Notovitch claimed that, at the lamasery or monastery of Hemis, he learned of the "Life of Saint Issa, Best of the Sons of Men." His story, with the text of the "Life," was published in French in 1894 as La vie inconnue de Jesus Christ. It was translated into English, German, Spanish, and Italian.

Notovitch's account of his discovery of the work is that he had been laid up with a broken leg at the monastery of Hemis. There he prevailed upon the chief lama, who had told him of the existence of the work, to read to him, through an interpreter, the somewhat detached verses of the Tibetan version of the " Life of Issa," which was said to have been translated from the Pali. Notovitch says that he himself afterward grouped the verses " in accordance with the requirements of the narrative." As published by Notovitch, the work consists Of 244 short paragraphs, arranged in fourteen chapters.

The otherwise undocumented name "Issa" most closely resembles the Arabic name Isa (????), used in the Koran to refer to Jesus.

This Hemis Tibetan monastery was along the silk route, when Ladakh was formerly part of Tibet, before India became a nation, and to this day, monks who live here claim that "Issa" was a former student.

The "Life of Issa" begins with an account of Israel in Egypt, its deliverance by Moses, its neglect of religion, and its conquest by the Romans. Then follows an account of the Incarnation. At the age of thirteen the divine youth, rather than take a wife, leaves his home to wander with a caravan of merchants to India (Sindh), to study the laws of the great Buddhas.

Issa is welcomed by the Jains, but leaves them to spend time among the Buddhists, and spends six years among them, learning Pali and mastering their religious texts. He goes among the pagans, warning them against idolatry and teaching a high morality. Then he visits Persia and preaches to the Zoroastrians.

At twenty-nine Issa returns to his own country and begins to preach. He visits Jerusalem, where Pilate is apprehensive about him. The Jewish leaders, however, are also apprehensive about his teachings yet he continues his work for three years. He is finally arrested and put to death for blasphemy, for claiming to be the son of God. His followers are persecuted, but his disciples carry his message out over the world.

In the Notovich translation, the section regarding Pontius Pilate is of particular note; in this version of the events around the death of Jesus, the Sanhedrin go to Pilate and argue to save the life of Jesus, and they are the ones who 'wash their hands' of his death, instead of the Roman Pilate.

Edgar Goodspeed describes the debunking of Notovitch's claims as a hoax.

Notovitch's writings were immediately controversial. The German orientalist Max Mueller,professor of indian philosophy in Oxford who'd never been to India himself, published a letter he'd received from a British colonial officer J.Archibald Douglas, which stated that the presence of Notovich in Ladakh was "not documented.". The head of the Hemis community signed a document that denounced Notovitch as an outright liar.

The story of his visit to Hemis seems to be taken from H.P. Blavatsky's Isis Unveiled.In the original, the traveler with the broken leg was taken in at Mount Athos in Greece and found the text of Celsus' True Doctrine in the monastery library.

The idea that Jesus was in India was also inspired by a statement in Isis that he went to the foothills of the Himalayas.

Although Notovitch is the first one known to claim the Jesus's travel to India, however Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (d.1908), who proclaimed himself the awaited Messiah, made a more detailed research on the account of Jesus's travel to India. Unlike Notovitch he claimed that Jesus had traveled towards India post-crucifixion in search of the lost tribes of Israel and there he died a natural death. Ghulam Ahmad founded the Ahmadiyya sect. Others claim to have seen the same manuscripts.

Many other authors have taken this information and have incorporated it into their own works. For example, in her book "The Lost Years of Jesus: Documentary Evidence of Jesus' 17-Year Journey to the East", Elizabeth Clare Prophet asserts that Buddhist manuscripts provide evidence that Jesus traveled to India, Nepal, Ladakh and Tibet.

During his stay in Ladakh Notovith collected several Mani stones on which were engraved sacred tibetan words which were later donated to the Trocadero Museum in Paris. Also in the Musee' de l'Homme in Paris there is a piece of Kashmiri fabric registered under his name. The night between the 3rd and 4th November 1887 Notovitch suffered severe toothache for which he sought the assistance of a German missionary who had studied medicine in Edinburgh, and that had been working as the director of the Leh hospital since 1866. The missionary was Dr. Karl Rudolph Marx and belonged to the Morovian brothers. The diary of Dr.Marx correctly reports having treated Notovitch for his tootache.

In 1893 , Notovitch work was first time publicized at international platform by shri Virchand_Gandhi in Chicago who was one the important delegate to First Parliament_of_the_World's_Religions. And Shri Virchand_Gandhi is credited for originally translating & publishing same to english in 1894 from an ancient manuscript found in Tibet and this version is available online.

One of the skeptics who personally investigated Notovich's claim was Swami Abhedananda, who journeyed to the monastery determined to either find a copy of the Himis manuscript or to expose it as a fraud. His book of travels, entitled Kashmir O Tibetti, tells of a visit to the Himis gonpa and includes a Bengali translation of two hundred twenty-four verses essentially the same as the Notovitch text, confirming therefore the existence of the documents.

In 1925, the Russian philosopher, Nicholas Roerich, also journeyed to the monastery. He apparently saw the same documents as Notovitch and Abhedananda. Both Abhedananda and Roerich were thereby convinced of the authenticity of the Issa legend .

A search at Hemis Library by an American University was carried out in 2005, but nothing was found.

There is a documentary and a book on this subject, by Richard Bock, who seems to believe Notovitch's claims (book and film 1976-77, DVD released 2007 ) ..

An extended publication regarding the years spent by Jesus in India with extremely detailed historical, facts and pictures are contained in the besteseller book "Jesus lived in India" by Holger Kersten.

Notovitch published a book in Russian and French, pleading for Russia's entry into the Triple Entente with France and England. It is entitled in French: La Russie et l'alliance anglaise: étude historique et politique, and was published in 1906. He also wrote biographies of Tsar Nicolas II and Alexander III. (Sources: worldcat.org, books.google.com.)