COLONEL SIR SIDNEY GERALD BURRARD (1860-1943), SURVEYOR GENERAL OF INDIA Records of the Survey of India, Volume VIII, Exploration in Tibet and Neighbouring Regions, 1865-1892 . Dehra Dun: Trigonometrical Survey, 1915[-16]. 2 parts, 2° (331 x 204mm). Photogravure portrait frontispiece of Kishen Singh, 24 maps and plans, one coloured. (Occasional light spotting, title page and portrait frontispiece of Nain Singh in vol. I lacking and preface leaf detached.) Original printed boards, titled on spine (some light staining, extremities worn, old repairs, inner hinges cracked). Provenance : 'Presentation Copy forwarded with the compliments of the Surveyor General of India' (letterpress presentation slips on upper pastedowns) -- semi-legible ?accession ink stamp on cover of part II '[...] 20 DEC 1917 SURVEY OF INDIA' -- Jesse Core, American Vice Consul, Consulate General, Madras (inscriptions on front pastedowns, dated 1951 and 1952). A REMARKABLE RECORD OF THE CLANDESTINE INTELLIGENCE-GATHERING EXPLORATIONS INTO THE VAST TERRA INCOGNITA BEYOND THE INDIAN BORDERS OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE undertaken by Indian explorers, including Lala, Rinzin Nimgyl, and Nain, Mani and Kishen Singh, as part of the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India, 1858-1909. During the mid-19th century, fearing a Russian invasion into India and desperate for intelligence on their northern neighbours, Major Thomas George Montgomerie (1830-1878), head of the Himalayan survey in Kumaon and Garhwal, sent Indians across the closed border, disguised as itinerant lamas, to map the vast Tibetan plateau and observe Russian activity in the region. He trained these native hillmen to survey secretly by taking precise footpaces -- 33 inches exactly in the case of Nain Singh -- and using a Buddhist rosary of 100 beads (rather than the traditional 108) to keep count of their paces. After every 100 paces one bead would be clicked; for Singh, a complete circuit of the rosary therefore represented 1,000 paces, or five miles. Nain Singh (1829/30-1882) was the greatest of these explorer-spies who became known as the 'Pundits'. He mapped the trade route through Nepal to Tibet, determined for the first time the location and altitude of Lhasa, and mapped a large section of the Tsangpo, the major Tibetan river. His findings forced a complete revision of the map of Tibet and proved d'Anville's plan to be unreliable. Subsequent British expeditions commented that most of their information was still derived from the Singhs' expeditions, and these later expeditions verified the accuracy of the two pundits' observations. The geographer Sir Henry Yule said of Nain Singh, '[he] is not a topographical automaton, or merely one of a great multitude of native employees with an average qualification. His observations have added a larger amount of important knowledge to the map of Asia than those of any other living man'. (2)
COLONEL SIR SIDNEY GERALD BURRARD (1860-1943), SURVEYOR GENERAL OF INDIA Records of the Survey of India, Volume VIII, Exploration in Tibet and Neighbouring Regions, 1865-1892 . Dehra Dun: Trigonometrical Survey, 1915[-16]. 2 parts, 2° (331 x 204mm). Photogravure portrait frontispiece of Kishen Singh, 24 maps and plans, one coloured. (Occasional light spotting, title page and portrait frontispiece of Nain Singh in vol. I lacking and preface leaf detached.) Original printed boards, titled on spine (some light staining, extremities worn, old repairs, inner hinges cracked). Provenance : 'Presentation Copy forwarded with the compliments of the Surveyor General of India' (letterpress presentation slips on upper pastedowns) -- semi-legible ?accession ink stamp on cover of part II '[...] 20 DEC 1917 SURVEY OF INDIA' -- Jesse Core, American Vice Consul, Consulate General, Madras (inscriptions on front pastedowns, dated 1951 and 1952). A REMARKABLE RECORD OF THE CLANDESTINE INTELLIGENCE-GATHERING EXPLORATIONS INTO THE VAST TERRA INCOGNITA BEYOND THE INDIAN BORDERS OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE undertaken by Indian explorers, including Lala, Rinzin Nimgyl, and Nain, Mani and Kishen Singh, as part of the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India, 1858-1909. During the mid-19th century, fearing a Russian invasion into India and desperate for intelligence on their northern neighbours, Major Thomas George Montgomerie (1830-1878), head of the Himalayan survey in Kumaon and Garhwal, sent Indians across the closed border, disguised as itinerant lamas, to map the vast Tibetan plateau and observe Russian activity in the region. He trained these native hillmen to survey secretly by taking precise footpaces -- 33 inches exactly in the case of Nain Singh -- and using a Buddhist rosary of 100 beads (rather than the traditional 108) to keep count of their paces. After every 100 paces one bead would be clicked; for Singh, a complete circuit of the rosary therefore represented 1,000 paces, or five miles. Nain Singh (1829/30-1882) was the greatest of these explorer-spies who became known as the 'Pundits'. He mapped the trade route through Nepal to Tibet, determined for the first time the location and altitude of Lhasa, and mapped a large section of the Tsangpo, the major Tibetan river. His findings forced a complete revision of the map of Tibet and proved d'Anville's plan to be unreliable. Subsequent British expeditions commented that most of their information was still derived from the Singhs' expeditions, and these later expeditions verified the accuracy of the two pundits' observations. The geographer Sir Henry Yule said of Nain Singh, '[he] is not a topographical automaton, or merely one of a great multitude of native employees with an average qualification. His observations have added a larger amount of important knowledge to the map of Asia than those of any other living man'. (2)
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