Pundit Maps

The Pundits (“learned men”, term derived from sanskrit) were the advance party of the exploration by the British in India of the northern regions located beyond the Himalaya, during the second half of the 19th century. Recruited from the native communities of the areas of British India bordering the Himalaya, they secretly explored regions out of bounds for white people. They used coded names, were provided by the Survey of India with specially made equipment to allow them to take and record (and hide) their measurements (air temperature, distance and direction travelled, boiling water temperature, latitude) and their expeditions lasted, sometimes, several years during which no news reached their bases in India. Their reports were gathered by the Survey of India which produced a sizeable number of articles and documents together with unique maps. This section includes a number of these maps and some images created by the Survey of India from the Pundit reports. The section covers explorations from 1868 to 1892. The originals are either at Dehra Dun or with the RGS in London.

John Brown

1915

Zenodo

• Discover
• Compare
• 3D
• Document