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A MEMOIR ON THE INDIAN SURVEYS
This work was suggested by Mr. Clements R. Markham's "Memoir on the Indian Surveys," in which the geographical and other kindred operations carried out in India from the date of the British occupation were reviewed in a most picturesque and masterly manner. In 1878 a second edition of Mr. Markham's work was published, in which the narrative was brought up to 1875, and in some cases for a year or so later. For the last fifteen years I have been accumulating notes in moments of leisure, with a view to the publication of a volume which might serve as a continuation to that by Mr. Markham, and the kind support given to the project by the Secretary of State for India and the Viceroy has now enabled me to present the work in a more or less complete shape. From unavoidable circumstances the arrangement of matter is not identical with that adopted by Mr. Markham, but I believe I have conformed to it sufficiently to make reference easy, and wherever the source of information is not specially mentioned, it may be assumed that it will be found in the official Annual Report for the particular year.
The Pundits
On a September day in 1863, Abdul Hamid entered the Central Asian city of Yarkand. Disguised as a merchant, Hamid was actually an employee of the Survey of India, carrying concealed instruments to enable him to map the geography of the area. Hamid did not live to provide a first-hand count of his travels. Nevertheless, he was the advance guard of an elite group of Indian trans-Himalayan explorers—recruited, trained, and directed by the officers of the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India—who were to traverse much of Tibet and Central Asia during the next thirty years. Derek Waller presents the history of these explorers, who came to be called "native explorers" or "pundits" in the publi...
