India Discovered (31 page)

The extent of his interest is reflected in the objectives of his survey in Mysore. These are
minutely detailed in the title of the book that resulted: A
Journey from Madras through the Countries of Mysore, Canara and Malabar, performed under the orders of The Most Noble the Marquess of Wellesley, Governor General of India, for the Express Purpose of Investigating the State of Agriculture, Arts and Commerce, the Religion, Manners and Customs; the History, Natural and Civil, and Antiquities in the Domains of the Rajah of Mysore and in the Country acquired by the Honourable East India Company, in the late and former Wars, from Tippoo Sultan.
With such a title there was no need for an introduction. Day by day, Buchanan recorded his observations. With an eye for new crops that might benefit British India, he paid particular attention to agriculture. He despatched vast quantities of
seed to Calcutta and when seed was not available, he carefully drew the plant in question. By May 1801, with the rains just breaking, he was exploring the tobacco growing areas west of Mysore city when he stumbled upon the first of the famous Chalukyan temples. He was not impressed: the building was ‘utterly destitute of either grandeur or elegance’, and as for the sculpture, ‘I have not yet had the
good fortune to meet with a Hindu image that was tolerable’. Next day he reached Halebid. In size, at least, the main temple ‘exceeded any Hindu building I have seen elsewhere’ and he much admired the highly polished pillars. But the famous sculpted friezes still did not please him.

Its walls contain a very ample delineation of Hindu mythology; which in the representation of human or animal forms is as destitute of elegance as usual; but some of the foliages possess great neatness.

On the basis of an inscription, he dated the temple to 1280, and he correctly identified Halebid as the capital of the thirteenth-century Hoysala Ballala dynasty.

Next came Belur. The temple was again too ornate for his taste; but his day was made by a chance meeting with some cochineal farmers. Here
was an unusual branch of husbandry, and one that intrigued Buchanan greatly. The farmers, or rather drovers, were herding their livestock along the cactus hedges. As the scarlet insects devoured one plant, a small colony was set to work on the next. In a good year the farmers expected to harvest close on half a ton of dead and dried insects. With indigo rivalling opium as India’s most lucrative
cash crop, Buchanan could see a rosy future for cochineal.

As the rains grew heavier and the going harder, he reached Sravana Belgola three days later. This was the most important Jain shrine in southern India. Already Buchanan, who had just returned from Burma, was far more drawn to Buddhism and its sister religion, Jainism, than to Hinduism. In particular he looked forward to seeing ‘the colossal
image of Gomata Raja’. This statue, which towers above the lake and Jain temples, is reputedly one of the highest free-standing sculptures in the world. Ironically, though, Buchanan, the first visitor to Sravana Belgola, failed to see it.

This [the statue] I was not able to visit, owing to an inflammation that attacked my eyes the day before, and rendered the light almost intolerable. I sent my painter and interpreter to inspect the hill.

They reported the statue as seventy feet high, and the painter did a sketch which, as the Duke of Wellington would observe, bore not the slightest resemblance to the original. Next day Buchanan was worse. He was quite blind, and had to be carried to the nearest military base for treatment. It was three months before he could take to the field
again and complete his survey. His report, in three volumes, was published in 1807 and remained the most reliable and exhaustive description of Mysore throughout the nineteenth century. It was reprinted in 1870 and is still a classic.

Fergusson declared the colossal statue of the Jain saint ‘among the most remarkable works of native art in the south of India & Nothing grander or more imposing
exists anywhere out of Egypt and, even there, no known statue surpasses it in height.’ He thought it must have been carved out of an existing rock pinnacle rather than erected on site. Coomaraswamy would agree, giving its date as
AD
983. The site, though, appears very much older, and legend has it that both Chandragupta Maurya and Ashoka visited it.

According to Fergusson, the first visitor actually
to see the statue was Wellesley. But Buchanan seems to make Wellesley’s visit later than that of Colin Mackenzie, the man in charge of the Mysore Survey and the future Surveyor-General of India. Mackenzie was certainly the first to measure it (fifty-seven feet, not seventy), and there is a famous portrait of him, by Thomas Hickey, in which the Sravana Belgola statue, alongside a ‘pole and
basket’ survey marker, is shown in the background.

Mackenzie, like Buchanan, was a Scot of wide interests and exceptional ability. The son of the first postmaster at Stornoway in the Outer Hebrides, he served the first ten years of his career as the local customs officer. But he was also a brilliant mathematician and, while collaborating on a life of John Napier (the inventor of logarithms),
he became fascinated by the mathematical discoveries of the ancient Hindus. With that extraordinary resolve which 200 years ago seems to have been quite taken for granted, he left forever the windswept scapes of Lewis and, with no certainty of either a passage or employment, set off for India in search of the Hindu system of logarithms. It was 1783 and Mackenzie was twenty-eight, somewhat late to
be starting an Indian career.

In Madras he was gazetted as an Ensign of Infantry but he soon transferred to the Engineers and made his first survey in 1784. Opportunities for distinction as both a siege engineer and surveyor then came thick and fast. He served during the Third Mysore War (1790–92), was present at the siege of Pondicherry in 1793, and served with the Nizam of Hyderabad’s troops
in 1795 and at the siege of Colombo in 1796. There followed more surveying in Hyderabad territory, during which he prepared a detailed study of the famous diamond mines. He also reported on a remarkable temple that he had discovered at ‘Perwuttum’ on the Kistna river.

In 1798, the Fourth and last Mysore War saw his prompt recall from survey duty. As chief engineer with the Nizam’s forces, he
fought alongside Arthur Wellesley. He was the only man with Wellesley during the famous episode when the future Duke became separated from his men during a night advance. This incident was widely regarded as a blemish on Wellesley’s prospects. Revealingly, a contemporary rejected any such heresy on the grounds that ‘any imputation of deficiency of courage [on Wellesley’s part] must equally have applied
to Colonel Mackenzie whose bravery and sangfroid in action are proverbial’. Wellesley himself regarded Mackenzie as indispensable. ‘I shall say nothing of Mackenzie’s merits as a surveyor; his works are a strong proof of them. He was under my command during the campaign and I never saw a more zealous, a more diligent, or a more useful officer.’ Mackenzie played a vital role in the final siege
of Tipu’s capital, and immediately after the war was appointed to take charge of the survey of Mysore.

The Mysore Survey was India’s first large-scale topographical survey. It covered some 40,000 square miles and took nine years to complete. The methods devised by Mackenzie, and the organization and training of his staff, became standard procedures for the extension of the survey to the whole
of India. Its success proved that such an ambitious scheme was well within the realms of possibility. Starting on the northernmost frontiers of the state, Mackenzie and his staff covered the whole country with a network of carefully determined positions; from these, individual survey parties carried out minor triangulations and then toured the ground, fitting in roads, rivers and all the other human
and physical features that go to making up a map. For months on end, these small detachments would disappear into the mountains and jungles. ‘Fever and ague’ might prostrate the whole team, and the rains would pen them within their tents for weeks on end. But the work went on; the reports and survey sheets accumulated. Mackenzie himself was in the field for up to two years at a time; but, as completion
drew near, he increasingly immersed himself in the preparation of the final maps, plus a memoir, in seven folio volumes, on the conduct and results of the survey.

This memoir – and indeed, the whole Mysore Survey – was remarkable for the information collected on non-geographical subjects. Unlike Buchanan, Mackenzie was no naturalist; and the botanist attached to the Survey failed to stay the
course. But in the report on the ‘Perwuttum Pagoda’ Mackenzie had already shown a deep and sympathetic interest in Indian antiquities and history. Three years later, he discovered the remains of the Amaravati
stupa,
the most important Buddhist monument in south India. And at about the same time, he secured the services of a Brahmin, Kavali Venkata Boriah, through whose learning Mackenzie believed
that ‘a new avenue to Hindu knowledge was opened’. Throughout the period of the Mysore Survey, Mackenzie not only directed the operations of his survey parties, but, through Boriah, also a network of antiquarian scouts. Scouring the country in search of inscriptions, historical records, coins and architectural curiosities – for all of which Mackenzie paid from his own pocket – their activities
covered the whole of peninsular India. Later they were extended to Java, where Mackenzie was employed from 1811–13, and to Bihar and Bengal, when he became Surveyor-General in 1815.

The Mackenzie collection was far and away the largest and most important hoard of historical materials amassed during the nineteenth century. It included 1568 manuscripts in various scripts and languages, 8076 inscriptions,
6218 coins, 3000 engraved copper plates recording land tenures, and 2630 drawings of sculptures and monuments. What this means in terms of shelf space can best be gauged from the 8000 volumes in the Madras Library – only a fraction of the total, much of which found its way to Calcutta and London.

No man, even with a university of Brahmins at his elbow, could hope to translate and digest all this
material; it would be 1828 before the bulk of it had even been catalogued. But for once the government was far from blind to its importance. Even Lord Bentinck, no great respector of Indian antiquities, was filled with admiration.

His [Mackenzie’s] ardour, perseverance and contempt of all climate and danger in pursuit of this object have been quite extraordinary. No man that ever was in India has had the same opportunity, has incurred the same expense, or devoted the same time to these investigations. If it is possible & to clear away the impenetrable darkness with which this Indian system, its origin and its progress, has been involved, the efforts of Colonel Mackenzie promise the finest hopes of success.

In old age, Mackenzie became something of an institution, like Cunningham
fifty years later. Bemused by his dedication, the government continued to endorse his researches. No one could fault his management of the Indian surveys or criticize his eminence as one of India’s outstanding geographers. Yet increasingly he immersed himself in his antiquarian studies. In an historical sketch of south India’s history during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, he made a rare
attempt to interpret some of his materials. He had also written, in 1797, a notable account of the Jains, on the basis of which he is sometimes credited with the discovery of this important faith. But basically his object was to collect and preserve. He firmly believed that all the materials for a history of pre-Islamic India still existed. But they were scattered about, forgotten and unread. They
must quickly be discovered and recorded before the inscriptions were erased by time and the manuscripts destroyed out of ignorance. During the 1820s, James Tod in western India and Brian Hodgson in Nepal would subscribe to exactly the same belief and religiously follow Mackenzie’s example. Stimulated by the sums paid to Mackenzie for his collection – his executors received £15,000 from the East
India Company for the bulk of it – travellers throughout India and beyond took a new interest in antiquities; the spate of coin collecting and inscription copying in the 1830s, which resulted in the reconstruction of India’s classical past, can be attributed as much to Mackenzie’s example as to Prinsep’s exhortations.

The year 1800, which saw Buchanan embarking on his route survey and Mackenzie
launching the first major topographical survey, saw yet a third party of surveyors heading out of Madras for the rolling uplands of Mysore. In charge was William Lambton, a Yorkshireman of uncertain, probably humble, origins who had delayed his Indian debut even longer than Mackenzie. He had now been just two years in India and, though holding only the rank of lieutenant, was already in his mid-forties.
Somehow the military establishment had forgotten about William Lambton. As a barrack-master he had whiled away the previous thirteen years in the backwaters of eastern Canada. While Mackenzie had been studying logarithms in Stornoway, Lambton had been teaching himself geodesy and astronomy in New Brunswick. And there, no doubt, he would have stayed. But there came a scrutiny of the regimental
records and then a summons. By now his regiment had moved to India, was commanded by Wellesley, and about to see stirring action in Mysore. Lambton was needed.

He went first to Calcutta and announced his presence by delivering a paper to the Asiatic Society on
The Theory of Walls
(‘wherein some particulars are investigated which have not been considered by writers on fortifications’); this was
closely followed by another on
The Effect of Machines When in Motion.
Wellesley, understandably, was not sure what to make of either the man or his achievements. But during the Mysore War he became impressed by both and, when Lambton confided in him the great scheme that was forming in his mind, Wellesley became one of his most ardent supporters. The scheme in question was for a trigonometrical
survey stretching right across the Indian peninsula and capable of being continued ‘to an almost unlimited extent in every other direction’.