Huzoor (rh): About Luqman we know that he was one of the wise men and has never been mentioned as a prophet in the Holy Quran. But Zulkif is taken to be a prophet by all the scholars who read the Holy Quran because it is mentioned in the list of prophets. So Zulkif is understood to be, by some scholars, Buddha of India because he belonged to a place, Kephal or Kaphel or something like that, you know. The place of his origin is called Kephal or Kaphal, I don’t remember.
Person 1: Kapilvastu.
Huzoor (rh): Kapilvastu, that’s right. Kapil. So Kefal is the Arabic pronunciation of Kapil. So Zulkif is the one who belongs to Kapil. And because he is an obscure prophet, no prophet by such name is found in the history of those prophets who appeared in the Middle East. So that is an added factor in favour of this theory. That Zulkif, who is an obscure prophet as far as the Middle East goes, belongs to some different part of the world, so we must find out where he was. And when we study the history of other nations and other religions, then this is the nearest possible explanation. So as far as Luqman is concerned, he is taken to be only a wise man. As far as Zulkif goes, this is my conjecture and I tend to agree with this theory. That it was the Buddha which was mentioned. Some say that there are other prophets as well, who apparently are mentioned as Middle Eastern prophets, but who belong to other regions of the world. But it’s yet an open question. Some people are investigating on this issue. And I told some ahmadi scholars to work on this.
