Jesus In India: A Road Map of His Lost Years

If I recall correctly from my quite incomplete study of the Bible, Jesus’ biography is missing a big chunk in the middle: nothing is known of his doings between ages 12 and 30. Some have speculated that Jesus must have travelled to the East in those formative years, achieving and imparting wisdom along the way.

In Srinagar, in the Indian state of Kashmir, there’s even a shrine of which it is said that it is Jesus’ tomb – implying that he didn’t die on the cross, nor did he go to heaven (as claimed by the Muslims). The Roza Bal shrine is revered by Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists. The Muslim sect of the Ahmadiyyas positively identifies the shrine as the tomb of Yuz Asaf – i.e. Jesus.

Other beliefs about Yuz Asaf include that:

he married a woman called Meryem (Mary), who bore him a number of children; until recently, the shrine was guarded by the descendants of the sage buried in the tomb.
he lived to be about 110 years old
his mother Mary died when he was 38 and is buried in Mai Mari da Ashtan in the town of Murree (Pakistan)

Apart from figuring prominently in Ahmadiyya religious practice, the ‘Indian’ Jesus has been adopted by some in the New Age movement and by others seeking to distinguish Jesus’ teachings from his divinity. Some find in the story of Jesus’ eastward wanderings proof of links between Judeo-Christian and Buddhist teachings.

This map, documenting Jesus’ supposed trek from Jerusalem over Tehran and Kabul to Srinagar, taken from this Ahmadiyya website.

*Republished with permission from Frank Jacobs, who runs Strange Maps. Jacobs loves maps, but finds most atlases too predictable. He collects and comments on all kinds of intriguing maps—real, fictional, and what-if ones—and has been writing the Strange Maps blog since 2006, first on WordPress and now for Big Think.  His map “US States Renamed For Countries With Similar GDPs” has been viewed more than 587,000 times. An anthology of maps from this blog was published by Penguin in 2009 and can be purchased from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.