Vintage maps provide a unique insight into how cities and countries evolved over time and how the world looked like without the modern day boundaries that define the way we are used to seeing the world.
The Indian subcontinent has looked very different when envisioned by various people who have drawn maps over the years since the evolution of more accurate techniques of map drawing from the 15th century.
To showcase how things have evolved, the National Museum is organising a two-month show that will have on display the country’s most comprehensive private collection of historic maps.
Hyderabad-based Kalakriti Archive, is lending to the show 70 maps that will form the backbone of an exhibition titled ‘Cosmology to Cartography’ that will take viewers back in time to the beginning of early cosmological representations of the ‘World of Mortals’ and guide them through the growth of modern map-drawing. It will showcase the competing global interests and influences — religious, economic and political — that have contributed to the perception of ‘India’ as we understand it in the present times.
National Museum Director-General Sanjiv Mittal said that the exhibition would feature an extraordinary variety of painted and printed Indian maps produced in the subcontinent and internationally, including original manuscript representations.
Speaking about the show, Prshant Lahoti, who heads the Kalakriti Archive, said the exhibition would also capture the development of the Indian printing industry, which although established by Europeans, came to be heavily influenced by Indian artistic styles and technology. “Monumental original paintings of profound religious symbolism from the 15th to 19th Centuries will be juxtaposed with ground-breaking historical maps of India, many of which are unique and have never before been placed on public view,” he said.
The exhibition also features cartographic depictions of the ancient European conception of the subcontinent, and the first vaguely accurate maps of India made in the wake of Vasco Da Gama’s arrival in 1498. In the more recent times are maps of medieval Hyderabad and Bangalore, and the enlightenment model of French Pondicherry. Visitors will also discover extraordinary plans of future metropolises such as Mumbai, Kolkata and Delhi, promise the organisers.
Two maps from the National Museum’s collection will also add to the exhibition repertoire. One is an 18th-century Rajasthani image of Lord Krishna showing his cosmic Vishwaroopa form, while the other is a five-century-old watercolour work showing Hyderabad’s Nizam Ali Khan giving audience to French envoy M. Bussy with the Walled City as a sprawling backdrop.
The special exhibition at the National Museum will begin on August 11.
