JESÚS LIVED IN INDIA

FOREWORD
It was in 1973, and purely by lucky coincidence, that I first ran across the theory that Jesus had lived in India, and had eventually died there too. Sceptical though noncommittal about the matter
decided to try to retrace the entire course of Jesus' life. I soon encountered the first obstacle: no contemporary sources could stand up to present-day scholarly scrutiny enough to give the nec
essary fine detail about the historical Jesus. Who was the man?
Where was he from? Where did he go? Why was it that he appeared so strange and mysterious to his contemporaries? What was he really after?
Following up my investigations I finally arrived in India, where I became acquainted with several people who had spent considerable time and effort researching into the whole subject of Jesus in
India. From them I received a wealth of astonishing information, along with great encouragement and valuable support.

After this book was published for the first time, in Germany in 1983, I received hundreds of letters from enthusiastic readers who not only expressed their delight and wonderment, but also made a
large number of valuable comments and important suggestions.
But I am particularly grateful in addition to the more discerning critics who took the time thoroughly to examine the claims I made and so enabled me now to correct a few inaccuracies originally
present. In this way, over the course of ten years, an improved work has evolved that has the capacity to allude to even the very smallest, most specialist reference concerning the Indian origins of Jesus' teachings.

Also within these ten years, the book has been translated into no fewer than fifteen different languages (including Croat, Polish, Korean and Chinese - there have been ten editions in Brazil alone). The story of the survival of Jesus and his life in India has deservedly come to gain worldwide attention
Some of the assertions I make may seem audacious, some even improbable, but I have tried to provide solid evidence for all the claims I have put forward, and to support them with reference to genuinely trustworthy sources. There remains considerable scope for future research in the various individual disciplines.
It has never been part of my purpose to undermine anyone outlook on Christianity, much less to leave any reader glumly srounded by shards of shattered faith. It is simply a matter of the
greatest importance today to find a way back again to the origin ur to the universal and central truth of Christ's message, which has been distorted almost beyond recognition by the profane ambitions of more or less secular institutions that have arrogated hemselves a religious authority ever since the early centuries of to the so-called Christian Era.
This book is no proclamation of a new faith, therefore: it is merely an attempt to open a way to a new future, firmly grounded in true spiritual and religious authorities of the past.

Do not think I am spinning yarns:
Get up and prove things otherwise!
All ecclesiastical history
Is a mishmash of error and coercion.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Holger Kersten
Freiburg im Breisgau
March 1993