Where have all our maps gone ?

Hundreds Of Priceless Antique Prints Have Mysteriously Disappeared Over The Years From The Asiatic Society
Hemali Chhapia TNN
The country has lost a slice of its history, from an institution no less than the Asiatic Society of Mumbai, founded in 1804 to preserve India’s rich antiquity. From the deep recesses of this establishment where even roaches can’t enter, maps circa 18th Century—priceless, irreplaceable, handdrawn and colourful original prints— have been disappearing from its vaults. Almost nothing remains of the entire set of maps that date back to 1803-04: they depict the expanse of Mumbai (then Bombay) in great detail when the first revenue survey was carried out. Called the Dickinson survey, close to 350 rolls had every part of the city painstakingly drawn—its street plan, forts, old tanks, buildings. The 200-year-old guardian of these maps has no clue how they slipped through its fingers. And in what doesn’t seem to be an admirable reflection of the Asiatic Society’s efforts to preserve these precious records of a bygone era, another set of antique rolls last catalogued in 1975 is short of 150 maps. These included admiralty charts of various parts of the world, some drawn by the Portuguese who were considered prolific cartographers. “It appears to be a systematic theft. Of another set of 1,330 maps that were catalogued by an internal committee of the Asiatic, only 1,135 remain now. I have written a letter to the Society regarding these missing maps. Maps have been va n i s h i n g over a period of time,’’ said eminent geographer B Arunachalam. The architect of the University of Mumbai’s geography department, Arunachalam’s expertise is mathematical cartography, and he has worked with professional bodies like the Society of Indian Ocean Studies, the Indian National Cartographic Association as well as the National Geographic, India. The octogenarian has been involved with the Asiatic Society since the ‘50s when the first internal survey of maps was carried out. His theory that an insider is involved in the thefts may not be far from the truth. Every time a survey of the maps was ordered, it was called off before completion. “And in every survey, I noticed that a few maps had disappeared from the time when the previous stocktaking exercise was carried out,’’ said Arunachalam, who is now conducting a fourth survey. Though the on-going fourth survey is so termed, it may actually be the first extensive one, and could well mark the start of map preservation. Arunachalam agreed to chair the job only after an assurance from Asiatic Society president and historian Aroon Tikekar that his work will go on uninterrupted. Tikekar acknowledged that he’d been informed that the maps had gone missing, but he is determined to preserve what’s left with the society. “Most of the maps that went missing were lost years ago. We have not lost anything in the last 15 years. In fact, now we have also received a special grant from the cultural department of the Central government for preserving our maps,’’ said Tikekar. This stock-taking has already led to some surprising discoveries — after some “digging’’, maps belonging to the Asiatic were found in the central library of the state in Fort, South Mumbai. A priceless Peking map dating back to the First Opium War (1839-1842) between China and the British Empire, was found inside a bundle of India's taluka maps. The high point of the Asiatic Society was in 1869 when the Bombay Geographical Society (BGS) was merged with it. Apart from 3,900 rare old maps, the BGS handed over globes, fossils and books dating back to the 17th Century. Through the merger, the Asiatic Society inherited 1,869 maps of the admiralty service of the marine charts, 200-300 strategic maps of the US geological survey and the US topographical survey, maps of the Punjab Revenue Survey, Madras Presidency Revenue Survey and Gujarat Revenue Survey, apart from the village survey maps stretching across the length and breadth of the country. There were also maps of the old Bombay Presidency. While the Asiatic Society never made public all that it inherited, the BGS released the entire list of antiques in the last of its 16 volumes — Transactions of the BGS. There is no clarity on how many maps remain and which ones are beyond repair. “Some rolls lay there, never opened for over 100 years. Many were so brittle that they crumbled even as we tried to flatten them,’’ said a pained Arunachalam. At the heart of the problem was the fact that these prints were not stored correctly. Others were reduced to dust by termites, explained Tikekar. “Lack of finances’’ has always been the Society defence. Now, the Navy has expressed an interest in restoring these maps. A part of the Asiatic Society’s basement presents a grim picture of the many perforated chapters of man’s understanding of the world. Two globes — a celestial and a terrestrial one— made of papier mache received from the BGS were senselessly allowed to go to ruin for years. The terrestrial globe dating to 1835-36 depicted only those pieces of the world that man had discovered. There was no Antarctica in that world. Those irreplaceable globes will now be discarded. And many prized maps beyond repair will meet a similar end. Along with the maps that have vanished from the Asiatic shelves, all the tales associated with them have also been lost. ANCIENT CARTOGRAPHY

India had three distinct mapping flavours Early mediaeval Rajasthani maps focused on holy places and pilgrim routes. Most maps were entirely pictorial with no lettering. Later, native maps from Rajasthan depicted forts, battles and canal lay-outs. Rajasthani maps have a rich tradition of bright colours and miniature figures of humans and animals

Mughal Islamic maps range from simple line drawings and pictorial panoramas to area depiction, with detailed scribework in Persian or Urdu. A coloured Persian paper map scroll of Shahjehanabad at the Indian Post Office library shows the fort on the banks of the Yamuna with a town laid out to its west, centred around Chandni Chowk

Maratha maps come closest to currentday modern cartography. While earlier maps were almost pictorial, later ones are distinctively topographical. A wide range of fort maps from the Maratha tradition have been traced. A colour map of the siege of Panhala, for instance, has details of the fort, gates arsenals, camp positions, etc