Jesus In India — Page 131
CHAPTER FOUR 121 was necessary, therefore, that Jesus, the Messiah, may peace be on him, should have journeyed to this country and, after locating the whereabouts of the lost sheep, should have conveyed to them the message that God Almighty had vouchsafed to him. And until he had not done this, the purpose for which he had been sent by God Almighty would have remained without result and unful- filled. His mission was to preach to the lost sheep of Israel. Thus, for him to just pass away from the world without going after the lost sheep, and searching for them, and teaching them the way to salvation, would have been quite like the case of a man who had been commanded by a king to go to a desert tribe to dig a well and supply them with water from that well, but this man goes instead to some other place where he spends three or four years, and returns without having taken even a single steps to search for the concerned tribe. So did such a man act in compliance with the command of the king? Not in the least. On the contrary, for the sake of his own comfort, the man showed no concern for that tribe. If, however, it is asked, how and why it should be supposed that the ten tribes of Israel had come to this country, the answer is that the supporting evidence of this thesis is so strong and incon- trovertible that even a dullard will not deny it. It is only too well known that people like the Afghans and the old inhabitants of Kashmir are in fact of Israelite origin. For example, the people of Alai Kohistan which is at a distance of two or three days' jour- ney from the district of Hazara, have called themselves Beni Israel from time immemorial. Similarly, there is another hilly tract in this region known as Kala Dhaka, whose inhabitants also take pride in being of Israelite origin. Then in the Hazara district itself, there is