Buddhist-Meditation-Systematic-and-Practical

scant records of this because of later ages of destruction,
first by the Christians when they came to power and
later by the Muslims who conquered them.
It is possible that bhikshus from these Western lands
may have gone on pilgrimages to India or Ceylon, for in
the Chronicle of Ceylon (Mahavamsa XXX:39) there is
mention of a place called Alasandra, thought by some
scholars to mean Alexandria in Egypt.
A remarkable find was reported to have been made by a
Russian explorer in the Hemis Gompa (vihara) in
Ladakh. This was supposed to be a manuscript giving a
brief account of Jesus' life in India in or near Sindh,
where he is said to have studied for six years, returning
at the age of twenty-nine to Israel. The book that gives
this knowledge, La Vie inconnue de Jesus-Christ, by
Nicolas Notovitch (Paris 1894), though rare now, is
widely known in India in its English translation. (The
manuscript from which it was derived has not been
found, nor is anything about its existence known to the
Ven. Kushok Bakkula of Ladakh, so that this evidence
must remain open to doubt.)
There are, of course, a number of places where similes
used in Buddhist works have close parallels with the
parables of Jesus. It is a possibility that some connection
exists between them, and that Jesus may have drawn
upon material from the Far East to illustrate his meaning.
The following are among the most striking, and as they
33