Swami Abhedananda’s: Journey into Kashmir and Tibet

Swami Abhedananda, the illustrious apostle of Sri Ramakrishna Paramahansadev, visited London for the first time in the year 1896 at the clarion call of his brother-disciple Swami Vivekananda. After twenty-five years of spiritual ministration in England, America and many other European countries, he returned to India in the Year 1921 for serving his motherland till the end of his eventful life. While in America the Swami came across the book The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ by the Russian traveller Nicolas Notovitch, which revealed the fact that Jesus Christ lived in India during the sixteen years of his unknown life, i.e., from 13 to 28 years of his age. Materials of the book was stated to have been collected by the writer from a manuscript on the life of Jesus Christ in the Himis Monastery in Ladak, where he happened to stay for some time for treatment by the Lamas. In order to check up the truth, Swami Abhedananda immediately on return to India started his journey to Tibet through Jojila Pass on the 14thJuly 1922, from Belur Math, when he was the Vice-President of the Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission, Belur. He returned to Belur Math on December 11, 1922, after a highly successful journey. While in the Himis Monastery Swami Abhedananda discovered an ancient manuscript in Tibetan language which unravelled the unknown chapter in the help of a local Lama interpreter he had the same translated in parts, which have been included in Chapters 12 & 15 of this book.Swami Abhedananda made it a rule to jot down in his diary the details of all that happened in course of his journey to Kashmir and Tibet. In this book, in Bengali, Swami Abhedanander Kashmir-O-Tibbat Bhraman he incorporated the said details along with matters, both cultural and historical, relating to the countries like China, Japan, Korea etc. while correcting and improving the manuscript for the book, of which this is the published English edition. The account given by Swami Abhedananda about the unknown life of Jesus Christ in Chapters 12 & 15 corroborates the extracts from the book The Unknown life of Jesus Christ by N. Notovitch One of this book. Appendix Two gives the full text of the Himis manuscript on ‘Life of the Saint Issa’ by Nicola Notovitch as translated from the French by Violet Crispe (1895).