as a Bodhisattva under the name of Issa, and of an ancient manuscript that spoke of Jesus trekking to India to study the Vedas and Buddhism. Of course, this caused quite a stir, with Notovitch being denounced and finally conceding to having made up the story.

The story, however, refused to die. Travellers to Tibet, such as Swami Abhedananda, Nicholas Roerich and many others claimed that they had been told similar stories by monks. The controversy has raged on over the years, compounded by Notovitch’s own ‘confession’, and the question still remains: Was it a hoax or did Jesus actually live in India?

Here is the Notovitch text brought back into print.