South Asia

Jesus’ Kashmir Connection

It doesn’t take much to figure out the Jesus Connection in Kashmir.

In Srinagar, Kashmir, the Roza Bal shrine is the tomb of a man called Issa, presumed to be that of Jesus Christ since Jesus is usually called Issa in Arabic, which means he who resuscitates the dead. In Swahili and Arabic it also means salvation and protection. It is often superfluous as the Arabic translation of Jesus, since in Arabic, Jesus is Yasue.

The Gospels reveal that Jesus’ birth name was Yeshua and that the word Jesus is its derivative.

Except for one, the Gospels were written in Greek. The word for Jesus is Iησοῦς pronounced as “eeaysoos.” When “eeaysoos” was transliterated into the English long ago, it became Jesus — the word used in English today (https://carm.org/jesus-name-really-yeshua).

Matthew 13:55-56 discloses that James, Joses, Simon and Judas, were Jesus the son of Mary’s brothers. The sisters are not named.

Mark 3:31, Mathew 12:49 and Mathew 12:46-50 further confirm the existence of Jesus’ brothers.

So even when the Bible does not specifically refer to Jesus’ cousins, nieces or nephews, their existence cannot be denied. And since names do tend to run in families, cousins may carry the same name. One of Jesus’s brothers was Joses, only a short Greek form of Joseph. So Joses was named after his father, a cross-cultural practice right up to the present. Every contemporaneous son of Joseph does not necessarily refer to Jesus or one of his brothers.

From all this information, then, Issa, as an Arabic attribute of the act of raising the dead cannot be considered Jesus’ name. And since there is no evidence in the Bible that Jesus flaunted his gift of raising the dead, he would not have referred to himself with such an attribute and even less so in Arabic which was neither his mother tongue in Israel nor spoken in Kashmir at that time.

By all the known, consensual evidence, Jesus and his disciples stayed within a linguistic environment of Aramaic, Greek and perhaps some Latin but not Arabic or Swahili.

The attribute Issa as he who raises the dead could not have been given until at least the first raising of the dead and that happened only after the thirtieth year of Jesus’s life. We are dealing with an act and not a proper noun.  The attribute of raiser of the dead in Arabic was given only after news of the miracle reached the Arabic speaking world.

As stated earlier, Jesus never brandished his miracles. Even if he had gone to Kashmir, he would never have introduced himself as Issa. Furthermore, there is neither any evidence of the dead being raised in Kashmir two thousand years ago by a certain Issa, nor any trace of the Arabic language or Arabic speakers to justify the attribution Issa to a person. Starting from the 13th century, Muslim preachers brought Arabic into Kashmir in trickles, since the Qura’an is written in and Muslim prayers are formalized in Arabic.

The burial site of Issa is located in the Roza Bal shrine, in the Khanyaar neighbourhood of central Srinagar, the capital of the mountainous Indian state. The site used to be a center of Buddhism, Hinduism, and Shaivism for a thousand years before Islam.

The Issa buried here was Jesus’ nephew who had the gift of faith healing which many Christians and non-Christians have had since the beginning of time without being messiahs.

The name given to the person who is buried in Roza Bal is Yuz Asaf meaning “Son of Joseph and also implies “Leader of the Healed.”

Since Joseph and Joses are the same name, this son of Joseph / Joses was Jesus’ nephew.

Phonetically, the sound of Yuz Asaf can, with mild tweaking, be pronounced as Jesus — a practice so fraught with errors that no scholar would attempt it for fear of the derision and rejection of peers. That is because homophonic sounds are more often coincidental than incidental, except as an amusing after-dinner parlor game.

The common cognate meaning of two words is the decisive factor confirming a common origin. That is absent between Yuz Asaf  and Jesus and Issa. The cognate of Yuz Asaf is compounded from the Hebrew he will add and leader of the healed. But Yuz Asaf also means Son of Joseph, and one of Jesus’s brothers was Joseph / Joses (Matthew 13:55-56).

If Jesus did appropriate the tenets of peace and neighborliness, and nothing is known of his life between the age of 12 & 30, he could as easily have retrieved them from Australian Aborigines or Siberians and not necessarily Buddhists as some believe. These universal concepts are not exclusive to Buddhism. Synchronicity — Jung defined it and Sting sang it.

Why an Aramaic speaking Jew in 78CE, the date of the supposed Jesus in Kashmir, would use an Arabic attribute to declare his most singular power in a language that was to take a thousand years to reach Kashmir is devoid of sense.

Pinpointing The Jesus Connection in Kashmir is Rocket Science 101.

Badlu Ram could reduce India-Pakistan Tensions

Left to itself, moral uprightness can degenerate into joyless self-righteousness or intolerance of the opinions and behavior of others. It can shrivel into a dead end of blood drenched eloquence. The presence or absence of music and the type of music to which a society responds draws a thin red line between the balance of its degree of righteousness and self-righteousness. Cultural continuity, and the intensity of its practice can be studied in components of society that seek to preserve its status quo even at the risk of life and limb, which is one way to describe an army.

 

Punjab Regiment L to R :  Pakistan, undivided & India :  http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8b/33rd_Punjabis_(15_Punjab)_(PMs)_1910.jpg;  http://defence.pk/attachments/8000c3ece83dfbdfb15dd6309b0f74b7-jpg.85154/;  http://media.sacbee.com/static/weblogs/photos/images/2011/jan11/republic_day_sm/republic_day_10.jpg

Let’s take a look at the symptomatic evolution of war marches of India and Pakistan considering that India seems to be heading Pakistan’s way.

Like all warlike cultures, India and Pakistan, whose regiments were divided only sixty-seven years ago, cherish their war songs they don’t sing, since of course they are neither sissies nor mirasi minstrels!

The exception is the Indian Army’s Assam Rifles which owes a debt to Captain Manjit Singh, a Christian officer born in Jammu, graduated from Madras University, an ace hockey player and the guiding genius behind the Badlu Ram ka badan song.

The light-hearted words reflect the dashing merriment expected of young officers close to their troops, enjoying their chota pegs. A rifleman, eyeing up a pretty girl, was put on pack drill for neglecting to clean his rifle.

 

http://worldonline.media.clients.ellingtoncms.com/img/photos/2002/05/21/3AindiaNEW_t640.jpg?a6ea3ebd4438a44b86d2e9c39ecf7613005fe067; http://3.imimg.com/data3/IS/NM/MY-9325985/41sarj9ocbl-_sl500_aa300_-250×250.jpg

Enter Badlu Ram, who died in the ‘Japan Waar’, but the quartermaster was smart, didn’t declare his death and kept drawing rations in his name! The refrain, acknowledges that while Badlu Ram’s body is under the earth, his rations are still drawn— 100 years Hallelujah— bang on John Brown’s body! And here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIl1nL64KNI

This lilting march says that at least Assamese warriors do not take themselves too seriously, in accordance with General Ingle’s advice in A Soldier’s Prayer for his Son. Even their battle cry is neither religious nor nationalistic— Rhino charge!

A choice uncharacteristic of India and Pakistan whose battlefield losses indiscriminately come under Martyred and not Killed in Action, with both countries seeking to claim the self-righteous high ground.

For example, musically, one cannot disassociate the Pakistan Army from Ae Mard e mujahid Ja’ag zara https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFmHxJcG7u4. Although secular India might allow regiments to keep their religious battle cries such as Bol na’ara Haidari, Bolé so Nihal and Jai Ma Kali, their marching songs enshrine cheerless nationalism, such as Qadam Qadam, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sJqJeLwww0, the delightful exception being the Madras Regiment’s Bollywoodian Suhana Safar aur yeh Mausam Rangeen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhto634aZIU — Jeeyo veer Madrasi!

But it was not always so glum.

http://www.nam.ac.uk/online-collection/images/960/1-999/750.jpg

From Sepoy to Subedar: the memoirs of Subedar Sita Ram Pande (1873), reveal that the Bengal native Infantry, formed of Punjabis, Pathans and Uttar Pradeshis, used to sing Kabhi sukh kabhi dukh, angrez ka naukar— sometimes pleasure, sometimes pain, a servant of the English!

The Karnatic Regiment went even further, singing of Queen Victoria being a “very good man…” http://research.culturalequity.org/get-audio-detailed-recording.do?recordingId=24077

The pre-partition, undivided elite Punjab Regiment marched to the pederastic, Zakhmi Dil, which means Wounded Heart. John Masters in Bugles and a Tiger writes of “one of the most famous of Pathan songs, the ‘Zakhmi Dil’ (‘Wounded Heart’) begins with the words, ‘There’s a boy across the river with a bottom like a peach, but, alas, I cannot swim”.

 

http://mentalfloss.com/sites/default/files/styles/article_640x430/public/butt_slap.jpg

Alpha males have always flirted with homosexual phrases and conduct to flaunt their heterosexuality like sportsmen patting each other’s bottoms. Soldiers of elite units are no different.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b0/2june_2007_296.jpg/800px-2june_2007_296.jpg

Take into account Le Boudin, anthem of the French Foreign Legion, in time and space as far apart from India and Pakistan as it could be.

The prelude refers to a round-bottomed bum-boy getting sodomized in the priest’s tent, and closes with Hey round-bottom, drop your trousers, censored in public in the interests of lofty political correctness!

The South Asian constituents of a five thousand year old tradition have been successfully battered by self-righteousness. The obscurantist wind that suffocated fifty centuries of renowned tradition has become a tsunami. It has spawned mass murder in Pakistan and not to be outdone, India’s restless zealots also threaten to lead its secularism astray. .

Badlu Ram is a gust of fresh mountain air to ease the suffocation and touch base with a balanced past. India and Pakistan should be bellowing their lungs out singing Badlu Ram ka Badan.

Thank you, Major Manjit Singh.