We know that God reestablished his covenant with the Jacob and his children under the name ISRAEL (the path to God). We also know that because of departing the covenant, the Lord scattered his people and promised to one day Gather them again. The History of the Jews is primarily that of the Tribes of Benjamin and Judah. The Northern Tribes were scattered among Babylon and Syria, and from there scattered to the ends of the Earth. Did you know that some members of these tribes went to India, Ethiopia and other places? Some of their history is known to us, but all of their wanderings are known to God. The Same God who spoke his Law to Moses and to Jesus is alive and speaks to us today. Through the same process of revelation, all the lost history of the Earth will be known. Every person will know much more about their heritage, their place in the Kingdom God will establish, and they will know that there is an all powerful God over the earth that fulfills His promises.
This page will give a general overview of what we know so far, and will hold space for more information to be revealed.
We see below indications that the Israelites were scattered south to Africa, east to Asia and north to Europe, and some made it far to the west into the Americas and the Pacific Islands, quite literally to the four corners of the world.
BY TRIBE
The Mountain Jews of the Caucasus.
The Bukharian Jews of Central Asia.[21]
Nordisk Israel identify the Tribe of Naphtali with Norway.[22]
Pacific Islanders (Samoans, Hawaiians, Tongans, Fijians, etc.).[23]
Proponents of Nordic Israelism follow John Cox Gawler's identification of the Tribe of Dan with Denmark. However Gawler also placed Dan in Scotland and Ireland, an identification British Israelites follow, but proponents of Nordic Israelism stress more on the identification with Denmark.[13]
Finland is identified with the Tribe of Issachar by Nordic Israelites. Proponents point out that in Finnish the word for Father is Isä, connecting the word to Issachar and its Hebrew etymology:
...But one of the most convincing details comes from the Finnish word for Father, which is, Isä - almost confirming ancient Finnish ties with the Israelite tribe of Issachar. Only Finnish has such a unique word for Father.[14]
The pyramidologist Adam Rutherford in 1937 published Iceland's Great Inheritance (1937) in which he connected the Tribe of Benjamin to Iceland. Modern proponents of Nordic Israelism follow this identification and articles have been published further on the identification.[15]
Samaria, Great Britain
America
BY REGION
Tribes of Levi, Ephraim and Manasseh
The Samaritans, once a comparatively large, but now a very small ethnic and religious group, consist of about 700 people currently living in Israel and Samaria. They regard themselves as the descendants of the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh, the sons of Joseph.
Several genetic studies on the Samaritan population have been done using haplogroup comparisons as well as wide-genome genetic studies. Of the 12 Samaritan males used in the analysis, 10 (83%) had Y chromosomes belonging to haplogroup J, which includes three of the four Samaritan families. The Joshua-Marhiv family belongs to Haplogroup J-M267 (formerly "J1"), while the Danafi and Tsedakah families belong to haplogroup J-M172 (formerly "J2"), and can be further distinguished by M67, the derived allele of which has been found in the Danafi family. The only Samaritan family not found in haplogroup J was the Cohen family (Tradition: Tribe of Levi) which was found haplogroup E-M78 (formerly "E3b1a M78").[11] This article predated the change of the classification of haplogroup E3b1-M78 to E3b1a-M78 and the further subdivision of E3b1a-M78 into 6 subclades based on the research of Cruciani, et al.[12]
The 2004 article on the genetic ancestry of the Samaritans by Shen et al. concluded from a sample comparing Samaritans to several Jewish populations, all currently living in Israel—representing the Beta Israel, Ashkenazi Jews, Iraqi Jews, Libyan Jews, Moroccan Jews, and Yemenite Jews, as well as Israeli Druze and Palestinians—that "the principal components analysis suggested a common ancestry of Samaritan and Jewish patrilineages. Most of the former may be traced back to a common ancestor in what is today identified as the paternally inherited Israelite high priesthood (Cohanim) with a common ancestor projected to the time of the Assyrian conquest of the kingdom of Israel."[13]
Archaeologists Aharoni, et al., estimated that this "exile of peoples to and from Israel under the Assyrians" took place during ca. 734–712 BC.[14] The authors speculated that when the Assyrians conquered the Northern Kingdom of Israel, resulting in the exile of many of the Israelites, a subgroup of the Israelites that remained in the Land of Israel "married Assyrian and female exiles relocated from other conquered lands, which was a typical Assyrian policy to obliterate national identities."[13] The study goes on to say that "Such a scenario could explain why Samaritan Y chromosome lineages cluster tightly with Jewish Y lineages, while their mitochondrial lineages are closest to Iraqi Jewish and Israeli Arab mtDNA sequences." Non-Jewish Iraqis were not sampled in this study; however, mitochondrial lineages of Jewish communities tend to correlate with their non-Jewish host populations, unlike paternal lineages which almost always correspond to Israelite lineages.
The Samaritans also retain ancient Israelite traditions that predate Judaic customs and the Oral Law. The Samaritan Pentateuch is preserved in a Paleo-Hebrew derived script that predates the Babylonian exile and further lends credence to the Israelite lineage of the Samaritans. Samaritans adhere to a version of the Torah, known as the Samaritan Pentateuch, which differs in some respects from the Masoretic text, sometimes in important ways, and less so from the Septuagint. the Samaritans do not regard the Tanakh as an accurate or truthful history. They regard only Moses as a prophet, speak their own version of Hebrew, and while they do not regard themselves as a part of Judaism, the Samaritans do consider Jews to be fellow Israelites and they view themselves and Jews as the two authentic houses of Israel. Less archaeological work has been performed on investigating the direction and the regions of the post-Assyrian exile largely because those enthusiastic in pursuing this path of research usually lack skills while archaeologists lack funds, contrary to the situation in Israel where the period of the Judges has been to some degree substantiated by physical finds,[15] and because the interest in pursuing this subject is seen as a semi-mythical pursuit at the edge of serious research. Usually the lack of archaeological evidence has been explained by the assimilation theory which proposes that the exiled Israelites adopted so many of the traits of the surrounding cultures and that any unearthed artefacts cannot be linked to them with any certainty.
Since 539 BC, when Jews began returning from Babylonian captivity, many Jews have rejected the Samaritan claim of descent from the Israelite tribes, though some have regarded them as a sect of Judaism. The advent of genetic studies, the discovery of the Paleo-Hebrew script, and textual comparisons between the Samaritan Pentateuch and the Masoretic text all have made it very difficult to refute the Israelite origin of the Samaritans, causing the majority of the Jewish world in modern times to view the Samaritans as an authentic Israelite group.[1][2]
Some traditions of the Assyrian Jews hold that Israelites of the tribe of Benjamin first arrived in the area of modern Kurdistan after the Neo-Assyrian Empire's conquest of the Kingdom of Israel during the 8th century BC; they were subsequently relocated to the Assyrian capital.[35] During the first century BCE, the Assyrian royal house of Adiabene—which, according to Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, was ethnically Assyrian and whose capital was Erbil (Aramaic: Arbala; Kurdish: Hewlêr)—was converted to Judaism.[36][37] King Monobazes, his queen Helena, and his son and successor Izates are recorded as the first proselytes.[38]
Main article: Nimat Allah al-Harawi
According to the Encyclopaedia of Islam, the theory of Pashtun descent from Israelites is traced to Maghzan-e-Afghani, a history compiled for Khan-e-Jehan Lodhi in the reign of Mughal Emperor Jehangir in the 16th century. The Maghzan-e-Afghani's Bani Israel theory has been discounted by modern authorities, due to numerous historical and linguistic inconsistencies.[citation needed]
In his universal history Mirat-ul-Alam – The Mirror of the World – Bukhtawar Khan describes the journeys of the Pashtuns from the Holy Land to Ghor, Ghazni, and Kabul. Similarly, Rahmat bin Shah Alam, in his Khulasat-ul-Ansab and Fareed-ud-Din Ahmad in Risala-i-Ansab-i-Afghana provide the history of the Afghans and deal with their genealogies.
Two of the most famous historical works on the subject are Tarikh-i-Afghana – History of the Afghans – by Nimat Allah al-Harawi, which was translated by Bernard Dorn in 1829, and Tarikh-i-Hafiz Rahmatkhani, by Muhammad Zadeek which he wrote in 1770. "Tawarikh-e-Hafiz Rehmat khani"was later translated and provided with footnotes by Khan Roshan khan. These books deal with the early history of the Pashtuns, their origin and wanderings in general. They particularly discuss the Yusefzai (literally "sons of Joseph") and their occupation of Kabul, Bajoor, Swat, Peshawar and some of Charsadda (District of Peshawar).
In his Travels into Bokhara, which he published in 1835, Sir Alexander Burnes wrote: "The Afghans call themselves Bani Israel, or the children of Israel, but consider the term Yahoodi, or Jew, to be one of reproach. They say that Nebuchadnezzar, after the overthrow of Israel, transplanted them into the towns of Ghore near Bamean and that they were called after their Chief Afghan they say that they lived as Israelites till Khalid summoned them in the first century of the Muhammadans. Having precisely stated the traditions and history of the Afghans I see no good reason for discrediting them… the Afghans look like Jews and the younger brother marries the widow of the elder. The Afghans entertain strong prejudices against the Jewish nation, which would at least show that they have no desire to claim – without just cause – a descent from them." (Sir Alexander Burnes, Travels into Bokhara, Vol. 2:139-141.)
Burnes was again in 1837 sent as the first British Envoy to the Court of Kabul. For some time he was the guest of King Dost Mohammad Khan. He questioned the King about the descent of the Pashtuns from the Israelites. The King replied that "his people had no doubt of that, though they repudiated the idea of being Jews".
William Moorcroft traveled during 1819 to 1825 through various countries adjoining India, including Afghanistan. "The Khaibarees," he says, "are tall and have a singularly Jewish cast of features." (Moorcroft, Travels in Himalayan Provinces of Hindustan and the Punjab; in Ladakh and Kashmir, in Peshawar, Kabul, Kunduz and Bokhara, 12)
In his book, An Historical and Descriptive Account of Persia and Afghanistan, which he published in 1843, J. B. Frazer says: "According to their own tradition they believe themselves to be descendants from the Hebrews… they preserved the purity of their religion until they met with Islam." (J.B. Frazer, A Historical and Descriptive Account of Persia and Afghanistan, 298)
Sir Henry Yule (1902 Encyclopædia Britannica, article on Afghanistan) references the tradition:
This story is repeated in great and varying detail in sundry books by afghans, the oldest of which appears to be of the 16th century; nor do we know that any trace of the legend is found of older date. In the version gives by Major Raverty (Introd. To Afghan Grammar), Afghana is settled by King Solomon himself in the Sulimani mountains; there is nothing about Nebuchadnezzar or Ghur. The historian Firishta says he had read that the Pashtuns were descended from Copts of the race of Pharoah. And one of the Afghan histories, quoted by Mr. Bellew, relates "a current tradition" that previous to the time of Kais, Bilo the father of the Biluchis, Uzbak (evidently the father of the Uzbegs), and Afghana were considered as brethren. As Mahommed Uzbeg Khan, the eponymus of the medley of Tartar tribes called Uzbegs, reigned in the 14th century A.D., this gives some possible light on the value of these so-called traditions.
Thomas Ledlie wrote in an article in the Calcutta Review in 1989 that "the Afghans [...] claim themselves to be of Bani Israel." [11]
It should first be noted that Jewish tradition holds that the tribes were not 'lost', but intermingled. The idea entire tribes - such as the Tribe of Joseph - became separated from the main body is not in accordance with that tradition. It is, however, established historical fact that the early Jewish diaspora was widespread, particularly along the Silk Road, and that sizeable groups migrated, assimilated, and eventually, in some cases, took the local religion. Additionally, the presence of an early Jewish community in the area is well attested, and indeed the community survived to the modern day. It is therefore not unlikely that there is a community descended from early Jewish migrants, but difficult to plausibly call them a 'lost tribe'.
Joseph-Pierre Ferrier wrote his History of the Afghans in 1858 (translated by Capt. W. M. Jesse). Ferrier wrote that "When Nadir Shah Afshar marching to the conquest of India arrived at Peshawar, the chief of the tribe of Yoosoof Zyes (Sons of Joseph) presented him with a Bible written in Hebrew and several other articles that had been used in their ancient worship and which they had preserved...This fact, supposing it to be one, if affording evidence sufficiently convincing to some persons, can only be considered as authority with respect to the Yoosoofzyes ; but it does not follow, therefore, that other Afghan tribes are branches from the same stem ; on the contrary, everything leads to the conclusion that, although they all speak a common language, the Pushtoo, the tribes are not all of the same origin - they are distinguished by marked characteristics, moral as well as physical."[12]
George Moore published his work The Lost Tribes in 1861. He argued that these tribes are traceable to India. After giving details of the character of the wandering Israelites, he said: "And we find that the very natural character of Israel reappear in all its life and reality in countries where people call themselves Bani Israel and universally claim to be the descendants of the Lost Tribes. The nomenclature of their tribes and districts, both in ancient Geography, and at the present day, confirms this universal natural tradition. Lastly, we have the route of the Israelites from Media to Afghanistan and India marked by a series of intermediate stations bearing the names of several of the tribes and clearly indicating the stages of their long and arduous journey." [George Moore, The Lost Tribes]
Moore goes on to say: "Sir William Jones, Sir John Malcolm and the missing Chamberlain, after full investigation, were of the opinion that the Ten Tribes migrated to India, Tibet, and Cashemire [Kashmir] through Afghanistan." [George Moore, The Lost Tribes]
Major H. W. Bellew went on a political mission to Kandahar and published his impressions in his Journal of a Mission to Kandahar, 1857-8. He then wrote in 1879 his book Afghanistan and Afghans. In 1880 he was sent, once again on another mission to Kabul, and in the same year he delivered two lectures before the United Services Institute at Simla: "A New Afghan Question", or "Are the Afghans Israelites?" and "Who are the Afghans?" He then published another book: The Races of Afghanistan. Finally he collected all his facts in An Enquiry into the Ethnography of Afghanistan, which was published in 1891.
In this work he mentions Killa Yahoodi ("Fort of the Jews") (H.W. Bellew, An Enquiry into the Ethnography of Afghanistan, 34), as being the name of the eastern boundary of their country, and also speaks of Dasht-i-Yahoodi ("Jewish plain") (ibid., 4), a place in Mardan District. He concludes: "The Afghan’s accounts of Jacob and Esau, of Moses and the Exodus, of the Wars of the Israelites with the Amalekites and conquest of Palestine, of the Ark of the Covenant and of the election of Saul to the Kingdom, etc., etc., are clearly founded on the Biblical records, and clearly indicate a knowledge of the Old Testament, which if it does not prove the presence of the Christians at least corroborates their assertion that the Afghans were readers of the Pentateuch." (Ibid., 191
The "Lost Tribes" tradition has left some traces in the self-perception of both some Pashtuns and of some Jews well into the 20th century, and until the present day.[13] Thus, Itzhak Ben-Zvi, the second President of Israel, in his 1957 book The Exiled and the Redeemed, writes that Hebrew migrations into Afghanistan began: "with a sprinkling of exiles from Samaria who had been transplanted there by Shalmaneser, King of Assyria (719 BC) [...] The Afghan tribes, among whom the Jews have lived for generations, are Moslems who retain to this day their amazing tradition about their descent from the Ten Tribes. It is an ancient tradition, and one not without some historical plausibility... if the Afghan tribes persistently adhere to the tradition that they were once Hebrews and in course of time embraced Islam, and there is not an alternative tradition also existent among them, they are certainly Jewish." (p. 176)
In the 2000s, the "lost tribes" hypothesis was popularized by Shalva Weil, an anthropologist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem,[14] In 2010, The Observer under the title "Pashtun clue to lost tribes of Israel" claimed that "Some leading Israeli anthropologists believe that, of all the many groups in the world who claim a connection to the 10 lost tribes, the Pashtuns, or Pathans, have the most compelling case" and on a planned study on the ancestry of the Afridi Pashtuns (while noting that "A previous genetic study in the same area did not provide proof one way or the other"), also citing Weil as saying "Of all the groups, there is more convincing evidence about the Pathans than anybody else, but the Pathans are the ones who would reject Israel most ferociously. That is the sweet irony".[15]
by Isaac L. Hmar
isaac_intoate@yahoo.com
“My sheep wandered over all the mountains and on every high hill. They were scattered over the whole earth, and no one searched or looked for them”- Ezekiel 34: 6.
Claming to be the lost tribe of Israel by various tribes around the world is not stupor nor unreasonable as there was a historical event at a time when the Jews were suppressed to extend from disrespected minority in the Christian and Islam world. As a result, the Jews were scattered around the world and the 10 tribes of Israel are still believed to be missed till today. According to II Kings 15 (Old Testament): “In the days of Pekah king of Israel came Tiglath – Pileser king of Assyria and took Ijon, and Abel –beth –mah `a chah , and Jonah, and Kedesh, and Hazor, and Galilee, and Gentile, all the land of Naphtali, and carried them to captive to Assyria.” Therefore, 1500 years after the tribes of northern Israel were supposedly exiled from their homeland in ancient Palestine and across African and Asian continents; dozens of different ethnic groups have recently made claims to be descent from the 10 lost tribes of the kingdom of Israel. Some of them have an indigenous tradition of Israelite ancestry while others get the idea of their Jewish connection from Christian missionaries who noticed some similarities between their customs and ancient Judaism. The most interesting groups among them include the Ethiopians of Ethiopia, the Pathans of Afghan-Pakistan border, the Kashmiris of Kashmir (India), the Chiangmins of Chinese-Tibetan border, the Ibos and Lembas of Africa, the Mormon of Salt Lake City in U.K and the Bnei Menashe (Shinlung tribes) of North East India.
ITS ORIGIN: The Israelites, who had been lost and scattered around the world, believed that God would surely bring them back to their homeland. Prophet Ezekiel foretold this event in the book of the Holy Bible. Thus, for more comprehensive perceptive on the lost tribe, let us briefly study the history of Israel to see how they were misplaced and lost. Some historians believed that the 10 lost tribes of Israel disappeared after they crossed the Sambatyon River. This is a reverberation of the legend that the 10 lost tribes who were exiled by the Assyrians in the 8th century B.C.E. from which time they lost touch with the rest of the Jewish people - are to be found beyond the Sambatyon River which is a torrential, rushing river all the days of the week, apart from the Sabbath. However, historians were unable to make out the exact location and site of the river, and of course, the picture of the Sambatyon River put forward by scholars was sharply diverse and puzzling. One Roman historian Gaius Secundus(AD 23-79) commonly known as Pliny the Elder, asserted that the river happened to be very deep and the flowing water current was burly while Sabbath was approaching nearer. As a result, they could not proceed to their land and started scattered at different places. The most important question is: who are the 10 lost tribes of Israel?
When King Solomon passed away, his kingdom began disintegrating. However the ten tribes of Isreal like Reuben, Simon, Isakar, Zebulon, Manasseh, Ephraim, Dana, Napthalia, Gada and Ashera continued to occupy Shekim and Nablas in the northern part of Samaria where they established the kingdom of Israel. In 722-21 BC, the Assyrians occupied the territory immediately north of what is today's Syria, Iraq, and Turkey and they continued to build their empire. Following World War I, when the British took over the lands formerly ruled by the Ottoman Empire, they sent their archeologists to the Middle East and took many local ancient treasures to the British Museum. You can see there the Meshy Stone which depicts the tribute paid by King Jehu of the northern kingdom of Israel to Shalmanaser III, king of Assyria. You can also see a relief from the walls of the magnificent palace at Nineveh, Assyria's capital city. That palace belonged to King Sennacherib, and the relief shows the siege of the Israelite city of Lachish; it was conquered by Sennacherib, who then boasted about it on his palace walls. The British stripped the relief from the Nineveh palace and brought to the British Museum.
In II Chronicle 5 it is written thus, “And the God of Israel stirred up the spirit of Pul King of Assyria, and the spirit of Tilgath-Pilneser King of Assyria, and he carried them away, even the Reubenites, and the Gadites, and the half tribe of Manasseh, and brought them unto Halah, and Haber, and Hara, and to the river Grozan, unto this day.” These historical facts referred to the date from the 5th or 4th century B.C.E. Tiglath-Pileser and pul (Tiglath-Pileser`s Baylonian name) are one and the same Assyrian King, and the tribal territories of Reuben, Gad, and the eastern half of Manasseh were in the areas listed in II King 15, the verse in Chronicles can be discounted as a late conflation of the two passages in the Kings. Setting it aside, then, and supplementing the account in Kings with our knowledge of Israelites and Assyrian history, it is possible to arrive at the following reconstruction:
Firstly, in 734-732 B.C.E some two centuries after the fall of Davidian monarchy the kingdom was disjointed into a northern kingdom of Israel and a southern Kingdom of Judah, most of the north was overrun and invaded by the Assyrians, leaving only its capital city-Samaria, and the surrounding countryside unconquered and expanding their frontiers south and westward.
Secondly, in 726, Tukulti-apil-Essara`s son and successor, Sulman-asared V(726-722), called Shalmaneser in the Bible, marched on Samaria and reduced its King Hoshea(730-722) to a vassal. In 722, suspecting Hoshea of conspiring with the Egyptians, he again laid siege to the city. The battle lasted 3 years. Shalmaneser died before the battle ended and was succeeded by his son Sargon II (721-705), who presided over the fall of Samaria and the final destruction of the Kingdom of Israel in 720.
Thirdly, after both Tiglath-Pileser`s and Sargon`s conquests, the Assyrians deported Israelites to different regions of Assyria and replaced them with exiles from elsewhere.The remaining southern kingdom of Judah was ultimately destroyed by a new regional power, the Babylonians in 586. With the fall of Samaria, the northern tribes disappeared. We know no more about them since then. The Bible says nothing about the fate of the Israelites exiled.
THE CLAIM: For many years now, there has been widespread belief within some sections of Mizoram and Manipur particularly among the Kuki-Hmar-Mizo group who claim to have a historical relationship with one of the "Ten Lost Tribes" of the Biblical Israelites, namely, the tribe of Manasseh. Although this claim might appear to be far-fetched, many empirical facts seem to support this belief. However, as this group of people did not maintain any written historical records before the ‘Gospel’ reached them, so there are no written documents to support their Israelites’ connection. Their cultural and traditional beliefs and practices were passed from generation to generation by means of the oral tradition. They based their connection with the Israelites mainly from the wordings of a song that was sung during the grandest and biggest festival of the Hmar tribe - SIKPUI KUT (Sikpui festival). This particular song made vivid references to the Israelites at the time of their liberation from the Egyptian bondage, under the leadership of Moses and the events that followed when they crossed the Red Sea. Interestingly, some of the Kuki-Hmar-Mizo traditional and customary practices have similarities with those of the biblical Israelites.
In 1950 some section of Kuki-Mizo began to contact Calcutta Israeli Consulate to accept them as one of the lost tribes of Israel solely on the basis of the “SIKPUI HLA. In 1971 there was an inquiry from the home ministry regarding the claim made by these people as the lost tribe. Shri(Late) Ngurdinglien Ex-MLA requested L. Keivom who was then having a district training, to translate the SIKPUI HLA(Red-sea song) into English to verify their claim. Following is the note prepared by L. Keivom;
A Note prepared for the Government of Manipur in 1971 by Mr. L.Keivom
From time immemorial the Hmars used to celebrate during winter season an annual festival called SIKPUI FESTIVAL OR FEAST. In one of the songs of this Sikpui Festival, there is a vivid reference to some happenings in the unknown distant past, which bear similarity to the experiences of the Israelites at the time of their liberation from the Egyptian bondage under the leadership of Moses and the events that followed after they crossed the Red Sea. This particular song occupies such an important place that no Sikpui Festival can start before singing it with rapt attention. This fact may therefore suggest that the incident referred to in the song might have been an unusual happening of great consequence in the pages of their national history; otherwise they would not have attached great importance. Following is a rough translation:
While we are preparing for the Sikpui Feast,
The big red sea becomes divided;
As we march along fighting our foes,
We are being led by pillar of cloud by day,
And pillar of fire by night.
Our enemies, O ye folks, are thick with fury,
Come out with your shields and arrows.
Fighting our enemies all day long,
We march forward as cloud-fire goes before us.
The enemies we fought all day long,
The big sea swallowed them like wild beast.
Collect the quails,
And draw the water that springs out of the rock.
2. In one of the Hmar folklores, mention is made of the Great Deluge largely similar to the one mentioned in the Holy Bible but with a slight variation. According to this account, the big flood covered the whole earth except one hillock where all living beings fled to safety. There are unconnected accounts, however.
3. Another Hmar folklore mentions something like the happenings after the Great Deluge: their attempt to build a Tower of Babel and the providential intervention leading to the confusion of the language of the people involving in it. There is a slight departure from the biblical accounts in this case also. The Hmar folklore talks mainly of the division of language without mentioning the background.
4. Religious particularly sacrificial rites and practices of the Hmars are very similar to that of the Jews in biblical times. The question whether these similarities are accidental can only be a matter of conjecture as empirical study is not possible with our present scanty (mostly hearsay) historical material. One thing however is very clear. Given the geographical remoteness and the near similarities of their accounts of their national experiences and the commonality in sacrificial rites and practices, the Hmars and the Jews might at one time have either lived together long enough to influence on each other’s way of life or they once belonged to the same community. This missing link will remain the unsolved mystery in their history, a challenging task that so far eludes solution.
In conclusion, Mr. L. Keivom and some scholars believes that this song may be composed after the gospel reached Hmars and know something about the book of Genesis and Exodus, the Israelites at the time of their liberation from the Egyptian bondage, under the leadership of Moses and the events that followed when they crossed the Red Sea. Thus, L. Keivom IFS (Rtd) asserts that the “SIKPUI HLA (song of the Sikpui festival) doesn’t have any vivid references and connection with Red-sea of the Israelites. However, interestingly, some of the Kuki-Hmar-Mizo traditional and customary practices have similarity with those of the biblical Israelites.
LINKS TO THE LOST TRIBES