A Cartographic Profile of the Deccan
by Salma Ahmed Farooqui and A Subash
A K Sherwani Centre for Deccan Studies
Hyderabad: Maulana Azad National Urdu University
The history of map making, cartography and two dimensional representations of space is still in its infancy in India. Except for a few maps made in the Mughal court and the maps of military campaigns made by the Maharata chieftains in the eighteenth century we hardly have any indigenous examples of maps. The last great medieval empire of South India, the VIjyanagara empire seems to have made absolutely no attempt at either mastering the art of artillery casting or map making and in the changing military scenario of the sixteenth century had little, if any chance of succeeding against a better equipped and disciplined army, the Deccan army of the Sultanates. The book under review is an attempt at bringing together both the printed and the manuscript maps in different repositories around the world which illustrate the Deccan and is a laudable attempt at documenting a neglected aspect of Indian history.
Indian historiography has a long way to go before it can analyze the contribution of Indian traders and explorers to the development of western knowledge about the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal.We know that a sailor Majid had provided assistance to Vasco da Gama on his maiden attempt to sail across the Arabian Sea. The nautical tradition behind his venture has not yet been studies. Similarly the sailors of the Cholas who effortlessly sailed from Nagapattinam to Guangzhou have not left traces of their craft behind. It would be well worth our while to investigate the nautical and navigational knowledge behind such sea borne ventures. B Arunachalam began his research which culminated in a monograph published by the Bombay Maritime History Society, but this line of inquiry has not been pursued. In the light of the context outlined above, the book discussed in this essay makes a valuable beginning. Of course Susan Gole published her monumental work in the 1970s and there has been little since. The Atlas of the Mughal Empire and more recently the Atlas of Ancient India are valuable contributions to Historical Geography.
J B Harley in his monumental work History of Cartography which was published in five volumes by the University of Chicago Press has exactly 2 chapters on Indian cartography even though India and Ireland were the earliest countries to be surveyed using the Trigonometrical techniques. Mathew Edney has an extremely interesting book on this. Harley has frequently drawn attention to the political and ideological use of cartographic representations. The maps in this book contain a wealth of details which reveal the intellectual and cultural presumptions on which the mappe mundi were constructed. The authors have documented maps belonging to all the important powers which controlled parts of the Indian coastline from the early seventeenth century. By carefully studying the maps illustrated in this book we get a fairly accurate idea of the evolution of Indian geography. The dominant powers controlling the cost are carefully marked and the capital city depiction on the maps. We also get some idea of the fortification walls from the maps, like the example of Ginjee located near Pondicherry. The coastline of the Deccan received particular attention as the Portuguese were interested in acquiring ports and facilities for their ecclesiastical and trading pursuits.
The book contains nearly 150 maps from different parts of the world. The section on Arabic maps and Chinese maps are particularly interesting. This book makes interesting reading and is a valuable contribution to the thin self of serious books on the history of cartography.
by Salma Ahmed Farooqui and A Subash
A K Sherwani Centre for Deccan Studies
Hyderabad: Maulana Azad National Urdu University
The history of map making, cartography and two dimensional representations of space is still in its infancy in India. Except for a few maps made in the Mughal court and the maps of military campaigns made by the Maharata chieftains in the eighteenth century we hardly have any indigenous examples of maps. The last great medieval empire of South India, the VIjyanagara empire seems to have made absolutely no attempt at either mastering the art of artillery casting or map making and in the changing military scenario of the sixteenth century had little, if any chance of succeeding against a better equipped and disciplined army, the Deccan army of the Sultanates. The book under review is an attempt at bringing together both the printed and the manuscript maps in different repositories around the world which illustrate the Deccan and is a laudable attempt at documenting a neglected aspect of Indian history.
Indian historiography has a long way to go before it can analyze the contribution of Indian traders and explorers to the development of western knowledge about the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal.We know that a sailor Majid had provided assistance to Vasco da Gama on his maiden attempt to sail across the Arabian Sea. The nautical tradition behind his venture has not yet been studies. Similarly the sailors of the Cholas who effortlessly sailed from Nagapattinam to Guangzhou have not left traces of their craft behind. It would be well worth our while to investigate the nautical and navigational knowledge behind such sea borne ventures. B Arunachalam began his research which culminated in a monograph published by the Bombay Maritime History Society, but this line of inquiry has not been pursued. In the light of the context outlined above, the book discussed in this essay makes a valuable beginning. Of course Susan Gole published her monumental work in the 1970s and there has been little since. The Atlas of the Mughal Empire and more recently the Atlas of Ancient India are valuable contributions to Historical Geography.
J B Harley in his monumental work History of Cartography which was published in five volumes by the University of Chicago Press has exactly 2 chapters on Indian cartography even though India and Ireland were the earliest countries to be surveyed using the Trigonometrical techniques. Mathew Edney has an extremely interesting book on this. Harley has frequently drawn attention to the political and ideological use of cartographic representations. The maps in this book contain a wealth of details which reveal the intellectual and cultural presumptions on which the mappe mundi were constructed. The authors have documented maps belonging to all the important powers which controlled parts of the Indian coastline from the early seventeenth century. By carefully studying the maps illustrated in this book we get a fairly accurate idea of the evolution of Indian geography. The dominant powers controlling the cost are carefully marked and the capital city depiction on the maps. We also get some idea of the fortification walls from the maps, like the example of Ginjee located near Pondicherry. The coastline of the Deccan received particular attention as the Portuguese were interested in acquiring ports and facilities for their ecclesiastical and trading pursuits.
The book contains nearly 150 maps from different parts of the world. The section on Arabic maps and Chinese maps are particularly interesting. This book makes interesting reading and is a valuable contribution to the thin self of serious books on the history of cartography.
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