Forbes, James, 1749–1819, James Forbes letter, Chandode, 1780 November 1, copied between 1794 and 1800
- Call Number:
- Folio A 2023 69
- Holdings:
- Accessible by appointment in the Study Room [Request]
- Creator:
- Forbes, James, 1749–1819
- Title(s):
- James Forbes letter, Chandode, 1780 November 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 11, page 109-118
- 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 describes Chandode as a small town, even more romantic than the last one. Forbes praises its picturesque scenery, and yet reminds the reader that it is “not to be traversed without dread; when we recollect these savage monsters, and the dangerous snakes and other noxious reptiles, with which they abound.” “Brahmins & Hindoo Ceremonies, at Chandode” Forbes quickly moves on to the topic that will occupy the remainder of the letter: Hindu practices, ceremonies, and beliefs. He describes the town as a very sacred site, with numerous temples and a river in which devotees bathe themselves. He gives details on Hindu dying and funeral practices, describing a process by which the dying individual is placed on a pile of earth and, after they die, washed in the river and burned. He makes a passing comment about the potential health effects of the removal of the individual onto the earth, but otherwise insists that the ceremonies are “decent, solemn, and affecting.” He includes several verses he says are recited by the officiating brahmin as he addresses the elements, though he does not provide a source. He compares the verses to a passage from Edward Young’s (1683-1765) Night Thoughts and quotes another example of these ceremonies, this time from William Jones’s translation of Kalidasa’s play Sakuntala. “Pagodas and Ornaments” Forbes next begins a description of the temples he finds throughout the town. They are, he says, some of the finest he has seen in all of India. He remarks on the variety of “deities, angels, genii, and demons” one finds in the temples’ ornamentation, and in Hindu practice writ large, suggesting that not even Ovid can compete with the proliferation of divine beings. He speculates as to whether the Greeks and Hindus are related to a single mythological tradition. Forbes then changes topics to Indian painting, and other art forms. In particular, he mentions his attempts to mimic Indian technique, and his subsequent conclusion that “the style of the Indian artists is hard, incorrect, and devoid of every excellence and grace we admire in the Italian schools.” Likewise, he argues that Indian music is “harsh and discordant” and that their current poetry is unremarkable, though he admits that some of the ancient Sanskrit texts may possess some aesthetic merit. “Hindoos” Forbes’s final consideration in this letter is Hindu belief and practice, a topic he has returned to continually throughout his correspondence. He gives a brief account of the composition of the caste system, including a description of the four varnas, and cites the translation of Hindu laws produced under Warren Hastings—presumably the Manusmriti, composed in the late 18th century by Nathaniel Halhed (1751-1830) from a Persian translation of the original Sanskrit—as an invaluable source. As with his appraisal of Hindu poetry, Forbes asserts that “modern Brahmins are certainly very inferior to their great ancestors, in those early ages, in science and wisdom.” But despite this ignorance, Forbes offers something of a defense over the following pages. He writes, “they surely must be esteemed an enlightened people, who believe and meditate on such great and solemn subjects, as occupy their minds in their retired shades.” He quotes extensively from the introduction to the introduction to Halhed’s translation, including passages that focus on the prevalence of differing religious traditions in India. Forbes subsequently reasons that, because “I am now so much among the Brahmins, and see so much of their life and conversations at the several Pagodas and sacred groves in these distircts,” he can confirm that they believe in “the unity of the Godhead; but they think it necessary to represent his different attributes under symbolical forms.” He follows this with several remarks on his own dedication to toleration, and his unwillingness to judge other beliefs, alongside what he says is a letter translated by historian Robert Orme (1728-1801), in which a Hindu ruler reminds the Mughal ruler Aurangzeb of his predecessor Akbar’s commitment to religious pluralism. In any event, he closes his letter with another piece of evidence in support of the underlying monotheism of Hinduism—that is, he endorses toleration, but argues for the similarity of Hinduism and Christianity anyway. He transcribes what he says is a letter from a Hindu father to a son who had converted to Christianity. In the letter, the father insists that Hindus, too, worship a single divine essence, and that his son need only ask one of many learned scholars to realize this truth. Portions of this text appear in <title>Oriental Memoirs</title>, volume 3, chapter 28.
- Physical Description:
- 10 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/3199956
- Metadata Cloud URL:
- https://metadata-api.library.yale.edu/metadatacloud/api/aspace/repositories/3/archival_objects/3199956?mediaType=json&include-notes=1&include-all-subjects=1