Forbes, James, 1749-1819, James Forbes letter, Anjengo, 1773 January 1, copied between 1794 and 1800
- Call Number:
- Folio A 2023 69
- Holdings:
- [Request]
- Creator:
- Forbes, James, 1749-1819
- Title(s):
- James Forbes letter, Anjengo, 1773 January 1
- Date:
- copied between 1794 and 1800
- Classification:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Series:
- Series I: A voyage from England to Bombay with descriptions in Asia, Africa, and South America
- Part of Collection:
- volume 6, page 9-31
- 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 devotes his thirtieth letter to an account of the Malabars, or the inhabitants of the western coast of India, the Malabar Coast, where Anjengo (now Anchuthengu) is located. He suggests that they are similar to the “northern Hindoos,” but describes them as a nonetheless different group, with slightly difference religious, social, and political practices. His use of the term Malabar—like the term Hindu—seems to encompass geographic, religious, and racial identity in a single concept. Forbes identifies a caste system among the Malabars similar to that found to the north. He begins with a description of the Brahmins, whom he divides into two “sects.” First, he discusses those devoted to a life of “peace, meekness, and innocent superstition,” and who “inculcate and practice a pure morality, particularly of benevolence to man.” These Brahmins engage in no “secular” pursuits. The other “sect,” however, “live at courts, hold places under government,” and collect revenues: they, Forbes says, “exercise the iron rod of oppression with the utmost rigor.” He compares them to Catholics in their confidence that from the Ganges they will receive absolution. Forbes soon returns to more general comparisons. The Malabars are, in his view, “a braver and more animated set” than their compatriots to the north; nonetheless, the country is governed by fear, and one generally “follows the profession of his own family; marries in his childhood with his equal; and thro’ life seldom soars higher than the limited sphere of his own connections.” A sort of stasis prevails. Regarding their religion, Forbes makes several comments. The first is an anecdote, illustrative of what Forbes takes as an engrained secrecy. Walking towards a nearby town, Forbes comes across a temple hidden in the woods, and next to it, a lake. Approaching the lake, he interrupts a woman bathing. She, seeing him, runs off, and talks to a man in the distance. Not understanding the situation, Forbes enjoys the view, only to find himself pursued by a group of men with sticks and stones. After taking refuge in a nearby village, Forbes is informed that he had trespassed on sacred grounds, and therefore “my life would most likely have been the sacrifice of my rashness.” Forbes then turns to a broader, civilizational and comparative argument. Most civilization rise and fall, whereas in India—or in Malabar specifically—“there seems to be a stand; and I presume it has been so for ages, as far at least as our information extends.” Forbes does not mean to suggest that the Malabars resemble the “Hottentots of Africa, nor the savages of America,” but rather that the Indians, like the Chinese, have never declined. Though they may not possess the arts, sciences, and so on like the Europeans, or for that matter the Mughals, but they have enjoyed peace for thousands of years. From here, Forbes launches into a commentary on the climate and its effects on human capacity: the heat saps the “alacrity of mind” the English possess in their home country, and inculcates a passivity in Indians that is rarely disproven. Forbes narrates the story of a woman dying in battle besides her husband as one such exception. Forbes gives a brief description of the king of Travencore—a brahmin of an “inferior cast” who had elevated himself through various rites—before comparing the religious practice and beliefs of the “Hindoo” with the “Malabar.” There is a degree of uniformity, one that makes conversion to Christianity very difficult. Indians are, instead, wish “not to tread a new path” different from those before them. The Naires, according to Forbes, are “the second tribe among the Malabars.” Forbes comments extensively on their marriage practices: “one wife is common to a number of husbands,” an arrangement which, in his view, keeps up the martial spirit of the men and prevents the women from experiencing widowhood in the same way as those in the north. Forbes quotes Montesquieu as evidence for his claims, as well as Isaiah 47:1 as a precedent. Forbes describes the dress of the various groups, noting the differences between the brahmins and others, and likewise gives an account of Muslim women in the region, with their various practices of chastity (or lack of), seclusion, and worship. He includes a long quotation from Homer’s Odyssey, on dress and fashion. Malabar Christians are, to Forbes, much like the other Indians he encounters, yet invariably “of the lowest cast of people,” given the difficulty missionaries have faced in converting those in higher castes. Again, Forbes uses this as a starting point for comparisons of Hindus and Malabars, which he seems to take as communities exhibiting different political, social, racial, and religious traits. The notion of a supreme being, however, stays the same. He includes a quotation from Addison’s “A Letter from Italy” on oppression. After describing the famines resulting from the despotism of the area’s rulers, Forbes relates his own purchase of two children as slaves. He claims this was “for a friend in Bombay” and insists that the reader “not censure my humanity for this purchase, for I can assure you it was a happy transition for the poor children, who were sent to an amiable lady, who will treat them with the greatest tenderness.” Forbes claims that poverty and suffering is the only other alternative, and that this is what drives women to sell their own children. Forbes moves from slavery back to the castes of the Malabars. He introduces “the most degraded and abject race of the human species; the Pooleahs!” This group, Forbes claims, are so despised by society that they are banished from every inhabited area and, if they a higher caste individual comes upon them by accident, they will immediately kill them. Forbes writes: “poverty and wretchedness have certainly altered these people, having debased the human form, and given them a mean and savage appearance.” The Mahometans, however, embody a different sort of savagery: Forbes describes how they, “when intoxicated with Bhang or Opium…sometimes run a-muck,” even killing the English garrison at one point. Forbes closes his letter with a brief note on law and punishment—the killer of a cow receiving the greatest torture—before taking leave of Anjengo. He says, “in a few days I hope to take a final leave of Anjengo, a place where I have enjoyed neither health, pleasure, nor emolument.” The letter concludes with a quotation from Goldsmith’s “The Traveller.” Portions of this text appear in <title>Oriental Memoirs</title>, volume 1, pp. 375-403.
- Physical Description:
- 23 pages
- Genre:
- Correspondence , 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/3199607
- Metadata Cloud URL:
- https://metadata-api.library.yale.edu/metadatacloud/api/aspace/repositories/3/archival_objects/3199607?mediaType=json&include-notes=1&include-all-subjects=1