Nicolas Notovitch and the 'Life of Saint Issa'
In recent years there have been several books published whose thesis is broadly that Jesus Christ spent his formative years in India or Tibet studying Buddhism. The basis for these claims is a book published in Paris in 1894 by a Russian citizen of jewish origin named Shulim Aleksandrovich Notovich titled 'La Vie inconnue de Jesus-Christ' (i.e., 'The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ'). (1)
Notovich, better known to history by the Francophone version of his name Nicolas Notovitch, claimed to have been travelling in India in 1887 and as result of an accident having injured his leg. To aid in his convalescence he was helped to the Hemis Buddhist monastery in Ladakh in northern India (who he claims had some knowledge of surgery).
Allegedly in the time that he was at the Hemis monastery; Notovitch was shown an ancient manuscript in the Pali language called the 'Life of Saint Issa, Best of the Sons of Men', which recounted the history of Jesus' travels to India and how he acquired his religious ideas from Hindu and Buddhist religious scholars before he travelled back to Judea to conduct the life recounted in the gospels.
According to Notovitch the Buddhist monks translated the text of the 'Life of Saint Issa' to him, while he took notes. Notovitch then published this text – with a travelogue and his tentative conclusions from the text – as 'The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ'.
Naturally the text attracted intense interest from biblical scholars and Indologists in Europe with the resounding verdict of the experts being that Notovitch had concocted, in the words of Leopold von Schroeder, a 'big, fat lie'. (2)
This wasn't just the dismissive nervous tick that is often seen among scholars today, but rather one based on a critical examination of the text and ascertaining the providence of the work in question.
Max Muller's initial assessment of Notovitch's text was to put it bluntly: brutal.
He wrote in the journal 'The Nineteenth Century' that if Notovitch wasn't just a bad liar then he was the subject of an imaginative hoax or a practical joke by the lamas of the monastery. (3)
Muller then wrote to the chief lama of Hemis monastery to ask if he had heard of a work called, or about, the life of one 'Saint Issa' and if Notovitch had ever been to the monastery. The chief lama replied in the negative. (4) This statement was then repeated to Professor James Archibald Douglas in person in June 1895 who promptly published the full text of this statement in 'The Nineteenth Century' as well as his analysis of Notovitch's text and to which Max Muller added a brief addendum. (5)
Despite a half-hearted reply and the proposal of an 'expedition' to go to the Himis monastery to recover the document so that his critics could satisfy themselves of its existence and authenticity; Notovitch was unable to back up these claims. The matter has rested there as far as mainstream scholarship is concerned since 1895.
However as you might reasonably expect; various independent researchers and eccentrics latched onto Notovitch's claims and began trying to find evidence to counter criticism of them. A representative example of the evidence marshalled by these individuals can be found at the 'Arifkhan' website, which asserts that because other individuals claim to have seen the manuscript after the publication of 'The Unknown Life of Jesus' then Notovitch must have been telling the truth all along. (6)
The claims of 'sightings' are to be frank almost entirely fatuous for same reason that we do not take the numerous 'sightings' of the Yeti to be concrete evidence that the abominable snowman actually exists. Instead we should (and do) ask sceptical questions and point out that we need rather more than – what is essentially – gossip to prove the existence of something hitherto unknown.
'Arifkhan' claims that Nicholas Roerich (and his son) (1925), Mrs. Gasque (1939), E. Caspari (1939) and U. Eichstadt (1974) all 'saw' the manuscript of the 'Life of Saint Issa'. (7) The problem with this is that none of these references have any specific origin as far as I can see; other than the Roerich claim which at least seems based on an actual reference. (8)
Even if we are given a specific reference where this is stated. It is still nothing more than hearsay after a famous book – of which they had likely heard – had stated said document existed at a certain Buddhist monastery and one that it seems likely the lamas had now heard of due to the scale of interest in it that was communicated to them via questions and requests to see said work.
We should note that 'Arifkhan' - like other proponents of the existence of the 'Life of Saint Issa' - pads this out with a claim that Dr. E. Ravicz (1973) was 'informed it existed by a Tibetan friend' (i.e., third party hearsay, which isn't evidence by and of itself) and Edward Noack (and his wife) (sometime in the 1970s [note the lack of specifics]); who were allegedly told 'by a monk' that they had 'manuscripts' (note the plural) about Jesus' 'Journey to the East'. (9)
The use of the plural conforms to what Notovitch claimed in his 'The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ'. In so far as that according to his account there were many copies of the 'Life of Saint Issa' in monasteries as well as in Lhasa itself; although the work itself wasn't well known. (10)
This neatly allows us to highlight the myopic reading of Notovitch's account by his apologists in so far as Notovitch isn't saying that the 'Life of Saint Issa' is only to be found in the Hemis monastery, but rather in most monasteries and certainly in Lhasa.
So why on earth do believers in the existence of the 'Life of Saint Issa' focus on the Hemis monastery?
Why not go and search in the Buddhist archives in Lhasa where Notovitch states that there were multiple copies? (11) Or even more bluntly where are the 'sightings' of the same book in different Buddhist monasteries or the archives at Lhasa?
Why are all the 'sightings' focused on the Hemis monastery?
When we note that they are all after the publication of Notovitch's book and its considerable sales (for example it went through at least four print runs in its French edition in its first year of publication alone) (12) then the simplest conclusion with the least assumptions: is that the 'sightings' are based on the claims - directly or indirectly - made by Notovitch in his book. As opposed to the fact that there really was a book called the 'Life of Saint Issa' circulating that some how remains hidden from any but the prying eyes of the faithful.
Moving on to the claim made by 'Arifkhan' that Henrietta Sands Merrick 'saw' the manuscript and recorded as such in her 1931 book 'In the World's Attic' is simply nonsense.
Sands Merrick's comment is quoted thus:
'In Leh is the legend of Jesus who is called Issa, and the Monastery at Himis holds precious documents fifteen hundred years old which tell of the days that he passed in Leh where he was joyously received and where he preached.' (11)
In other words Sands Merrick is telling us that she knew of the story propagated by Notovitch – either first or second hand – not that she actually saw the manuscripts in question. Once again note the use of the plural rather than the singular as per my above comments on the 'sightings'.
Possibly the most authentic 'sighting' presented by the apologists of Notovitch is that of Swami Abhedananda (born Kaliprasad Chandra) in 1922 when he claims that he travelled to Hemis to investigate the story. The monks twenty-five years after the event apparently changed their minds and claimed that Notovitch did indeed visit their monastery and was shown the same 'documents'.
Swami Abhedananda also reproduced forty verses from the 'Life of Issa' - which he states had fourteen chapters with two hundred and twenty three couplets (as opposed to the two hundred and twenty four couplets claimed by Notovitch) – in his travelogue, which he acquired with a local lama assisting in the translation. (14)
This sounds reasonable until we note that we have to rely purely on the intellectual integrity and astuteness of Swami Abhedananda for this information. The fact that he readily admitted that he had have assistance from a local lama to translate the text suggests that Swami Abhedananda did not have any method to actually ascertain the authenticity of the manuscript he was perusing if we credit his story.
The problem however is whether we really offer Swami Abhedananda the benefit of the doubt.
The fact is that we can't given that Swami Abhedananda directly contradicts Notovitch in so far as he claims the manuscript that Notovitch saw was not in Pali, but in Tibetan. He also asserts that the original Pali version of the manuscript was in the Marbour monastery near Lhasa (the only 'sighting' to use a location other than the Hemis monastery), which again contradicts Notovitch who asserts that there were multiple versions of the manuscript freely available in many different Buddhist libraries across the region.
Such contradictions between the two key 'sightings' of the 'Life of Saint Issa' without independent evidence of either being true suggests we are on intellectually dubious ground here. It is also worth reminding the reader at this point that we have no actual reason to suppose the forty verses 'translated' by Swami Abhedananda are genuine as we have nothing to actually compare them with other than the already highly suspect text provided by Notovitch.
However evidence is available that suggests the unreliability of Swami Abhedananda's claims about having viewed the 'Life of Issa' at the Hemis monastery and the claim that the monks had made a tout-face concerning whether Notovitch actually visited their monastery in 1887 .
This is found in the fact that after Swami Abhedananda's death in 1939. One of his disciples visited the Hemis monastery to inquire about the 'Life of Saint Issa' and was told that the book had 'disappeared'. (15)
Could that be a coincidence?
I rather doubt it.
It directly suggests that Swami Abhedananda was either deceived or perpetrated a hoax, but whichever way you want to cut it. It discredits Swami Abhedananda's evidence, because it forces us to repeat Muller's and Douglas' question in 1894 and 1895: where is the original manuscript?
In other words: the 'sightings' of the 'Life of Saint Issa' are unlikely to be real and in at least one case are likely to be a hoax. Nor, even if they were real, would they prove the existence of such the 'Life of Saint Issa' only that those concerned believed they had seen it, but none of the 'sightings' are by people in a position to authenticate the work in question they claim to have seen in their 'sighting'. Since none to my knowledge spoke Tibetan and/or Pali except possibly Swami Abhedananda.
It is rather problematic to say you have 'seen' a specific manuscript when you don't understand the languages it is written in.
We should also note that those who believe in the existence of the 'Life of Saint Issa' have also singularly failed to answer Muller's and Douglas' points in their respective articles concerning the strikingly European knowledge of Buddhism demonstrated by the chief lama in Notovitch's book. (16)
They have also failed to counter the fact that the chief lama professed to know nothing of the Egyptians, Assyrians and the tribes of Israel, while Notovitch has said chief lama declaiming about them from a position of authority in his book. (17)
In other words: there is absolutely no reason on the basis of the currently available evidence, or even simple logic, to doubt that the 'Life of Saint Issa' is a hoax created by Nicolas Notovitch. I might also add that this conclusion also explains why seven years elapsed between Notovitch's 'discovery' in 1887 and his publication of the short work that is 'The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ' in 1894.
Scratch one more fraud.
References
(1) Nicolas Notovitch, 1894, 'La Vie inconnue de Jesus-Christ', 1st Edition, Paul Ollendorff: Paris
(2) Douglas McGretchin, 2009, 'Indology, Indomania, and Orientalism: Ancient India's Rebirth in Modern Germany', 1st Edition, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press: Madison, p. 133
(3) Max Muller, 1894, 'The Alleged Sojourn of Christ in India', The Nineteenth Century, No. 36, pp. 515-522
(4) McGretchin, Op. Cit., p. 133
(5) James Archibald Douglas, 1895, 'The Chief Lama of Himis on the Alleged 'Unknown Life of Christ'', The Nineteenth Century, No. 39, pp. 667-677
(6) http://www.arifkhan.co.uk/TOJ/core/founders/notovitch/index.html
(7) Ibid.
(8) Cf. http://reluctant-messenger.com/issa.htm
(9) http://www.arifkhan.co.uk/TOJ/core/founders/notovitch/index.html
(10) Nicolas Notovitch, n.d. (1894/1895?), 'The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ', 1st Edition, R. F. Fenno: New York, pp. 8-11;
(11) Ibid, pp. 8-9; Notovitch, 'La Vie', Op. Cit., pp. ii-iv
(12) Cf. title page of Notovitch, 'La Vie', Op. Cit.
(13) http://www.arifkhan.co.uk/TOJ/core/founders/notovitch/index.html
(14) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Notovitch#Corroboration_in_India
(15) Richard Hooper, 2012, 'Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, and Lao Tzu: The Parallel Sayings', 1st Edition, Hampton Roads: Newburyport, p. 176
(16) Muller, Op. Cit.; Douglas, Op. Cit.
(17) Douglas, Op. Cit.; specifically see the answer to Question 6.