Volume 3, circa 1765-1800
- Call Number:
- Folio A 2023 69
- Holdings:
- [Request]
- Title(s):
- Volume 3
- Date:
- circa 1765-1800
- Classification:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Series:
- Series I: A voyage from England to Bombay with descriptions in Asia, Africa, and South America
- Provenance:
- Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
- Conditions Governing Access:
- The materials are open for research.
- Conditions Governing Use:
- The collection is the physical property of the Yale Center for British Art. Literary rights, including copyright, belong to the authors or their legal heirs and assigns. For further information, consult the Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts.
- Scope and Content:
- Forbes introduces his eight letter as an overview of Hindu practices and beliefs. He insists that he does not possess the knowledge or space to conduct an in depth investigation of the topic, yet also adds that local particularities need not concern the reader too much, as Hindus are relatively the same regardless of location. A brief historical overview—of the shift from idyllic patriarchy to the despotism of the “rajahs”—almost immediately gives way to an analysis of Hindu religious beliefs and practices. In a rough sense, Forbes divides Hindu traditions into two parts: religious beliefs and scripture, and social practices. The former occupy the first half of the letter, while the latter comprise the second half. Throughout, Forbes echoes prevailing Western views of India—which emphasized caste, religious practice, and exoticism—though he analyzes certain aspects of Indian life quite closely, at times providing both theological and ethnographic commentary. Forbes insists on a narrative of Indian religious practices—he uses the term Hindu, though “Hinduism” as a concept did not yet exist—predicated on decline. He writes: “we should, according to the opinion of those better versed in their mythology than myself, still admire the sublimity of their religion; which being extremely allegorical, has by that means degenerated into extravagant superstition.” While Hindu practices are, to Forbes, often cruel and confusing, their theoretical foundations nonetheless deserve attention. He later attempts to convey the “pure tenets” of this “very rational system, now greatly degenerated.” For Hindus, the soul is, according to Forbes, a “delinquent angel” which, though brought into the world by Brahma, the Supreme Deity, now transmigrates through the world, “subject to natural and moral evils,” before it might return to the “innocence” of its previous state. Forbes reads Hindu notions of reincarnation through a highly Christian lens, interpreting the soul’s various incarnations as punishments—like ascetic practices, which he reads as atonement—for past sins. Against this backdrop, “how highly [Europe] should prize the pure and holy tenets of the Christian Faith,” and Christ, who “offered himself as a full, perfect, and all-sufficient atonement for the sins of fallen Man!” Nevertheless, Forbes defends these beliefs from the charge of polytheism, insisting that polytheist worship simply reflects the inability of the human mind to grasp divinity in its entirety. Instead, one worships the “wisdom and creative power of God” under “the name of Brimha,” the “providential and preserving quality” under the “appellation of Veeshnu,” and the “attribute which corrects and destroys” under “that of Seeva, or Shivah.” And if Hindus and Muslims pose a difficulty for those who might attempt to covert them, it is less for their irrationality, than for the former’s insistence that one might believe in the divinity of Christ and in Hindu mythology, and the latter’s argument that denies the “plurality of persons in the Godhead,” as would a Unitarian. Forbes makes other comments on the transmission of scripture and the constitution of caste, and also includes extensive passages from Alexander Dow’s historical work and a translation by Zephaniah Holwell. He then turns to various Indian religious practices, some of which he claims to have witnessed himself. He understands many of these as linked to castes, and introduces them under that framework. Forbes begins with the “Fackiers or Yogees…a sect of mendicant philosophers.” He fixates on some of the more sensational practices he claims to have seen: “I have seen a man who had vowed to hold up his arms in a perpendicular manner above his head, and never to suspend them, until at length he had totally lost the power of moving them at all…there appeared nothing human about him.” And later: “I saw another of these devotees who had made a vow, every year to fix a large iron ring into the most tender parts of his body.” He moves on to the lowest castes of Indian society, decrying their treatment at the hands of other castes, before briefly dwelling on other customs, such as chess, abstention from alcohol, and the burning of the dead. Perhaps more than any other topic, however, the treatment, education, and social status of women holds Forbes’s attention. He discusses their beauty, and marriage practices, and discusses in detail the practice of sati. Sati had, for many British travelers and administrators, formed an object of fixation and, later, condemnation. Forbes is strangely approving of the practice: “we cannot help admiring a young woman, in the prime of life, and bloom of beauty, blessed with parents, children, and friends, voluntarily forsaking every present felicity, and courting the ‘King of Terrors,’ in his most ghastly form.” “I confess it would afford me a melancholy satisfaction to be present at this solemnity. To see a young heroine set at nought every tie of affection, every pleasure still awaiting her in this sublunary sphere, and take her voluntary flight to those distant realms.” It is, perhaps, Hindu belief in predestination that makes this sacrifice possible. Indeed, it is not confined to sati: “my duty as Sheriff having obliged me to attend the execution of different Indians, I have always observed them to receive the sentence of death, and meet their fate, without a sigh.” Forbes then returns to less harrowing matters, and notes the use of opium, the employment of dancing girls, and other luxuries. He closes the letter with a gesture towards his next: it will, he says, focus on the (supposed) invaders of India, those whose advent promised to “deluge” the fields of the subcontinent in blood, that is, Muslims. Portions of the text appear in <title>Oriental Memoirs</title>, volume 1, pp. 59-84, with considerable abbreviation. Bibliography: Inden, Ronald. <title>Imagining India</title>. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990. King, Richard. <title>Orientalism and Religion: Postcolonial Theory, India, and ‘The Mystic East.’</title> London: Routledge, 1999. Mani, Lata. “Contentious Traditions: The Debate on Sati in Colonial India.” <title>Cultural Critique 7 (1987)</title>: 119-156.
- Genre:
- Botanical illustrations, Ornithological illustrations, Travel sketches, Maps, Watercolors (paintings), Drawings (visual works), Engravings (prints), and Portraits
- Subject Terms:
- Forbes, James, 1749-1819. Descriptive letters and drawingsForbes, James, 1749-1819. Oriental memoirs
- Associated Places:
- EnglandItalyScotlandWales
- Associated People/Groups:
- East India CompanyForbes, James, 1749-1819
- Finding Aid Title:
- James Forbes archive
- Collection PDF:
- https://ead-pdfs.library.yale.edu/11734.pdf
- Archival Object:
- https://archives.yale.edu/repositories/3/archival_objects/3199131
- Metadata Cloud URL:
- https://metadata-api.library.yale.edu/metadatacloud/api/aspace/repositories/3/archival_objects/3199131?mediaType=json&include-notes=1&include-all-subjects=1