Mapping physical, symbolic and experiential universe

Historical treasure

Sixteen years before Portuguese explorer Vasco de Gama reached India, a 1482 map printed in Bonn, Germany doesn’t recognise the Indian peninsula, but it does accurately position the course of the Ganges, the rivers of Punjab and the placement of the Indus Valley is also at mark. Interestingly, there is also a great deal of familiarity with the modern names when it comes to a few cities.

Then there are a series of maps whose fading lines highlight the struggle between various European powers for colonial influences in India. These lines have been redrawn several times, so much so that in one of the early maps, Delhi has been positioned where Hyderabad is today.

It was these maps that lead to power struggle among Europeans who wanted to infiltrate Indian shores and exploit its rich resources. But, much before these measured maps defined Indian’s geographical boundaries; Indians, in their own way, had developed symbolic maps for purely experiential purposes, the most important being - pilgrimage. These different cultural attributes and cultural perspectives of mapping in the Indian subcontinent have been thematically and chronologically represented in the exhibition “Cosmology to Cartography: A cultural journey of Indian Maps” mounted at the National Gallery.

The two-month long visual and historical treat is jointly curated by Vivek Nanda and Alex Johnson and the maps have been sourced from Prashant Lahoti, a private collector, who has been collecting these rare maps from all around the globe since 2002.

“These maps are very much part of the consolidation of empire building and how urbanism and cities become an important part of information building,  not just for ethnographic purpose, but also economics which is very important to the nature of empire,” Nanda, one of the curators, tells Metrolife. “Because if you didn’t know the map, you didn’t know how to exploit,” he adds.

“Maps show development of India as a recognisable form for modern world,” points out Germany-based Johnson, adding the first scientific survey of India is done in trigonometry where physical precision is charted with great precision.

Cartography is usually associated with physical maps, but this exhibition highlights how Indians navigate with symbolism to get familiar with their territory. A fine example of this is a 19th-century Sirohi school painting of Palitana temples on cloth. The experiential mappings highlight multiple shrines surrounding the pilgrimage site and the pathways pilgrims can take to reach the temple.

“The notion of mapping is the cultural domain where the indigenous world is mapped in symbolic ways,” says London-based Nanda who is an architect by profession. “The cartographic notion is some kind of a Western construct which is there to actually measure the landscape,” he adds.

“Physical mapping wasn’t consequential to Indians; they were always interested in symbolic maps. It is difficult to divorce the notion of philosophy, culture and place from the Indian mind in purely measurable terms. So, the most prominent gets greatest importance and can’t measure it with scale,” he elucidates.

Another culturally important map, according to Johnson, is the first English map based on Mughal information. “Ruth Thomas, first English ambassador to the Mughal court was the drinking buddy of Jahangir and the “Mughal emperor gave all available geographical descriptions, not known if geographical maps, but geographical descriptions to him,” he tells Metrolife.

“There is also a very magnificent collection of manuscripts maps from 1818 which is finest existing collection of cartography relating to any war in history,” he adds.

These maps offer cultural perspective of urbanism and understanding of the Indian subcontinent where Kanpur was once an industrial hub and Delhi was far away from its political significance.

The exhibition Cosmology to Cartography: A cultural journey of Indian Maps is on display at the National Museum till September 11.