James George Roche Forlong (6 November 1824 – 29 March 1904) was a
Major General
Major general (abbreviated MG, maj. gen. and similar) is a military rank used in many countries. It is derived from the older rank of sergeant major general. The disappearance of the "sergeant" in the title explains the apparent confusion of ...
of the
Indian Army
The Indian Army is the land-based branch and the largest component of the Indian Armed Forces. The President of India is the Supreme Commander of the Indian Army, and its professional head is the Chief of Army Staff (COAS), who is a four- ...
who trained as a
civil engineer in
Scotland
Scotland (, ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a Anglo-Scottish border, border with England to the southeast ...
and
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
. He was renowned for his road-building skills through the jungles of India and Burma and for his studies on
comparative religion
Comparative religion is the branch of the study of religions with the systematic comparison of the doctrines and practices, themes and impacts (including migration) of the world's religions. In general the comparative study of religion yie ...
.
Life
He was born at Springhall in
Lanarkshire
Lanarkshire, also called the County of Lanark ( gd, Siorrachd Lannraig; sco, Lanrikshire), is a historic county, lieutenancy area and registration county in the central Lowlands of Scotland.
Lanarkshire is the most populous county in Scotl ...
on 6 November 1824, the third son of William Forlong of Erines and his wife, who was the eldest daughter of General Gordon Cumming Skene of Dyce in Aberdeenshire.
He joined the Indian Army in 1843 and fought in the Mahratha Campaign of 1845-46. He later filled various posts including that of Secretary and Chief Engineer to the government of
Oudh
The Oudh State (, also Kingdom of Awadh, Kingdom of Oudh, or Awadh State) was a princely state in the Awadh region of North India until its annexation by the British in 1856. The name Oudh, now obsolete, was once the anglicized name of ...
. In 1858/59 he travelled extensively in Egypt, Syria and the Middle East.
Exposure to
Indian religions while doing missionary work led him to abandon his Christian faith, and into some very heterodox ideas about religious origins, including those of the ancient
Hebrews
The terms ''Hebrews'' (Hebrew: / , Modern: ' / ', Tiberian: ' / '; ISO 259-3: ' / ') and ''Hebrew people'' are mostly considered synonymous with the Semitic-speaking Israelites, especially in the pre-monarchic period when they were still ...
. These found expression in his massive work of
comparative religion
Comparative religion is the branch of the study of religions with the systematic comparison of the doctrines and practices, themes and impacts (including migration) of the world's religions. In general the comparative study of religion yie ...
, ''Rivers of Life'', with its markedly sexual, some would say blasphemous, interpretation of
religious rites and
symbolism
Symbolism or symbolist may refer to:
Arts
* Symbolism (arts), a 19th-century movement rejecting Realism
** Symbolist movement in Romania, symbolist literature and visual arts in Romania during the late 19th and early 20th centuries
** Russian sym ...
.
He retired from the army in 1876 and then concentrated on writing, mainly on the comparison of various religions. His huge opus "Rivers of Life" was followed by "Faiths of Man: A Cyclopaedia of Religions" which was published posthumously in 1906.
Forlong was a
rationalist. He was an Honorary Associate of the
Rationalist Press Association
The Rationalist Association, originally the Rationalist Press Association, is an organization in the United Kingdom, founded in 1885 by a group of freethinkers who were unhappy with the increasingly political and decreasingly intellectual tenor ...
, to which he left a sum of money in his will.
He died at home, 11 Douglas Crescent in Edinburgh's West End on 29 March 1904. He is buried in
Dean Cemetery in
Edinburgh
Edinburgh ( ; gd, Dùn Èideann ) is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 council areas. Historically part of the county of Midlothian (interchangeably Edinburghshire before 1921), it is located in Lothian on the southern shore of t ...
with his wife Lavinia ("Nina") Reddie. The grave lies in the northern Victorian extension attaching the original cemetery on one of the north-south paths.
Rivers of Life
"''...the shower of phallicism that burst upon the reading public in the shape of General Forlong's ''Rivers of Life''".''
The book is in two large volumes together with a huge coloured Chronological Chart of the Religions of the World representing different currents:
*
Tree Worship
Trees are significant in many of the world's mythologies, and have been given deep and sacred meanings throughout the ages. Human beings, observing the growth and death of trees, and the annual death and revival of their foliage, have often seen ...
*
Phallic Worship
*
Serpent Worship
Snake worship is devotion to serpent deities. The tradition is present in several ancient cultures, particularly in religion and mythology, where snakes were seen as the holders of knowledge, strength, and renewal.
Near East Ancient Mesopotam ...
*
Fire Worship
*
Sun Worship
*
Ancestor Worship
The veneration of the dead, including one's ancestors, is based on love and respect for the deceased. In some cultures, it is related to beliefs that the dead have a continued existence, and may possess the ability to influence the fortune of t ...
All of these originated very early in mankind's history, and form streams flowing down the millennia and separating and commingling into the major religions.
Some Themes
Like
Payne-Knight,
D’Hancarville and
Hargrave Jennings he is of the
phallicist school of religious anthropology. Phallic worship had two wings, the right hand, or
lingam
A lingam ( sa, लिङ्ग , lit. "sign, symbol or mark"), sometimes referred to as linga or Shiva linga, is an abstract or aniconic representation of the Hindu god Shiva in Shaivism. It is typically the primary '' murti'' or devotional ...
and the
left hand path
In Western esotericism the left-hand path and right-hand path are the dichotomy between two opposing approaches to magic. This terminology is used in various groups involved in the occult and ceremonial magic. In some definitions, the Left-Ha ...
of the
yoni
''Yoni'' (; sometimes also ), sometimes called ''pindika'', is an abstract or aniconic representation of the Hindu goddess Shakti. It is usually shown with '' linga'' – its masculine counterpart. Together, they symbolize the merging of micr ...
worshipers,
* The
Garden of Eden story was simply that of human generation.
Eve
Eve (; ; ar, حَوَّاء, Ḥawwāʾ; el, Εὕα, Heúa; la, Eva, Heva; Syriac: romanized: ) is a figure in the Book of Genesis in the Hebrew Bible. According to the origin story, "Creation myths are symbolic stories describing how the ...
bruised the serpent's head and he bruised what is euphemistically called her heel.
* The
Ark of the Covenant represented a female sex organ or yoni, and the two stones it contained signified testicles.
*The early Jews practiced a most crude and extreme form of phallic worship.
Elohim was the same as
Baal
Baal (), or Baal,; phn, , baʿl; hbo, , baʿal, ). ( ''baʿal'') was a title and honorific meaning "owner", "lord" in the Northwest Semitic languages spoken in the Levant during antiquity. From its use among people, it came to be applied t ...
and their worship was lingamist, the
Yahweh
Yahweh *''Yahwe'', was the national god of ancient Israel and Judah. The origins of his worship reach at least to the early Iron Age, and likely to the Late Bronze Age if not somewhat earlier, and in the oldest biblical literature he poss ...
worshiping revolt against it (spearheaded by the prophets) was a pro-yoni movement, like Indian
Shaktism
Shaktism ( sa, शाक्त, , ) is one of several major Hindu denominations, wherein the metaphysical reality is considered metaphorically a woman and Shakti ( Mahadevi) is regarded as the supreme godhead. It includes many goddesses, al ...
.
* Christian churches are constructed on phallic principles. All these ideas are backed up with great erudition and parallels from antiquity, India and the far east.
Selected publications
*''Rivers of Life''
''Volume 1''''Volume 2''
1883)
''Through what Historical Channels did Buddhism Influence Early Christianity?''
(''Open Court'', 1887)
''Short Studies in the Science of Comparative Religions: Embracing All the Religions of Asia''
(1897)
*''Faiths of Man: Cyclopaedia of Religions'' (3 volumes, 1906)
*''Jainism and Buddhism''
Quotes
* ''The numerous tales of holy trees groves and gardens repeated everywhere and in every possible form justify me in my belief that Tree Worship was first known and after it came Lingam or Phallic, with of course the female form A-dama.''
* ''He he Serpentis the special Phallic symbol which veils the actual God and therefore do we find him the constant early attendant upon Priapus or Lingam, which I regard as the second religion of the world.''
* ''Phallic Worship, the second if not the first of man's faiths.''
James G. R. Forlong Fund
The Royal Asiatic Society
The Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, commonly known as the Royal Asiatic Society (RAS), was established, according to its royal charter of 11 August 1824, to further "the investigation of subjects connected with and for the en ...
's James G.R. Forlong Fund derives from his bequest (in a will dated 1901). The fund was registered as a charity in 1962, to be used "for the "encouragement of the study of the religions, history, character, languages and customs of Eastern races" and within this definition to be devoted to the funding of scholarships and the publication of short works on these subjects.Thomas Burrow
Thomas Burrow (; 29 June 1909 – 8 June 1986) was an Indologist and the Boden Professor of Sanskrit at the University of Oxford from 1944 to 1976; he was also a fellow of Balliol College, Oxford during this time. His work includes ''A Dravidi ...
(1940)
* Vol.19 - ''A Dictionary of the Language of Bugotu, Santa Isabel Island, Solomon Islands'', by Walter George Ivens (1940)
* Vol.18 - ''Marriage in Early Islam'', by Gertrude Henrietta Stern (1939)
* Vol.17 - ''Three Persian Dialects'', by Ann Katharine Swynford Lambton (1938)
* Vol.16 - ''The Pronunciation of Kashmiri'', by Thomas Grahame Bailey (1937)
* Vol.15 - ''Balti Grammar'', by Alfred Frank Charles Read (1934)
* Vol.14 - ''Study of the Gujarati language in the 16th century'', by Trimbaklal Nandikeshwar Dave (1935),
* Vol.13 - ''An Introduction to Colloquial Bengali'', by Walter Sutton Page (1934)
* Vol.12 - ''The Phonetic System of Ancient Japanese'', by Saburo Yoshitake (1934)
* Vol.11 - ''Dialogues in the Eastern Turki dialect on subjects of interest to travellers'', by Ross (1934),
* Vol.10 - ''Ta'rikh-i-Jahan-gushay of Juwayni (vol.3)'', by Wahid-ul-Mulk, intro by Edward Denison Ross
Sir Edward Denison Ross (6 June 1871 – 20 September 1940) was an orientalist and linguist, specializing in languages of the Middle East, Central and East Asia. He was the first director of the University of London's School of Oriental Studies ( ...
(1931)
* Vol.9 - ''Diwan'', by Falaki-i Shirwani (1929),
* Vol.8 - ''The Elements of Japanese Writing'', by Noel Everard Isemonger (1929)
* Vol.7 - ''Critical studies in the phonetic observations of Indian grammarians'' (1929)
* Vol.6 - ''Falakī-i-Shirwānī: his times, life, and works'', by Hasan Hādī (1929),
* Vol.5 - ''The Milindapañho: being dialogues between King Milinda and the Buddhist sage Nāgasena. The Pali text'', ed. Vilhelm Trenckner, index by C.J. Rylands ... and an index of Gāthās by Caroline A.F. Rhys Davids (1928)
* Vol.4 - ''Taʾríkh-i Fakhruʾd d-Dín Mubáraksháh : being the historical introduction to the Book of Genealogies of Fakhruʾd-Dín Mubáraksháh Marvar-rúdí, completed in A.D. 1206 / edited from a unique manuscript by E. Denison Ross'', by Fakhr ul-Dīn Mubārakshāh (1927)
* Vol.3 - ''Moslem Architecture, 623 to 1516. Some causes and consequences'', by Ernest Tatham Richmond (1926)
* Vol.2 - ''The Arab Conquests in Central Asia'', by Hamilton Alexander Rosskeen Gibb (1923)
* Vol.1 - ''The Primitive Culture of India'', by Thomas Callan Hodson (1922)
Notes and references
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Forlong, James
1824 births
1904 deaths
19th-century British engineers
British people in colonial India
Rationalists
Scottish civil engineers