India's "Lost" Jews

[Bholanath]

What's left is a name -- Manasseh, Menasia or Manmase, an ancestor whose spirit the community invokes to ward off evil.

In 1950, a holy man from a remote village in Mizoram said the Holy Spirit had appeared to him in a vision, to explain that the "children of Manasseh" were in fact the children of Menashe, a forefather of the Israelite tribe of Menashe.

The tribe was one of the biblical "Twelve Tribes of Israel," ten of which disappeared after the Assyrian invasion.

Gradually his ideas took hold among a people converted to Christianity a few decades before. Today, nearly 7,000 Bnei Menashe live in Mizoram and neighboring Manipur, hoping for their chance to join the rest of the community in Israel.

Oh, PLEASE!!!! Everyone in India knows that MANASA, or MANASA DEVI is the "Serpent Goddess", worshipped in numerous shrines and on the "Nag Panchami" holy day (honoring the snakes["Nag/Naga"]). Snakes are associated with practically every "God/Goddess" in the Hindu pantheon.
In the Northeast provinces of India there have been tremendous efforts (largely successful) by evangelicals to christianize the tribals/indigenous populations, specifically in Mizoram, Manipur, and NAGALAND! Talk about being cut off from one's cultural past...(and a good way to get out of a politically unstable, poverty-stricken part of India - hey, we're the "lost tribes"!)
Many tribal peoples of India (and around the world) trace their ancestry from "Naga Royalty" [children of Manasa?], and likewise Buddhists as well as Hindus in Asia. Hello! Possibly a serpent deity in the middle-east had a similar name, or alternatively, these people came from China and have NO connection to the middle-east. Hey, gotta fill up those settlements in Israel!

 

[Anders]

Hi Bholanath,
You might like to check out this thread that talks about the likelyhood of the religion of the jews coming from South America to the Middle East via India. It fits with the serpent worship that you mention in your post. The link is http://www.cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php?topic=3744.msg26804#msg26804

An exerpt from that thread is here:

the point is that there is evidence that the religion of the Jews came from South America via India to the Middle East, bringing its bloodthirsty, flesh flaying, genital mutilating god along.

Some years ago, I think in 94, a French friend told me of a book written by a former Jesuit who became interested in the roots of his Catholic faith, and so ended up with Judaism which he again traced to Kashmir. One argument was that Abraham is like "A Brahm" refering to Brahma the creator and Sara, Abraham's wife is like Saraswati, the wife of Brahma. Secondly he saw in the story of Jacob anointing a stone that had given a dream the equivalent of the whorship of the Shiva lingam which is made of stone on which water is dripping and to which pooja is done in the temples dedicated to Shiva. Thirdly he noticed that a black coat and cerimonial sword allegedly used by Rabbis or some order of Jewish prists can be found very similar in Kashmir. As to explain why the Jews came to Palestine the reason was given, that they were a renegade sect of Siva worshippers, the male aspect of god and since the Kashmiris were tradtiotionally very strong devotees of Mother Divine this Shiva sect was expelled from the valley and came to the west but retained their wish to return to the fertile Kashmiri valley, the land of milk and honey. Another told me, also French by the way, that the temple of Solomon is in Kashmir, it is a small Shiva temple in Srinagar, which means the city of Sri, the City of the Goddess, and is the capital of Kashmir.

Hey, gotta fill up those settlements in Israel!

Yep, that's what it boils down to!

Anders

 

[Bholanath]

Anders, thanks for the link to interesting thread.

What I can understand is that, if both Hebrew and Sanskrit have Atlantean roots, and if Atlantis was like a global civilization, and if Atlantis had a center of civilization that was related to the Americas,............ it does not follow that the flux of influence first came from India to America, even if Sanskrit and much other knowledge has been preserved in India.

There seems always to be a path tracing back to Atlantis, for example from the Indus Valley civilization, and possibly Saraswati River civilization (once thought to be "mythical", but recently re-discovered via satellite technology), in the area now called Sindh and Kutch and Rajasthan. There is evidence some of the European gypsies came from this area (goddess-worship, language, music - ties). In my Ramayana research I found reference to South America (according to Indian scholars) know as Nagadvipa (land of snakes), a place to where one of Ravana's demon buddies abducted Ram and Lakshman temporarily. They were rescued by Hanuman (aboriginal/dravidian shamanic hero personage), whose "son" lived there in S. America. The book "Gods, Sages, and Kings" by Frawley is highly informative on Vedic civilization, describing a highly active global sea-faring culture.

What a tangled web.