Cambridge Digital Library
Source: https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/collections/surveyofindiamaps Parent: https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/
Survey of India Maps
The Survey of India map collection consists of maps which were intended to document the landscape of British dominions in the Subcontinent systematically. They include map sheets in the 1” to 1-mile, 1” to 2-mile and 1” to 4-mile series. The Survey of India map collections are rooted in Britain’s colonial past. The Survey of India was established in 1767, twenty years after the UK’s Ordnance Survey was founded to map the highlands of Scotland after the Jacobite rising, and it likewise reflects British government aims to document and control the subcontinent. Following the Great Trigonometrical Survey (1802-1871), undertaken at great cost both in human life and equipment, detailed mapping of topography started 1831, was consolidated in 1843 to 1904, and standardised after 1906.
Work by the Mapping Archaeological Heritage in South Asia (MAHSA) project has made many of the 1” to 1-mile map series available as a geospatially searchable archive, and work is ongoing to provide IIIF capability to view digitised images of map sheets hosted by the UL.
Records about these maps can be searched geospatially here:
Find out more about MAHSA here:
https://www.mahsa.arch.cam.ac.uk/
Petrie, C. A., Orengo, H. A., Green, A. S., Walker, J. R., Garcia, A., Conesa, F., Knox, J. R., & Singh, R. N. (2019). Mapping Archaeology While Mapping an Empire: Using Historical Maps to Reconstruct Ancient Settlement Landscapes in Modern India and Pakistan. Geosciences, 9(1), 11. https://doi.org/10.3390/geosciences9010011
Petrie, C.A., Abdul-Jabbar, J., Abhayan, G.S., Alam, A., Berganzo Besga, I., Campbell, R., Conesa, F., Green, A.S., Green, L.M., Garcia-Molsosa, A., Gerrits, P., Gregorio de Souza, J., Hameed, M., Khan, A.S., Madella, M., Mushtaq, M.W., Orengo, H.A., Prabhakar, V.N., Rajesh, S.V., Redhouse, D.I., Roberts, R., Samad, A., Singh, R.N., Singh, V.K., Suarez Moreno, M., Suganya, K., Tomaney, J., and Vafadari, A. 2025. Hidden in plain sight: the unrecognised contribution of the Survey of India in the documentation of ancient settlements in Pakistan and India, Journal of Field Archaeology 1-22 [online 29 Oct, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00934690.2025.2572881].
Paper copies of the maps presented here can be found in Cambridge University Library Map Department at the following classmarks:
1" maps, scale 1:63,360 at classmark: Maps.360.01 \ Half-inch maps, scale 1:126,720 at classmark: Maps.360.02 \