James Forlong

James George Roche Forlong (6 November 1824 – 29 March 1904[1]) was a Major General of the Indian Army who trained as a civil engineer in Scotland and England.

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.

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,[4] with its markedly sexual, some would say blasphemous,[5] interpretation of religious rites and symbolism.

"...the shower of phallicism that burst upon the reading public in the shape of General Forlong's Rivers of Life".