(C) Copyright of Prabuddha Biswas
1. MANUCCI VISITED PATNA DURING SECOND HALF OF 17TH CENTURY TO COLLECT THE GEOGRAPHICAL DATA2. FATHER CLAUDE BOUDIER VISITED PATNA AND BANKIPUR IN EARLY 18TH CENTURY
3. TIEFFENTHALER VISITED BIHAR IN THE SECOND HALF OF 18TH CENTURY – SPECIAL SURVEY ON RIVER GANGES AND GOGRA
4. MAJOR JAMES RENNEL DID THE ACTUAL SURVEY OF THE PROVINCES OF BENGAL AND BIHAR
5. MAJOR JAMES RENNEL, NOW KNOWN AS THE FATHER OF INDIAN GEOGRAPHY
GEOGRAPHICAL EXPLORATION IN BIHAR REGION
1. THE VISIT OF MANUCCI
Manucci visited Patna along with other towns and collected geographical (latitude and longitude) information with reference to Fortunate Island (but converted into Greenwich Mean Time). Though the figures were not fully correct, Manucci’s data of Patna was as follows: - Patna – 25 degrees and 22 minutes (Latitude) & 85 degrees and 8 minutes (Longitude).
In the 17th Century, Manucci visited the walled city of Patna City.
2. THE VISIT OF FATHER CLAUDE BOUDIER
In 1734-35, Father Claude Stanislaus Boudier visited Jaipur from Chandernagore. During his journey, to and fro, Boudier fixed the longitude and latitude of many important places, which included Patna and Bankipur also. Significantly, Bankipur was emerging as distinct township, from Patna City.
(I) Patna – 25 degrees and 22 minutes (Latitudes) & 85 degrees and 8 minutes.
(II) Bankipur – 25 degrees and 24 minutes (Latitudes) & 85 degrees and 7 minutes.
But the geographical figures were not fully correct.
FINAL FIXING OF GEOGRAPHICAL LATITUDES AND LONGITUDES IN THE LATE 18TH CENTURY
Tiffenthaler (1760-70s), D’Anville, made good use of Father Boudier’s observations on latitudes and longitudes particularly in Eastern India.
MAJOR JAMES RENNEL AND HIS TEAM
An actual survey of the Provinces of Bengal and Bihar was done by Major James Renell and his team as they followed the course of the River Ganges from Varanasi (Benaras) eastward to the Ganges Delta and the Bay of Bengal and took data of Varanasi, Patna and Dacca and among many other Indian cities on the way during 1770s and 1780s.
BRITISH INDIA – 1757 ONWARDS
1. There are three important landmarks in the British conquest of India. Each is connected with a geographical initiative. In 1757, the British conquered Bengal. Ten years later, in 1767, a Surveyor General for Bengal was appointed (Major James Rennell). Military conquest of India was accomplished with ease except for two pockets of resistance. The 1767 appointment of Bengal Surveyor General is taken as the starting point by the Survey of India.
2. The Great Trigonometrical Survey of India had a decided purely scientific dimension that went beyond utilitarianism. But this developed only in the 19th century, when the British Empire was fully established. In the earlier centuries, however, the British in India were guided by hard practical considerations.
3. In British India, Military geography went hand in hand with the administrative.
(i) Whatever geographical information was available in pre-existing scientific and political documents was taken out and utilized.
(ii) Local people were hired as messengers to bring in intelligence on routes, roads, rivers, bridges, hills, etc.
(iii) Jesuits and ex-Jesuits took modern measurements and obtained valuable primary data. (iv)
(iv) Whenever an opportunity presented itself, Company officials made surveys.
(v) Lastly, as soon as it became possible, an exhaustive systematic field survey was ordered.
BRIEF INTRODUCTION OF FAMOUS MODERN GEOGRAPHERS WHO VISITED PATNA AND BIHAR
1. MANUCCI
(I) Nicolao Manucci (1653-1708) was an Italian, who ran away from his hometown Venice at the age of 14 and after long travel through Asia Minor and Persia, reached India and secured employment as an artilleryman in the Army of Prince Dara Shikoh.
(II) After the defeat and death of Dara Shikoh in 1659, he adopted the profession of a medical practitioner.
(III) His long stay in India from 1653 to1708 placed him in a position to appreciate things better than any other European could do.
(IV) His long memoirs entitled Storio Dor Mogor,which run into four large volumes are full of his personal observations.
(V) He has also recorded valuable information on the industrial markets of South India and Hindustan.
(VI) On seventeenth-century India, Manucci is one of the best possible sources and has rightly been called a “mirror of seventeenth-century India”.
2. FATHER CLAUDE BOUDIER
(I) Fr Claude Stanislaus Boudier (1686-1757) was based in Chandernagore near Calcutta.
(II) The easternmost point for which longitude was known with good degree of accuracy was Chandernagore, the French Colony, in Bengal.
(III) Father Claude Boudier, Jesuit missionary had determined its longitude from series of observation. But the position of large number of places suffered from a great deal of uncertainty
(IV) His chance to traverse north India came about as a result of astronomical pursuits of Sawai Raja Jai Singh of Jaipur who wanted the Jesuit to visit him for scientific consultations.
(V) Accordingly, Boudier and another Jesuit, Pons, set out from Chandernagore on 6 January 1734. They returned to Chandernagore about a year later
(VI) During his journey both ways, Boudier fixed the longitude and latitude of many important places, and kept a survey of his route between Agra and Allahabad.
(VII) He described places on the road from Agra to Bengal with the computed distance of each from the course of the Yamuna and Ganga.
(VIII) Boudier’s work was extensively used by D’Anville and Rennell.
3. TIEFFENTHALER
(I) Fr Joseph Tiffenthaler (1710-1785) survived the dissolution of the Society of Jesus in 1773 by working under British auspices.
(II) He travelled to Calcutta keeping surveys on the way. Apparently he found the help he needed and settled in Oudh for the rest of his life, making Lucknow his headquarter.
(III) Till 1771 he was continuously on the move making astronomical observations and surveys, employing also one or more local assistants ‘versed in geography’, whom he sent to explore the sources of the rivers Ganga and Gogra.
(IV) Tieffenthaler was a tireless explorer. He was very keen that his work be noticed by the Europeans.
(V) It was The German astronomer and mathematician, John Bernoulli, at the time professor in Berlin, published Tieffenthaler’s treatise in three volumes in German (1785-1787) and French (1786-1789).
4. MAJOR JAMES RENNEL
(I) Rennell remained in office as Bengal Surveyor General 1767 till 1777 after which he worked at the East India House in London, where he remained influential till the end.
(II) In London, Rennell regularly prepared maps which were sent out to Bengal in Company ships.
(III) His Bengal Atlas appeared in 1779-1781.
(IV) His magnum opus however was the Map of Hindustan accompanied by a valuable Memoir.
(V) The two first appeared together in 1782, but subsequently underwent revisions separately till 1793 incorporating new and improved data.
(VI) As Rennell recalled in 1808: ‘at that day we were compelled to receive information from others respecting the interior of the country’. The first informants for the British geographers were the Jesuits.
(VII) Major James Rennel is known as the Father of Indian Geography.
PHOTOGRAPHS
1. Major James Rennel
2. Rennel's Map of Bengal and Bihar Province, 1776
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