Indian Cartography: A Historical Perspective

P L Madan, Indian Cartography: A Historical Perspective , New Delhi, Manohar Publishers, 1997

144 pages, illustrated throughout with reproductions of manuscript and printed maps; scholarly apparatus including bibliography and index; publisher’s cloth-backed boards with illustrated dust jacket
11.2 x 8.9 in (28.5 x 22.8 cms)

Indian Cartography: A Historical Perspective— A Modern Scholarly Synthesis of Indigenous and Colonial Mapping Traditions

P L Madan’s Indian Cartography: A Historical Perspective stands as one of the most sustained late-twentieth-century scholarly attempts to synthesise the complex traditions of mapping in South Asia, bringing indigenous, Islamic, and European cartographic practices into a single historical frame. Rather than treating Indian cartography as a derivative offshoot of European science, Madan situates mapping within long-standing intellectual cultures that encompassed cosmography, pilgrimage geography, revenue administration, and courtly knowledge systems.

The volume traces the evolution of spatial representation from early Sanskrit and Persianate conceptions of space through Mughal administrative mapping and into the systematic surveys of the East India Company and the British Raj. Particular attention is given to the epistemological rupture introduced by colonial survey practices, while carefully acknowledging continuities with earlier modes of territorial understanding. Illustrated with a broad range of reproduced maps and diagrams, the book functions both as a reference work and as an interpretive study.

Within the field of Indian cartographic studies, the work remains notable for its balanced treatment of pre-colonial and colonial materials and its emphasis on maps as cultural artefacts rather than purely technical instruments. For collectors, institutions, and scholars, it represents a foundational modern contribution to the historiography of mapping in the subcontinent.

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