James Forlong
James George Roche Forlong (6 November 1824 – 29 March 1904) was a Major General of the Indian Army who trained as a civil engineer in Scotland and England. He was renowned for his road-building skills through the jungles of India and Burma and for his studies on comparative religion. Life. He was born at Springhall in Lanarkshire 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. 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. These found expression in his massive work of comparative religion, "Rivers of Life", with its markedly sexual, some would say blasphemous, interpretation of religious rites and symbolism. 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, 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 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: 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 and the left hand path of the yoni worshipers, The James G.R. Forlong Fund. The Royal Asiatic Society'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. Publications in the James G. Forlong Fund Series include: