Forlong - Rivers of Life

EDITORIAL NOTE TO THE ELECTRONIC EDITION
This electronic text of Vol. I of Rivers of Life was key entered / OCRed and proofed by Frater T.S. from
page images of photocopies of the first edition. Changes noted in the errata page have been worked into
the text, and the errata page itself thus omitted. A few obvious typographical errors have been corrected
and in several places missing opening or closing quotation marks conjecturally restored. Except in the
case of what appeared to be obvious typographical errors, and in the titles of and quotations from
published works by other authors, I have not tampered with Forlong’s non-standard transliterations and
eccentric ‘fonetik’ English spelling. His reasons for employing these, and the reasons why they are not
followed consistently (mainly unwanted ‘corrections’ by printers) are discussed in the Preface.
Footnotes in square brackets are by the present editor; these have been kept to a minimum so as not
to disrupt pagination. Some give clarifications or corrections, a few are simply flippant, sarcastic or
hostile.
Original pagination and layout has been retained as far as possible, the main exception being that
rather than attempting to match the typeface I used Times New Roman.
Re-set PDFs of Volume I, the “Synchronological Chart” and the “Synoptical Table of Gods and
God-Ideas” (originally bound in as foldouts at the end of Vol. II) are distributed separately. My thanks
to Jon Sellers of Antiquities of the Illuminati for providing colour images of the big chart and maps
(Plates II and III in the print edition, originally bound in at the start and end of vol. II); the former was
used as a basis for the re-set; the latter are distributed as JPEG images.
The works listed as “in preparation” in the front matter manifested as (a) Short Studies in the
Science of Comparative Religions (8vo., London: Quaritch, 1897) and (b) Faiths of Man: a Cyclopedia
of Religions (3 vols. 8vo., London: Quaritch, 1906: this being the “Glossary or Polyglot Dictionary”);
the former included 10 articles on various faiths titled “Jainism and Buddhism,” “Trans-Indian
Religions” (a general study of south-east Asian religion), “Zoroastrianism,” “Hinduism, Vedas and
Vedantism,” “Laotsze and Taoism,” “Confucius and his Faith,” “The Elohim of the Hebrews,” “The
Jehovah of the Hebrews,” “The Sacred Books of the West” (an account of the compilation,
development and translation of the Hebrew Scriptures and to a lesser extent the New Testament) and
“Mahamad, Islam and Ancient Maka,” rounding up with a 93-page medley of rather insipid free-verse
renderings of various religious and philosophical / ethical teachings from all times and lands of which
records were available at the time. Material which was presumably intended for the remaining detailed
studies of particular faiths may be found scattered throughout Faiths of Man, whose alphabetically
arranged entries range from a single line to thirty-plus page essays; this work was not completed and
put into order by Forlong during his lifetime but was assembled from his surviving MSS. by an
anonymous editor (who interpolated clarifying and occasionally dissenting remarks into many entries).
Citations of a “Glossary” in Rivers of Life may in some instances be elucidated by reference to Faiths of
Man under the heading given, though not always.
Both Faiths of Man and Short Studies… have been reprinted by Kessinger Publishing, and owing to
having fewer detailed and coloured illustrations (Short Studies had three full-page plates of maps, partcoloured,
and fourteen inline black and white illustrations; Faiths of Man, a frontispiece plate in each
volume; two black and white photographs of the author, and a reproduction of part of a page from the
MS.) suffered less than Rivers of Life from Kessinger’s approach to book production (Faiths of Man
was also reprinted, with a new introduction, by University Books in the 1960s). An edition of Short
Studies … has been issued by Celephaïs Press; one of Faiths of Man is projected.
T.S.