2. The Lost Tribes of Israel

Sons of Isaac 

The Jews held in captivity in Babylon in the sixth century BC were only the remnants of the two tribes of Israel: Judah and Benjamin. More than a century earlier, in 721 BC, the northern Kingdom of Israel, comprising the other ten tribes, was conquered by the Assyrians and dispersed to land of the Medes, in Iran and Armenia, after which point they were henceforth described as “lost.” In both Jewish and Christian apocalyptic writings and other works, Gog and Magog were also identified with the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, who are described as great warriors who will accompany the return of the messiah or the arrival of the antichrist.[1] According to Jewish eschatology, Gog and Magog are enemies that will be defeated by the Messiah at the beginning of the End Times, which would usher in the age of the Messiah. Although biblical references to Gog and Magog are relatively few, they assumed an important place in apocalyptic literature and medieval legend. Jewish eschatology viewed Gog and Magog as enemies whose defeat ushers the age of the Messiah. They are also discussed in the Quran. In the Book of Revelation, Gog and Magog are applied to the evil forces that will join with Satan in the great struggle at the End of Time. After Satan has been bound and chained for a thousand years, he will be released and will rise up for a final time against God. He will gather “the nations in the four corners of the Earth, Gog and Magog” to attack the saints and Jerusalem. God will send fire from heaven to destroy them and will then preside over the Last Judgment.

Most importantly, these expectations would eventually provide the basis for later formulations of the Aryan Race. The Europeans, descendants of the supposed Aryan race, today known more popularly as the Indo-Europeans, are also referred to as “Caucasians” because they supposedly emerged from the area of the Caucasus mountains. These theories were formulated by European scholars in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, to associate Europeans with the history of occult knowledge, purportedly preserved through history by the progeny of the Sons of God of Genesis, or the Fallen Angels, whose race was continued in a combination of Gog and Magog the Lost Tribes of Israel, a people known as Scythians, who settled in the steppes north of the Caucasus, from the Don River basin in Southern Russia and Ukraine, to the Altai, a mountain range in Central and East Asia, where Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan and the Xinjiang region of China converge.

As related by Colin Gow in The Red Jews: Anti-Semitism in an Apocalyptic Age: 1200-1600, the Lost Tribes of Israel, who came to be known in Jewish lore of the Middle Ages as “Red Jews,” were a conflation of three separate traditions: the prophetic references to Gog and Magog, the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, and an episode from the Alexander Romance. The R1a genetic haplogroup is distributed at high concentrations in the Balkans, including Macedonia, and particularly the Altai Mountains of Northern Mongolia, linking the mysterious heritage of Alexander with the supposed Lost Tribes of Israel and Gog and Magog.[2] Haplogroup R1 is further divided into sub-haplogroups R1b, the most common haplogroup in Western Europe, and R1a (especially R1a1), which is unique for its diversity and distribution, is found in disparate pockets of concentration in Poland, Northern India and the Altai Mountains of northwestern Mongolia.[3] R1a1, which is found all over Armenia, Georgia and Eastern Europe in general, including the Sorbs, the Poles, and many people of central Europe, is also found in Finland, and many R1a1 people went west to Scotland and Scandinavia. R1a1 was found at elevated levels among a sample of the Israeli population who self-designated themselves as Ashkenazi Jews, and is possessed by about half of Ashkenazi Levites.[4]

The ancient legends of the Turkish people trace their descent to the Altai.[5] There was a well-established genealogical narrative in Ottoman historiography connecting the Ottoman dynasty to Esau, the son of Isaac.[6] The Prophet Abraham had two sons, Isaac and Ishmael. In turn, Isaac had two sons, Esau and Jacob, who conspired with his mother Rebecca to rob his brother Esau of his natural birthright. Jacob changed later his name to Israel, and went on to become the forefather of the Tribes of Israel, while Esau was the ancestor of the Edomites. The Hebrew word Edom means “red,” and the Hebrew Bible relates it to the name of its founder Esau, the elder son of the Hebrew patriarch Isaac, because he was born “red all over,” and his purported ancestors, the Edomites, were often associated with red hair and green or blue eyes.

R1a is found in high concentrations in the Altai region.[7] Haplogroup R1a has been found in ancient fossils associated with the Corded Ware culture and the famous Tarim mummies, a series of mummies discovered in the Tarim Basin in present-day Xinjiang, which date from 1800 BCE to the first centuries BCE. Victor H. Mair’s team concluded that the mummies are Western Eurasian, perhaps speakers of Indo-European. Upon examining these East Asian Mongoloid remains, Mair’s team reported:

 

The new finds are also forcing a reexamination of old Chinese books that describe historical or legendary figures of great height, with deep-set blue or green eyes, long noses, full beards, and red or blond hair. Scholars have traditionally scoffed at these accounts, but it now seems that they may be accurate.[8]

 

Some etymologies proposed that the word Scythians, from “Sacae,” in turn is derived from “Isaac Sons” or “Sons of Isaac.”[9] According to the ancient Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (37 – c. 100), the Scythians, whom he identified with Gog and Magog, “have all deep blue eyes, and bright red hair.”[10] By ancient authors, the term “Scythian” eventually came to be applied to a wide range of peoples “who had no relation whatever to the original Scythians,” such as Huns, Goths, Turks, Avars, Khazars, and other unnamed nomads.[11] The Scythians, also known as Scyth, Saka, Sakae, Sai, Iskuzai, or Askuzai, were Eurasian nomads, probably mostly using Eastern Iranian languages, who were mentioned by the literate peoples to their south as inhabiting large areas of the western and central Eurasian Steppe from about the ninth century BC to the fourth century AD. The Scythians first appear in Assyrian annals as Ishkuzai, related to the modern term “Ashkenazi,” from Ashkenaz, who according to the Bible was the son of Magog’s brother Gomer.[12]

The Scythians were the originators of the haplogroup R-M17, also known as R1a1, which would play a prominent role in the debate about the origins of the Aryans.[13] Like their ancestors the Scythians, the Khazars, a Turkic people of modern-day southern Russia and Ukraine who converted to Judaism in the eighth century, were also described as blue-eyed and red-haired.[14] In the History of the Nation of Archers, Armenian historian of the thirteenth century AD, Grigor Akner, claimed the Khazars were derived from Edomites. Red hair is commonly found in regions of Jewish or Central Asian ancestry. It is fairly common amongst the Ashkenazi Jewish populations, and occasionally among the Berbers of North Africa. In Asia, red hair can be found sporadically from Northern India, and the northern Middle East, such as Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel and Palestine. Red hair can also be found amongst those of Iranian descent, such as the Persians, Lurs, Nuristanis and Pashtuns. Red hair, of course, is found at its highest concentrations in Scotland.[15]

 

Alexander Romance

The Lost Tribes of Israel caught the imagination of Jewish scholars, including Sadia Gaon and Moses Ibn Ezra, who referred to the presence of imagined Lost Tribes of Israel in the territories of Afghanistan and Pakistan.[16] Particularly high concentrations of R1a1 are found among the Pashtuns of Afghanistan, who claim descent from both Alexander the Great as well as the Lost Tribes of Israel.[17] According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, “By introducing Hellenic culture into Syria and Egypt, he had probably more influence on the development of Judaism than any one individual not a Jew by race.”[18] Because of Aristotle, his tutor, Alexander was positively disposed toward the Jews.[19] According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, “As the Greek who most impressed his influence upon the development of the Jewish mind, Aristotle is one of the few Gentiles with whom Jewish legend concerns itself.”[20] Aristobulus, a third century BC Jewish philosopher, asserted that Jewish revelation and Aristotelian philosophy were identical.[21]

Josephus went as far as to suggest that Aristotle derived his doctrine directly from Judaism: “I do not now explain how these notions of God are the sentiments of the wisest among the Grecians, and how they were reared upon the principles that he [Moses] afforded them.”[22] Josephus preserved the following passage from Clearchus:

 

In his first book on Sleep he relates of Aristotle, his master, that he had a discourse with a Jew; and his own account was that what this Jew said merited admiration and showed philosophical erudition. To speak of the race first, the man was a Jew by birth and came from Cœlesyria [Palestine]. These Jews are derived from the philosophers of India. In India the philosophers call themselves Kalani, and in Syria Jews, taking their name from the country they inhabit, which is Judea; the name of their capital is rather difficult to pronounce: they call it Jerusalem. Now this man, who had been the guest of many people, had come down from the highland to the seashore [Pergamus]. He was a Greek not only in language, but in soul; so much so that, when we happened to be in Asia in about the same places whither he came, he conversed with us and with other persons of learning in order to test our wisdom. And as he had had intercourse with a large number of sages, he imparted to us more knowledge of his own.[23]

 

Alexander marched through Palestine unopposed, except in the case of Gaza, which was razed to the ground. Alexander is mentioned by name only in the Apocryphal I Maccabees (i. 1-8, vi. 2). It is supposed that the Book of Daniel alludes to him when it refers to a mighty king that “shall stand up, that shall rule with great dominion,” whose kingdom is to be destroyed after his death.[24] Josephus also records Alexander the Great purportedly visited the Jews in Jerusalem after having captured Gaza. When Alexander saw Jaddua, the high priest of the Jews, he reverenced God. When Parmenio, the general, expressed surprise at Alexander’s act, Alexander replied: “I did not adore him, but the God who hath honored him with this high-priesthood; for I saw this very person in a dream, in this very habit, when I was at Dios in Macedonia, who, when I was considering with myself how I might obtain dominion of Asia, exhorted me to make no delay, but boldly to pass over the sea, promising that he would conduct my army, and would give me the dominion over the Persians.” And when the Book of Daniel was shown to him, which declared that one of the Greeks should destroy the empire of the Persians, he supposed that he was the person intended.[25]

At the high priest’s request, Alexander granted the Jews the right to live according to the laws of their forefathers, and exempted them from the payment of tribute in the seventh year of release. To the Jews of Babylonia and Media also he granted similar privileges. Out of gratitude, the Jews agreed to name every child born the next year “Alexander.” That is why the name Alexander, or Sender for short, became a common Jewish name even to this day.[26] There are numerous legendary accounts found in the Talmud and Midrash about Alexander, including a visit to the Regions of the Amazons.[27] The Talmud also recounts that, when the Samaritans had obtained permission from Alexander to destroy the Temple in Jerusalem, the high priest Simon the Just, went out to meet him. At sight of Simon, Alexander fell prostrate at his feet, and explained to his astonished companions that the image of the Jewish high priest was always with him in battle, fighting for him and leading him to victory. Simon took the opportunity to justify the attitude of his fellow Jews, declaring that they were not rebels, but offered prayers in the Temple for Alexander’s welfare and that of his dominions.[28]

According to Josephus, in his Antiquities of the Jews, when Alexander met the Jewish high priest Jaddua in Jerusalem and the assembled Jews, he was shown the book of Daniel, and he believed himself to be the fulfilment of that prophecy and was pleased.[29] Alexander has also been identified, since ancient times, with the horned figure in the Bible who overthrows the kings of Media and Persia. In the prophecy of Daniel 8, Daniel has a vision of a ram with two long horns, and verse 20 explains that, “The ram which thou sawest having two horns are the kings of Media and Persia.” This identification continued to be accepted by the Church Fathers.[30] Alexander was known as “the two-horned one” in early legends.[31] The description may ultimately derive from the image of Alexander wearing the horns of the ram-god Zeus-Ammon, as popularized on coins throughout the Hellenistic Near East.[32]

The accounts of the Alexander Romance, composed in the Greek language before 338 AD, are reflected in the enigmatic figure mentioned in the Quran, named Dhul-Qarnayn, literally “He of the Two Horns,” who some Muslim and other commentators have identified with Alexander the Great.[33] Many modern Muslims are uncomfortable with the identification, because Alexander was supposedly a pagan. However, their stories are identical. As pointed out by Peter G. Bietenholz, by combining two passages in Josephus’ Jewish Antiquities with one in his Jewish War, we learn that Magog, a son of Japheth, was the founding father of the Magogai, commonly known as the Scythians. Living in the regions of the Tanais [Don River] and the Maotic marshes (Sea of Azov), the Scythians defeated one of the generals of Alexander the Great.[34] To prevent further advances, Alexander locked them up in their territory by blocking their passage through the Caucasus with iron gates.[35]

In addition to the Alexander Romance of Pseudo-Callisthenes, the Syriac version also includes a short appendix now known as the Syriac Alexander Legend. This original Syriac text was written in north Mesopotamia around 629-630 AD, a little more than a decade after the revelation of the story of Dhul-Qarnayn, but before the Muslim conquest of Syria and the resulting surrender of Jerusalem in 636 AD.[36] It contains additional motifs not found in the earliest Greek version of the Romance, including the episode where Alexander builds a wall against Gog and Magog. In Asia, the development of the Romance was profoundly affected by the so-called Christian Legend Concerning Alexander, an apocalyptic work not known in the West, until a Syriac version was published only in recent times.[37]

In the account found in chapter 18, “The Cave,” of the Quran, Dhul-Qarnayn is not identified with Alexander, but the stories are almost identical. This chapter was revealed to Mohammed when his tribe, the Quraysh, sent two men to discover if the Jews could advise them on whether Mohammed was a true prophet of God. The rabbis told them to ask Mohammed about three things, one of them about a man who travelled and reached the east and the west of the earth, and what was his story.[38] According to Islamic tradition, the verses were revealed in a period that would have preceded the compilation of the Syriac Alexander Legend. Nevertheless, as pointed out by Kevin Van Bladel, almost every element in the Quranic version of the story tale is also recounted in the Syriac Alexander Legend, but in a more detail where it is quite a bit longer. Each of the five parts of the Quranic account has a match in the Syriac text, and is presented in precisely the same order.[39]

Dhul-Qarnayn is described as a great and righteous ruler who built the wall of iron and copper that keeps Gog and Magog from attacking the people whom he met on his journey to the east, “the rising-place of the sun.”[40] There he meets a people for whom God did not provide protection from the Sun, a possible reference to the white-skinned early Caucasians. According to Islamic traditions, unable to pass the wall, Gog and Magog have been digging below ground ever since, and will emerge at the time of the return of the Messiah Jesus, to afflict the earth, but Jesus will pray to God to eradicate them.[41] The wall has been frequently identified with the Caspian Gates of Derbent, Russia, and with the Pass of Darial, on the border between Russia and Georgia. An alternative theory links it to the Great Wall of Gorgan, also known as “Alexander’s Wall,” on the south-eastern shore of the Caspian Sea, 180 km of which is still preserved to this day. In the Muslim world, several expeditions were undertaken in an attempt to find and study Alexanders’ wall. An early expedition to Derbent was sent by the prophet Mohammed’s successor Caliph Umar (586–644 AD), during the Arab conquest of Armenia, where they heard about the wall from the conquered Armenian Christians. The expedition was recorded by Al-Tabarani (873 – 970 AD), Ibn Kathir (1301 – 1373 AD), and by the Muslim geographer Yaqut al-Hamawi (1179 – 1229 AD). Finally, elsewhere the Quran it is mentioned that the end of the world would be signaled by the release of Gog and Magog from behind the wall, and other apocalyptic writings report that their destruction by God in a single night would usher in the Day of Judgement.[42]

 

Brahmins

Between 500 to about 230 BC, under the period of Persian occupation, Indian astronomy was introduced to Babylonian methods for the first time.[43] Around 535 BC, the Persian emperor Cyrus the Great (c. 600 – 530 BC) initiated a campaign to absorb parts of India into his Achaemenid Empire. With a brief pause after his death, the campaign continued under Darius the Great (c. 550 – 486 BC), who began to re-conquer former provinces and further expand the Empire’s boundaries. Around 518 BC, the Persian army pushed further into India to initiate a second period of conquest by annexing regions up to what is today known as Punjab. At its peak, the Persian Empire managed to take control of most of modern-day Pakistan and incorporate it into their territory. According to the fourth-century Greek historian Ammianus Marcellinus, Darius’ father Hystaspes, a cousin of Cyrus, was a chief of the Magi and studied under the Brahmins:

 

Hystaspes, a very wise monarch, the father of Darius. Who while boldly penetrating into the remoter districts of upper India, came to a certain woody retreat, of which with its tranquil silence the Brahmans, men of sublime genius, were the possessors. From their teaching he learnt the principles of the motion of the world and of the stars, and the pure rites of sacrifice, as far as he could; and of what he learnt he infused some portion into the minds of the Magi, which they have handed down by tradition to later ages, each instructing his own children, and adding to it their own system of divination.[44]

 

Greek astronomical ideas, inherited from the Babylonians, began to enter India in the fourth century BC, following the conquests of Alexander the Great.[45] At its greatest extent, the Seleucid empire, that resulted from Alexander’s conquests, included central Anatolia, Persia, the Levant, Mesopotamia, and what is now Kuwait, Afghanistan, and parts of Pakistan and Turkmenistan. Alexander established several cities in Bactria and an administration that was to last more than two centuries under the Seleucid Empire and the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom, the whole time in direct contact with Indian territory, and extended during the Greek-inspired Kushan Empire. The Macedonian satraps were then conquered by the Mauryan Empire, under the reign of Chandragupta Maurya. Following the collapse of the Mauryan Empire, Greco-Buddhism continued to flourish under the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom, Indo-Greek Kingdoms, and Kushan Empire. The Greco-Bactrians maintained a strong Hellenistic culture at the door of India during the rule of the Maurya Empire in India, as exemplified by the archaeological site of Ai-Khanoum, in northern Afghanistan. When the Maurya Empire was toppled by the Shunga Empire around 180 BC, the Greco-Bactrians expanded into India, where they established the Indo-Greek Kingdom, under which Buddhism was able to flourish. Menander I Soter (reigned c.165/155 – 130 BC) was a Greco-Bactrian and later Indo-Greek King who administered a large territory in the Northwestern regions of the Indian Subcontinent from his capital at Sagala. Menander is noted for having become a patron and convert to Greco-Buddhism and is widely regarded as the greatest of the Indo-Greek kings.[46]

Peoples exist in many of these part who continue to claim descent from Alexander, and sometimes as well the Lost Tribes of Israel. The Bene Israel (“Sons of Israel”), are a historic community of Jews who have been suggested as descendants of one of the Lost Tribes of Israel who had settled there centuries ago.[47] Genetic analysis shows that the Bene Israel of India cluster with the indigenous populations of western India, but do have a clear paternal link to the populations of the Levant.[48] A recent more detailed study on Indian Jews has reported that the paternal ancestry of Indian Jews is composed of Middle East specific haplogroups as well as common South Asian haplogroups, including R1a.[49] The origin myth of the Chitpavan Brahmins—a Hindu Maharashtrian Brahmin community inhabiting Konkan, the coastal region of the state of Maharashtra in India—as a shipwrecked people, is similar to the mythological story of the Bene Israel Jews of the Raigad district, who claim to be descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel.[50] The Bene Israel claim that Chitpavans are also of Jewish origin.[51]

South Asian populations have the highest concentrations of R1a1a, with the highest concentrations being represented among the West Bengal Brahmin caste of India.[52] The Brahmins were the highest ranking of the four social classes of India’s caste system, a class system based on birth. The Indian castes or “Varnas,” include Brahmins (priests), Kshatriyas (ruling and military), Vaishyas (merchants and farmers), Shudras (peasants) and Dalits (untouchables). India’s class system is unique, as no other major culture historically used a fully hereditary class system that was as defined and tied to their faith as the Indians.[53] Despite attempts to attribute its introduction by the ancient “Aryans,” the Indian caste system was a later development.[54] Rather, the Indian caste system corresponds almost exactly to class system outlined in Plato’s The Republic. Plato divided his just society into three classes: the guardians—or “Philosopher Kings” instructed in the Magian teachings of the Kabbalah as described in the Myth of Er[55]—warriors and producers. The Indian castes or “Varnas,” include Brahmins (priests), Kshatriyas (ruling and military), Vaishyas (merchants and farmers), Shudras (peasants) and Dalits (untouchables).

 

Gymnosophists

Buddhist missionaries were sent by Emperor Ashoka (304 – 232 BCE) of India to Syria, Egypt and Greece beginning in 250 BC. Elmar R. Gruber and Holger Kersten have proposed that the Therapeutae—the Egyptian sect reported of by Philo of Alexandria and who were related to the Essenes—may even have been descendants of Ashoka’s emissaries.[56] Some modern historians have suggested that the name for the Therapeutae was possibly a deformation of the Pali word Theravāda, a form of Buddhism.”[57] Buddhist gravestones from the Ptolemaic period have been found in Alexandria decorated with depictions of the dharma wheel.[58] Gnostic scholar Elaine Pagels mentioned that, “Trade routes between the Greco-Roman world and the Far East were opening up at the time when Gnosticism flourished (A.D. 80-200); for generations, Buddhist missionaries had been proselytizing in Alexandria.”[59] Pagels also reports that Hippolytus, a Christian scholar in Rome, wrote about the Indian Brahmins’ “heresy.”[60]

The Greeks were aware of a class of Indian philosophers whom they referred to as Gymnosophists. In Of Education, Clearchus of Soli, a Greek philosopher of the fourth and third century BC, claimed that “the gymnosophists are descendants of the Magi.” In a text quoted by Josephus, Clearchus reported a dialogue with Alexander’s teacher Aristotle, who stated that the Hebrews were descendants of the Indian philosophers:

 

Jews are derived from the Indian philosophers; they are named by the Indians Calami, and by the Syrians Judaei, and took their name from the country they inhabit, which is called Judea; but for the name of their city, it is a very awkward one, for they call it Jerusalem.[61]

 

Although not named in the New Testament, according to Western church tradition, the biblical Magi, also referred to as the Three Wise Men, who were said to have followed a start to Jesus’ birth, as Melchior, a Persian scholar; and Balthazar, a Babylonian scholar; and Caspar, an Indian scholar.[62] These names apparently derive from a Greek manuscript probably composed in Alexandria around 500 AD, which has been translated into Latin with the title Excerpta Latina Barbari. One candidate for the origin of the name Caspar appears in the Acts of Thomas as Gondophares (21 – c. AD 47), i.e., Gudapharasa, who declared independence from the Arsacids to become the first Indo-Parthian king, and was allegedly visited by Thomas the Apostle. According to Ernst Herzfeld, his name is survived in the Afghan city Kandahar, which he is said to have founded under the name Gundopharron.[63] Historian John of Hildesheim (1364 – 1375) relates a tradition in the ancient silk road city of Taxila, in present-day Punjab, Pakistan, that one of the Magi passed through the city on the way to Bethlehem.[64]

During his travels, Apollonius of Tyana (c. 15 – c. 100 AD) associated with the Brahmins of India, the Gymnosophists of Egypt, and the Babylonian Magi, who initiated him in the “Chaldean mysteries.” According to his biographer Philostratus, Apollonius was also said to have travelled to India, and was welcomed by its kings, and was, with Damis, his companion, for four months the guest of its Brahmans. Apollonius had met the Gymnosophists of India before his arrival in Egypt, and repeatedly compared the Ethiopian Gymnosophists with them. He regarded them to be derived from the Indians. They lived without any cottages nor houses, but had a shelter for the visitors. They did not wear any clothes and thus compared themselves to the Olympian athletes. They shared their vegetarian meal with him.[65] In Rome Apollonius was arrested and tried before Emperor Domitian for sorcery, for having predicted a plague at Ephesus. Apollonius defended himself by claiming it was merely his moderate diet that kept his senses alert and enabled him to see the present as well as the future. According to his biographer, though acquitted, Apollonius nevertheless managed to inexplicably vanish from the courtroom.[66]

There were also contacts between Gnostics and Indians. Syrian Gnostic theologian Bar Daisan described in the third century AD his exchanges with missions of holy men from India, passing through Syria on their way to Elagabalus or another Severan dynasty Roman Emperor.[67] Several scholars have pointed to the striking similarities between Gnosticism and various Indian and Buddhist traditions. As noted by Stepen A. Kent, the Tibetan Buddhist scholar Giuseppe Tucci acknowledged the “surprising simultaneity” between “the inwardly experienced psychological drama” of both Tantra and Gnosticism. Edward Conze, the noted Buddhist scholar, identified the “eight basic similarities between Gnosticism and Mahayana Buddhism” and further noted an additional twenty-three possible similarities. Coptic scholar Jean Doresse referred to possible “discoveries” that could be found between Gnosticism and “certain texts of Indian literature of the same period.[68]

In his Ecclesiastical History, Eusebius, the third century Christian bishop of Caesarea, wrote of Jewish settlements in India existing as early as the first century AD. He discussed an Alexandrian Stoic philosopher by the name of Pantaenus, who “was sent as far India” to evangelize “the heathen in the East.” Pantaenus, known as the tutor to Clement of Alexandria and Origen, made his journey shortly after the reign of Marcus Aurelius, which would place him in India around 181 AD. Saint Jerome (c. 342 – c. 347 – 420) mentions the birth of the Buddha, who he says, “was born from the side of a virgin.” The early church father Clement of Alexandria (d. 215 AD) was also aware of Buddha, writing in his Stromata: “The Indian gymnosophists are also in the number, and the other barbarian philosophers. And of these there are two classes, some of them called Sarmanæ and others Brahmins.”[69]

 

Left-Hand Tantra 

The greatest Muslim traveler al-Biruni, of the tenth and eleventh centuries AD, claimed that the Persian prophet Mani also went to Tibet, and that “most of” of the country adhered to his religion.[70] Early third and fourth century Christian writers such as Hippolytus of Rome and Epiphanius wrote about a Scythianus, who according to H.G. Rawlinson, was the first Alexandrian to visit India, around 50 AD.[71] Scythianus acquainted himself with Indian philosophy and learned, according to Epiphanius, that “all things comes from two roots or two principles.” Scythianus’ pupil Terebinthus presented himself as a “Buddha” and went first to Palestine and Judaea, “becoming known and condemned,” and ultimately settled in Babylon, where he transmitted his teachings to Mani. Manichaean churches and scriptures existed as far east as China and as far west as the Roman Empire. It was briefly the main rival to Christianity before the spread of Islam. Manichaeism spread to Tibet during the Tibetan Empire. However, in the Criteria of the Authentic Scriptures, a text attributed to Trisong Detsen, the author attacks Manichaeism by accusing Mani of being a heretic who took ideas from all faiths and blended them together into a perverted form.[72]

As Nathan Katz noted, there were Jews in the northwestern region of what is now China at least from the eighth century AD.[73] Pan Guangdan (aka Quentin Pan), a Chinese sociologist who specializes on the Jews, argued that a Jewish presence existed in Guangzhou (Canton), Ganpu and Hangzhou during the late Tang dynasty, or the ninth century AD, as well as medieval communities in Ningbo, Beijing, Quanzhou, Ningxia, Yangzhou and Nanjing, and also in the famous community at Kaifeng, during medieval times. Tibet, then, suggests Katz, “was virtually encircled with Jewish settlements, however small, in India, Kashmir, Turkestan, and China. It appears that Tibet at one time controlled a city, Khotan, a Jewish community, during the eighth century.”[74] The Kashmiris, like the Pathan, believe that they are descended from the supposed Lost Tribes of Israel.[75] Katz further suggests that there seems to be a further religious link as well, between Jewish messianism and the Tibetan Kalachakra system.[76]

Tantra is most commonly associated with sex, and often mistaken for the Kama Sutra. Tantra is a style of religious ritual and meditation that arose in medieval India no later than the fifth century AD, after which, it influenced Hindu traditions and spread with Buddhism to East Asia and Southeast Asia. Tantric sex, or sexual yoga, refers to a range of practices in Hindu and Buddhism in a ritualized context, often associated with antinomian tendencies. While taboo-breaking elements are symbolic for “right-hand path” Tantra (Dakshinachara), they are practiced literally by “left-hand path” Tantra (Vamachara). Vamachara is a mode of worship or sadhana (spiritual practice) that is considered heretical according to Vedic standards. Secret rituals may involve feasts of otherwise prohibited substances, sex, cemeteries, and defecation, urination and vomiting. Most important is the ritual sexual union known as Maithuna, mirroring the “sacred marriage” of Gnosticism, during which the man and the woman become divine: she is the goddess Shakti, and he the god Shiva. In particular, semen and menstrual blood produced through ritual sex the guru and his consort have been viewed as “power substances” and even ingested ritualistically.[77] In the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, it is claimed that the historical Buddha taught Tantra, but that since these were “secret” teachings, transmitted only from guru to disciple, they were generally written down long after his other teachings. However, historians argue that assigning these teachings to the Buddha is “patently absurd.”[78]

While some stories depict the arrival of Buddhism in Tibet earlier, the religion was formally introduced during the Tibetan Empire, between the seventh and ninth century AD. Traditional Vajrayana sources say that the tantras and the lineage of Vajrayana were taught by Sakyamuni Buddha and other figures such as the bodhisattva Vajrapani and Padmasambhava, a tantric Buddhist Vajra master from India. Vajrayana Buddhism was initially established in Tibet in the eighth century AD when various figures like Sakyamuni and Padmasambhāva were invited by King Trisong Detsen (755 – 797 AD), who had established Buddhism as the official religion of the state. Padmasambhava, who is considered by the Tibetans as Guru Rinpoche, is also credited with building the first monastery building named Samye. Yeshe Tsogyal, considered the Mother of Tibetan Buddhism, was a member of Trisong Detsen’s court and became a student of Padmasambhava and his main Karmamudra consort.

There is evidence to show that Christianity found its way into South East and East Asian countries even before the coming of western missionaries, through the efforts of merchants and missionaries of Nestorianism, a heresy incorrectly attributed to Nestorius (d. c. 450), from Persia or India or China. In the thirteenth century, international travelers, such as Giovanni de Piano Carpini and William of Ruysbroeck, sent back reports of Buddhism to the West and noted certain similarities with Nestorianism.[79] Syncretism between Buddhism and Nestorianism was widespread along the Silk Road in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, and was especially evident in the medieval Church of the East in China. This was especially evident in the Jingjiao Documents, Nestorian documents also known as the Jesus Sutras, a collection of Chinese language texts connected with the seventh-century mission of Alopen, a Church of the East bishop from Sassanian Mesopotamia.[80] The manuscripts date from between 635 AD, the year of Alopen’s arrival in China, and around 1000 AD, when the cave near Dunhuang in which the documents were discovered was sealed. A surprising example was found among these documents from a Book of Divination adapted to Buddhism, which hint at Gnostic influence:

 

Man, your ally is the god called “Jesus Messiah”. He acts as Vajrapani and Sri Sakyamuni. When the gates of the seven levels of heaven have opened, you will accomplish the yoga that you will receive from the judge at the right hand of God. Because of this, do whatever you wish without shame, fear or apprehension. You will become a conqueror, and there will be no demons or obstructing spirits. Whoever casts this lot (mo), it will be very good.[81]

 

The strongest evidence for the involvement of Christian missionaries in early Tibet comes in the letters of Timothy I, who was Patriarch of the Nestorian Church between 780 and 823 AD, overlapping with the reigns of three of Tibet’s great Buddhist emperors, Trisong Detsen, Senaleg and Ralpachen. Timothy I is known to have consecrated metropolitans for Damascus, Armenia, Dailam and Gilan in Azerbaijan, Rai in Tabaristan, Sarbaz in Segestan, for the Turks of Central Asia, and for China and possibly Tibet. According to Aziz S. Atiya, an example of Nestorianism influence is the survival of its ritual in a modified form in the Lamaism of Tibet, including the use of holy water, incense and vestments of a similar to Nestorian practices.[82] Nestorian crosses have been found in several places such as Anuradhapura, which are very similar in style to those in Persia, China at Sian-fu-stele and to those in Tibet and Armenia.[83]

 

Cochin Jews

The Gospel of Thomas, a Gnostic Gospels found near Nag Hammadi, Egypt, is named for the Apostle Thomas, who is traditionally believed by Christians in Kerala, on the Malabar Coast, to have spread Christianity among the Jews there. Edward Conze, a British scholar of Buddhism, pointed out that “Buddhists were in contact with the Thomas Christians [Christians who knew and used the Gospel of Thomas] in south India.”[84] In the ninth century, ibn Wahab wrote about the Cochin Jews (also known as Malabar Jews), the Jewish community of Cranganore, near Kochi (Cochin), on the Malabar Coast in southwest India, with roots that are claimed to date back to the time of King Solomon.[85] Comprising one of three major distinct Jewish communities in India, the Cochin Jews are called Cochinim in Hebrew, though the majority now live in Israel. Their roots are claimed to date back to the time of King Solomon.[86] They settled in the Kingdom of Cochin, now part of the state of Kerala. According to The History of the works of the learned (1699) published in England, a letter in Hebrew was brought from India, in which the Cochin Jews recounted the story of their ancestors’ arrival in Malabar after the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans.[87] According to Josephus, during the siege of Masada by Roman troops at the end of the First Jewish–Roman War (66–73), which resulted in the destruction of the Second Temple, the Sicarii martyrs who committed mass suicide were inspired by the speeches of their leader Eleazar, to follow the example of the Indian philosophers, an example of fearlessness based on their firm belief in the eternity of the soul. According to the letter, the king who reigned in India at the time granted them a Province called Shingly (Cranganore), near the city of Cochin (Kochi). [88]

Until the twenty-first century, India had the largest number of Jews of any country east of Iran.[89] According to Nathan Katz in “Contacts Between Jewish and Indo-Tibetan Civilizations Through the Ages: Some Explorations,” in the West, our numerical notation system is incorrectly referred to as “Arabic numerals” when, in fact, they were brought from India via the Middle East and into Europe by Jews.[90] Many Arab travelers record a Jewish presence in India. The ninth century geographer Abu Said al-Hassan mentioned Jewish communities in India and Ceylon.[91] Al-Biruni reported that, “Before, one or two foreigners could enter [Kashmir], especially Jews. Now, they do not let any Indians whom they do not know [enter it], let alone the others.”[92] Other great Muslim writers also discussed Indo-Jewish links, including al-Idrisi of the twelfth century and especially ibn Battuta of the fourteenth century.[93] During the twelfth century, a number of Jewish travelers visited India and wrote about Jewish life there. The most influential was Benjamin of Tudela, who left extensive descriptions of the Jews of southwest India. Speaking of Kollam (Quilon) on the Malabar Coast, he wrote in his Itinerary: “…throughout the island, including all the towns thereof, live several thousand Israelites. The inhabitants are all black, and the Jews also. The latter are good and benevolent. They know the law of Moses and the prophets, and to a small extent the Talmud and Halacha.”[94] It was during the same century that Maimonides wrote that his Mishneh Torah was studied in India. A quatrain by the fourteenth-century Rabbi Nissim of Spain expresses his pleasure at finding a Jewish king at Shingly, just north of Cochi.[95]

The ancient spice trade followed land and sea routes between the Middle East and South India. The famous silk routes, which may date from as early as the second century AD, linked Europe with China. Muslim travelers’ diaries from the ninth and tenth century AD testify to the prominent role of Jews in both these trades. Ibn Khordadbeh, an official of the Baghdad caliphate, in his Book of Roads and Kingdoms (ca. 870), described the commercial activities of the Radhanites, Jewish merchants in the trans-Eurasian trade network. Radhanites, who were based in northern Spain or southern France, maintained a number of distinct trading routes, including one that traversed Central Europe from Spain through France, Germany, Eastern Europe, the kingdoms of the Khazars, Asia, and thence into China. Another ran along the southern coast of Europe from Spain through Burgundy, Italy, the Balkans, Greece, Turkey, Baghdad, India, and around Indonesia to China. Another traversed Spain, North Africa, Egypt, Arabia, Yemen, and India, linking up to China.[96]

Sephardic Jews fleeing the Inquisition in both Spain and Portugal settled in southwest India, in Goa, Madras (now Chennai) and primarily on the Malabar coast, where they joined the Cochin Jews and introduced their racial consciousness through the Curse of Ham. According to The History of the works of the learned (1699), the Cochin Jews of the Malabar coast of India claimed to have been joined by Jews banished from Spain, including the renowned Kabbalist Rabbi Abraham ibn Ezra.[97] The Jews of Malabar also claimed to have amongst them other Jews who came from Castille, from Constantina in Armenia, and from Egypt and the town of Tzova in Israel.[98] When the Portuguese took control over Goa, Jews and crypto-Jews from Portugal joined the Bene Israel community. The famed Sephardic physician Garcia de Orta (1501? – 1568) belonged to this community. In addition, some settled in Madras, now known as Chennai Jews, they worked with the English East India Company. According to the famed Sephardic poet Daniel Levy de Barrios, during his lifetime Madras was one of the six main areas of Sephardic Jewish settlement in the English empire.[99] Jewish presence in the region was the primary reason for the Portuguese to institute the Goa Inquisition in 1560. More than 16,000 people were put on trial between 1560-1774. In the first 30 years of the Inquisition, 321 people were brought to trial on the charge of crypto-Judaism. Many Jews from Portuguese Goa fled to Bombay and to the Cochin Jews in Kerala.[100] The coming of the Dutch rule beginning in 1663 eased the pressure on the Jewish community in India.[101]

The visit of the Yemenite poet Zachary ben Sa’adia ben Jacob al Zahiri, in the first half of the sixteenth century, although he did not refer to them as “black,” distinguished the Sephardim of Malabar the “other congregations,” whom he described them as descendants of Kushites and Canaanite slaves.[102] Reflecting the Hindu system, the Cochin Jews also subdivided themselves into castes. the “white” Sephardi immigrants or Paradesi (“foreign”) Jews, together with a few Jews from Iraq, Europe and Yemen, joined with an indigenous elite, and distinguished themselves from the “black” Jews, better known as Malabari Jews. Each of these groups were slave-holders, and freed slaves from the Paradesi community were called “brown” Jews. Like the Brahmins, Paradesi Jews discriminated against the “black” Malabari Jews, and would not marry them and would not eat meat slaughtered by their ritual slaughterers.[103]

 


[1] Zvi Ben-Dor Benite. The Ten Lost Tribes: A World History (Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 11.

[2] “Ancient DNA provides new insights into the history of south Siberian Kurgan people.” Human Genetics. 126: 3, pp. 395–410.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Behar, Doron M.; Thomas, Mark G.; Skorecki, Karl; Hammer, Michael F.; Bulygina, Ekaterina; Rosengarten, Dror; Jones, Abigail L.; Held, Karen et al. “Multiple Origins of Ashkenazi Levites: Y Chromosome Evidence for Both Near Eastern and European Ancestries.” American Journal of Human Genetics 73: 4 (2003), pp. 768–79.

[5] Christopher I. Beckwith. Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present (Princeton University Press, 2011), p. 9.

[6] Evrim Binbas. “The King’s Two Lineages: Esau, Jacob, and the Ottoman Mythical Imagination in the Subhatu'l-Ahbar.”  In: Markus Friedrich & Jörg B. Quenzer. Genealogical Manuscripts in Cross Cultural Perspective (De Gruyter, 2025).

[7] Peter A. Underhill (2014). “The phylogenetic and geographic structure of Y-chromosome haplogroup R1a.” European Journal of Human Genetics, 23(1): 124–131.

[8] Victor H. Mair. “Mummies of the Tarim Basin.” Archaeology, vol. 48, no. 2 (March/April 1995), pp. 28–35.

[9] As cited in William Henry Poole. Anglo-Israel: Or, The Saxon Race, Proved to be the Lost Tribes of Israel. In Nine Lectures (W. Briggs, 1889), p. 132.

[10] Histories, IV:11.

[11] Oliver Nicholson. “Scythians (Saka).” The Oxford Dictionary of Late Antiquity (Oxford University Press, 2018), pp. 1346–1347

[12] Denis Sinor. The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia, Vol. 1 (Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 99; “Ashkenazi.” Webster’s New World College Dictionary, 4th Edition (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010).

[13] “Ancient DNA provides new insights into the history of south Siberian Kurgan people.”

[14] Raphael Patai and Jennifer Patai. The Myth of the Jewish Race (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1989) p. 72.

[15] Alistair Moffat & James Wilson. The Scots: A Genetic Journey (Birlinn, (1 May 2011), pp. 205–206.

[16] Navras Jaat Aafreedi. “Traditions of Israelite Descent Among Certain Muslim Groups in South Asia.” Shofar, 28: 1 (2009), p. 1. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5703/shofar.28.1.1.

[17] Mansoor A, Mazhar K, Khaliq S et al. (April 2004). “Investigation of the Greek ancestry of populations from northern Pakistan.” Hum Genet 114 (5): 484–90; Rory McCarthy, “Pashtun clue to lost tribes of Israel.” The Observer, (17 January, 2010)

[18] Kohler & Ginzberg. “Aristotle in Jewish Legend.”

[19] “Alexander the Great.” Jewish History. Retrieved from https://www.jewishhistory.org/alexander-the-great/

[20] Kaufmann Kohler & Louis Ginzberg. “Aristotle in Jewish Legend.” Jewish Encyclopedia. Retrieved from https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/1774-aristotle-in-jewish-legend

[21] Ibid.

[22] Contra Apionem, ii. 17.

[23] Ibid., i. 22.

[24] Daniel. xi. 3

[25] Kohler & Ginzberg. “Aristotle in Jewish Legend.”.

[26] Alexander the Great. Jewish History.

[27] Kohler & Ginzberg. “Aristotle in Jewish Legend.”

[28] Ibid.

[29] Josephus. Antiquities of the Jews, xi, 8, 5.

[30] Andrew Runni Anderson. “Alexander’s horns.” Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, 58 (1927), p. 110.

[31] Emeri J.Van Donzel & Andrea Barbara Schmidt. Gog and Magog in Early Eastern Christian and Islamic Sources (Brill, 2010), p. 57.

[32] David Pinault. Story-Telling Techniques in the Arabian Nights (Brill, 1992), p. 181 fn. 71.

[33] Ian Richard Netton. A Popular Dictionary of Islam (Routledge, 2006), p. 72-73.

[34] Peter G. Bietenholz. Historia and Fabula: Myths and Legends in Historical Thought from Antiquity to the Modern Age (Leiden: Brill, 1994), p. 122.

[35] Josephus. The Wars of the Jews. Book VII, Chap. 7, section 4, 244.

[36] Claudia A. Ciancaglini (2001). “The Syriac Version of the Alexander Romance.” Le Muséon. 114 (1–2): 121–140.

[37] John Andrew Boyle. “The Alexander Legend in Central Asia.” Folklore, 85(4), (Winter, 1974), pp. 217-228.

[38] Reported by Ibn Ishaq, Ibn Hisham (1/371-372), Sahihut-Tirmidhi (3/69/H. 3361-3362), and Ahmad Musnad.

[39] Kevin Van Bladel. “The Alexander legend in the Qur‘an 18:83-102,” in The Qur’ān in Its Historical Context (ed.) Gabriel Said Reynolds (New York: Routledge, 2007).

[40] Surah al-Kahf: 83-98.

[41] Tirmidhee. Abwaab al-Tafsir: Soorat al-Kahf (Hadeeth 5160), 8/597- 99. Ibn Maajah. Kitaab al-Fitan, (Hadeeth 4080), 2/1364. Ahmad. Musnad, 2/510, 511.

[42] David Cook. Contemporary Muslim Apocalyptic Literature (Syracuse University Press, 2005), pp. 8, 10.

[43] David Pingree. “Astronomy and Astrology in India and Iran.” Isis, 54: 3 (June 1963), p. 231. Retrieved from https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Journals/ISIS/54/2/Astronomy_and_Astrology_in_India_and_Iran*.html

[44] Ammianus Marcellinus. Roman History (London: Bohn, 1862) Book XXIII. pp.316–345. Retrieved from https://www.tertullian.org/fathers/ammianus_23_book23.htm

[45] David Leverington. Babylon to Voyager and Beyond: A History of Planetary Astronomy (Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 41.

[46] “Menander.” Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved from  https://www.britannica.com/biography/Menander-Indo-Greek-king.

[47] Shalva Weil. “Bombay.” In Norman A. Stillman (ed.). Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World. (Leiden: Brill, 2010).

[48] “The genome-wide structure of the Jewish people.”

[49] Chaubey, Gyaneshwer; Singh, Manvendra; Rai, Niraj; Kariappa, Mini; Singh, Kamayani; Singh, Ashish; Pratap Singh, Deepankar; Tamang, Rakesh; Selvi Rani, Deepa; Reddy, Alla G; Kumar Singh, Vijay; Singh, Lalji; Thangaraj, Kumarasamy (2016). “Genetic affinities of the Jewish populations of India.” Scientific Reports, 6: 19166.

[50] Tudor Parfitt & Yulia Egorova. “Genetics, History, and Identity: The Case Of The Bene Israel and the Lemba.” Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, 29: 2 (2005), pp. 206, 208, 221.

[51] Yulia Egorova. Jews and India: Perceptions and Image (2006). p. 85; Schifra Strizower. The Bene Israel of Bombay: A Study of a Jewish Community (1971). p. 16.

[52] Sharma, S; Rai, E; Sharma, P; Jena, M; Singh, S; Darvishi, K; Bhat, AK; Bhanwer, AJ; et al. “The Indian origin of paternal haplogroup R1a1(*) substantiates the autochthonous origin of Brahmins and the caste system.” Journal of Human Genetics, 54 :1 (2009), pp. 47–55.

[53] Thomas DeMichele. “The Caste System Explained.” Fact/Myth (August 30, 2016). Retrieved from https://factmyth.com/the-caste-system-explained

[54] “Manu-smriti.” Encyclopædia Britannica.

[55] David Livingstone. The Dying God: The Hidden History of Western Civilization (2002).

[56] Elmar R Gruber & Holger Kersten. The Original Jesus (Element Books, Shaftesbury, 1995).

[57] Robert Linssen. Living Zen (Grove Press New York, 1958).

[58] W.W. Tarn. The Greeks in Bactria and India (South Asia Books).

[59] Elaine Pagels. The Gostic Gospels (New York: Vintage/Random House, 1979), p. xxi.

[60] Ibid.

[61] Josephus. Contra Apionem, I, 22.

[62] “Magi.” Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved from https://www.britannica.com/topic/Magi

[63] Ernst Herzfeld. Archaeological History of Iran (London: Oxford University Press for the British Academy, 1935), p. 63.

[64] John of Hildesheim. Historia Trium Regum (History of the Three Kings).

[65] Osmond De Beauvoir Priaulx. “The Indian Travels of Apollonius of Tyana.” The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. 17(1860), pp. 70-105.

[66] Herbert J. Muller. Loom Of History (London: Museum Press Limited, 1959), p. 183.

[67] Cited in Porphyry, De abstin., iv, 17, 3 and Stobaeus. Eccles., iii, 56, 141.

[68] Stephen A. Kent. “Valentinian Gnosticism and Classical Samkhya: A Thematic and Structural.” Philosophy East and West, Vol. 30, No. 2 (April, 1980), pp. 241.

[69] Book I, Chapter XV.

[70] Biruni, Atar, tr. E. Sachau. The Chronology of Ancient Nations (London, 1879), pp. 191-92

[71] H. G. Rawlinson. Intercourse between India and the western world from the earliest times to the fall of Rome (University Press, 1916).

[72] Kurtis Schaeffer, Matthew Kapstein & Gray Tuttle. Sources of Tibetan Tradition (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013). pp. 95–96.

[73] Nathan Katz. “Contacts Between Jewish and Indo-Tibetan Civilizations Through the Ages: Some Explorations.” The Tibet Journal. Vol. 16, No. 4, Thematic Issue: Western Religions and Tibet (Winter 1991), p. 104.

[74] Ibid.

[75] Navras Jaat Aafreedi. “Traditions of Israelite Descent Among Certain Muslim Groups in South Asia.” Shofar, 28: 1 (2009), p. 2. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5703/shofar.28.1.1.

[76] Katz. “Contacts Between Jewish and Indo-Tibetan Civilizations Through the Ages,” p. 104.

[77] Gavin D. Flood. An Introduction to Hinduism (Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 159–160.

[78] Joseph Mitsuo Kitagawa. The Religious Traditions of Asia: Religion, History, and Culture (Routledge, 2002) p. 80.

[79] Macmillan Encyclopedia of Buddhism (2004), p. 160.

[80] Ibid.

[81] Uray Géza. “Tibet’s Connections with Nestorianism and Manicheism in the 8th–10th Centuries.” In Steinkellner and Tauscher (eds). Contributions on Tibetan Language, History and Culture (Vienna: Arbeitskries für Tibetische und Buddhistische studien Universität Wien, 13-19 September 1981, Vol. 1).

[82] Aziz S. Atiya. A history of Eastern Christianity (London, Methuen & Co. 1968), p. 263.

[83] T.V. Philip. East of the Euphrates: Early Christianity in Asia (India: CSS & ISPCK, 1998). Retrieved from https://www.religion-online.org/book-chapter/chapter-8christianity-in-other-places-in-asia/

[84] E. Conze. “Buddhism and Gnosis,” Le Origini dello Gnosticismo: Colloquio di Messina, April 13-18, 1966 (Leiden, 1967), p. 665.

[85] Orpa Slapak. The Jews of India: A Story of Three Communities (UPNE, 1995), p. 27.

[86] Orpa Slapak. The Jews of India: A Story of Three Communities. The Israel Museum, Jerusalem. 2003. p. 27;  Shalva Weil. “Jews in India.” in M. Avrum Erlich (ed.) Encyclopaedia of the Jewish Diaspora (Santa Barbara, USA: ABC CLIO. 2008), 3: 1204-1212.

[87] The History of the works of the learned, or An impartial account of books lately printed in all parts of Europe : with a particular relation of the state of learning in each country (1699). Volume 1. (London: Printed for H. Rhodes, at the Star near Fleet-Bridge, T. Bennet, at the Half-Moon in St Paul’s Church-Yard, A. Bell, at the Cross Keys in Cornhill, D. Midwinter and T. Leigh, at the Rose and Crown, in St. Paul’s Church-Yard, 1699), pp. 149-150.

[88] The Jewish War, Book VII.

[89] “India.” Jewish Virtual Library. Retrieved from https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/india

[90] Katz. “Contacts Between Jewish and Indo-Tibetan Civilizations Through the Ages: Some Explorations,” p. 100.

[91] “India.” Jewish Virtual Library. Retrieved from https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/india

[92] Noémie Verdon. “Chapter 1 Cultural Contexts of al-Biruni’s Work and Writings.” In The Books Sank and Patangal (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2024). Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004680302_003

[93] “India.” Jewish Virtual Library.

[94] Marcus Nathan Adler (ed.) The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela (Oxford University Press, London 1907), p. 65.

[95] “India.” Jewish Virtual Library.

[96] Elkan Adler. Jewish Travellers in the Middle Ages (Dover Publications, 1987), pp. 2–3.

[97] “Abraham bar Hiyya (Savasorda),” EJ; on links between Jews and Templars, see S. Baron, Social, IV, 37; X, 67, 331.

[98] The History of the works of the learned, or An impartial account of books lately printed in all parts of Europe : with a particular relation of the state of learning in each country (1699). Volume 1, pp. 149-150.

[99] Mordecai Arbell. “The Portuguese Jewish Community of Madras, India, in the Seventeenth Century,” Los Muestros, 41 (June 27, 2013).

[100] T.V. Parasuram. India’s Jewish Heritage (University of Michigan: Sagar Publications, 1982). p. 67.

[101] Claudius Buchanan. Christian Researches in Asia: With Notices of the Translation of the Scriptures into the Oriental Languages. 2nd ed. (Boston: Armstron, Cornhill, 1811); Menachery G (ed). “The Indian Church History Classics,” Vol. I, The Nazranies, Ollur, 1998.

[102] Jonathan Schorsch. Jews and Blacks in the Early Modern World (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 205.

[103] Nathan Katz & Ellen S. Goldberg. “The Sephardi Diaspora in Cochin, India.” Jewish Political Studies Review, Vol. 5, No. 3/4, The Sephardic Political Experience (Fall 1993), pp. 97-140.

Divide & Conquer