Short Studies in the Science of Comparative Religions

Forlong, Major-General J.G.R.: Short Studies in the Science of Comparative Religions, Embracing all the religions of Asia. London: Bernard Quaritch, 1897.

Read online at Scribd.

First issued this one on CP a while ago but previous attempts to put it on Scribd ran into problems. This release is the same as to the text but replaces the black & white versions of the plates with colour or greyscale images from a copy found on the Internet Archive.

Forlong is perhaps better known for a larger work issued 14 years prior to this one, under the title Rivers of Life: or sources and streams of the faiths of man in all lands &c. &c. &c. (2 quarto volumes plus a 7-foot long coloured chart summarizing its conclusions in diagrammatic form), described obliquely by Aleister Crowley as "an invaluable textbook of old systems of initiation" ("Curriculum of A.'.A.'.") and cited by the same author in support of his Grand Unified theory of Religions. Short Studies is far saner and more focussed; it grew out of a plan for a "Glossary or Polyglot Dictionary" of world relgions past and present, to be accompanied by a series of monographs on individual world religions, or on the religious practices and beliefs of various peoples, and comprises ten essays of 26 to 100 pages on particular aspects of Asian religion from Palestine to China, rounded up by a 93-page medley of rather insipid free-verse renderings of religious and ethical teaching from those times and lands for which records were available when he was writing.

This work obviously represents the scholarship in its field of the time, i.e. over a century ago (plus the General's own personal observations in various British colonial holdings in South Asia) and so should not be taken as completely reliable.

Celephaïs Press has also issued electronic editions of the General's other major works on History of Religions:

Rivers of Life
In which the General purports to trace the "Evolution of Faiths" from roots in tree, phallic, serpent, phallic, fire, phallic, solar, phallic, ancestor and phallic worship.
Vol. 1
Vol. 2
Appendix: Synchronological Chart of the Religions of the World
Appendix: Map of the ancient world
Appendix: Map of India and neighbouring lands
Appendix: Synoptical Table of Gods and God-Ideas

Faiths of Man: A Cyclopædia of Religion.
The manuscripts for the General's projected "Glossary" and monographs were assembled after his death by an anonymous editor and printed in 1906 in three octavo volumes totalling nearly 1700 pages. Entries range from a single line to thirty-page essays.
Vol. 1: A-D
Vol. 2: E-M
Vol. 3: N-Z
Similar caveats apply as to Short Studies, and many articles are frankly polemical; caution should be excerised when using this as a work of general reference.