Oriental Memoirs is a classic work in senses more than one, Way back in 1766 James Forbes, a clerk of the English East India Company, landed in Bomb ay via Cochin. What was meant to be a short-term overseas appointment for the 16 year-old lad became a long-drawn love affairs with India, He lived in India for over eighteen years, travel led widely all over the country, and reported his findings and impressions in the letters he wrote to his friends and acquaintances in Europe. He studied Indian geography and natural history, customs and costumes, rituals and religions, folklore and legends, history and archaeology with great care and comprehension. He also learnt which to draw, enabled him to embellish his long and short letters with figures and illustrations.

When he returned to England, he carried with him fifty two thousand hand-written pages and drawings in one hundred and fifty folio volumes. Oriental Memoirs is the result of the marathan exercise of painstaking research, strengthened by earlier studies of celebrated Indophiles like Sir William Jones, Dr. Robertson, Magor Rennel whose superior palents", according to the author, has added value and authenticity to the work."

India as she lived in the eighteenth century has been meticulously described by the remarkable English observer in the present volumes. No small details have not been missed, not even the birds and fishes, fruits and flowers, beasts and pets. "I resided for some years amongst the Brahmins in Hidostan", says the author," at a distance from the European settlements where I had an opportunity of observing the modes of life and the peculiar tenets of that singular people". Even esoteric subjects like Hindu astronomy and astrology, music and performing arts, philosophy and culture have received comprehensive treatment in the Forbes-letters which form the basis of this extraordinary book.

As such Oriental Memoirs has become encyclopaedic in scope and a highly readable account of the eighteenth century India even for the common readers. For the researchers in Indology of course it is an indispensable work of reference, and for all those who love Mother India a compulsory reading.

THESE memoirs are founded on a series of letters written during a long residence in India. A variety of new and interesting matter collected from valuable and accurate sources, has induced me to alter their original form, and present them to the world in the shape of a connected narrative. I consider this explanation necessary, to account for the epistolary style, and occasional repetitions, which will be found to pervade them.

Leaving England before I had attained my sixteenth year, and being, while in India, deprived of a choice of books, I lay no claim to literary merit. I am conscious of numerous defects in a work commenced at that early age, and continued for eighteen years in the India Company's service, when duty stationed me at many of their settlements, and curiosity led me to other places, in the western provinces of Hindostan.

Diffident as I am of this performance, I deem myself, in some degree, pledged to publish it, in consequence of the following correspondence with the National Institute at Paris; which was the immediate cause of procuring the liberation of myself and family from captivity. I also asssign as another reason, that some of my letters at full length, and copious extracts from others, have appeared in several late publications, without being ascribed to their real author.

Book's Contents and Sample Pages