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The Survey of India and the Pundits the Secret Exploration of the Himalaya and Central Asia

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The Survey of India and the Pundits the Secret Exploration of the Himalaya and Central Asia MICHAEL WARD The Survey of India and the Pundits The Secret Exploration of the Himalaya and Central Asia (Plates 9 and 10) he Survey of India was one of the brightest jewels in the crown of the T British in India. Its success was based on highly motivated, talented, well-trained and dedicated members of many races, a high proportion of whom died orwere killed in its service. The number of British officers was always small but they more than made up for this by being highly effective. Their professionalism was in keeping with the ethos of the Indian Civil Service, which managed to administer a country of 250 million people with no more than about 2500 British members. The contribution of the Survey of India to mountain exploration was formidable. In 1921, for example, during the fIrst Everest Reconnaissance Expedition, E 0 Wheeler, later Surveyor-General of India from 1941 to 1946, discovered the key to the successful route on the north side of the mountain after Mallory had failed to investigate the East Rongbuk Glacier. Later that year Wheeler set up the world's highest survey station on the Lhakpa La (22,OOOft), while HT Morshead, the other surveyor in the 1921 party, had already been on Kamet in 1920 with Kellas. Also in 1921 about 15,000 square miles ofunknown southern Tibet were surveyed and a survey of northern Sikkim completed. The roots of the Survey of India lay deep in the Vedic History of India: as early as the third century BC the art of survey had been described, and by the fIfth century AD, Arya Bhat had calculated the earth's circumfer­ ence at the equator to be 25,000 miles, less than 200 miles off the modem measurement. The Survey of India owed its birth to the appointment in 1797 by the East India Company of James Rennell as Surveyor General of Bengal. His fIrst Map ofHindostan, printed in the UK, had reached India in 1783. A systematic survey had been set up in India even before the British Ordinance Survey had been established, while its scientifIc base, the Great Trigonometric Survey (GTS), had been undertaken before similar projects in France and the UK. The GTS owed much to the genius and resolution of William Lambton who started work in Madras in 1802. Early on he had found errors on existing maps of more than 40 miles in the breadth of the peninsula, together with many wrongly positioned towns. After Lambton's death in 1823 he was succeeded by George Everest who completed the Great Meridional Arc from Cape Cormorin at the southern 59 60 THE ALPINE JOURNAL 1998 tip of India to Mussoorie, a distance of 2400km. This was the backbone of the gridiron system by which India was subsequently mapped. The difficulties of working in a land of mountains, desert and jungle were awesome, with poorcommunications and the ever-present risk ofattack by endemic disease, bandits and wild animals; moreover, instruments continually broke down. Sir George Everest, Surveyor General of India, particularly praised Momsin Hussain, 'the great repairer of instruments', without whose dedicated expertise so much of his survey work would have been impossible. Eventually the Survey reached the unmapped ranges of the Himalaya and Karakoram which divided the subcontinent from Central Asia. The relatively favourable political climate of the time allowed teams to probe India's north-west boundaries, while access to the then independent king­ doms of Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan, Assam, the North-East Frontier Agency and Tibet was largely unattainable. So the pundits were born. Following the retirement of Sir George Everest in December 1843, Andrew Waugh was appointed bot.lJ. Surveyor General and Director of the Great Trigonometrical Survey. Between 1855 and 1865, some of the Survey's most important work was completed in Kashmir under the guidance of Captain TG Montgomerie, the originator of the pundits. CAPTAIN TG MONTGOMERIE (1830-1878) Montgomerie was gazetted in the Bengal Engineers and arrived in India in 1851. In the same year he joined the Great Trigonometrical Survey and in 1855 was put in charge of the Kashmir Survey, with WH Johnson as his second-in-command. The triangulation started in Kashmir's Pir Panjal. In 1856 a reconnaissance of Ladakh was made during which K2 was seen and its height, 28,265ft, calculated for the first time. The Kashmir survey continued throughout the Indian Mutiny of 1857, and in 1858 it was in Skardu. In 1861 it moved to Ladakh, where parties worked on the frontiers of Chinese Turkestan and Tibet, and in the Karakoram and the West Kun Lun Shan. By 1859 a map of 8000 square miles of Kashmir had been completed. In 1865, during his first leave to the UK, Montgomerie was awarded the Founder's Gold Medal by the Royal Geographical Society. Though he was awarded this honour for his own personal achievements, it was to be for his initiative and enterprise in the use of the pundits that he would subsequently be remembered. Although surveys covering 'several marches beyond the Karakoram Pass' had already been made, it was clear that different techniques would be needed to fill in the large blanks on the map of Tibet and Central Asia. As natives of India could cross the frontier freely, Montgomerie conceived the idea of training native surveyors disguised as traders or pilgrims, using concealed instruments; these men became famous as 'the pundits'. THE SUR V E Y 0 FIN D I A AND THE PUN D ITS 61 Montgomerie fIrst put forward his ideas in a Memorandum dated 20 August 1861. He suggested that to measure distance, surveyors should be required to walk 2000 paces to the mile. They were trained to do this by a British Sergeant-Major with a drum and a pace stick. To assist counting they carried a specially-designed Buddhist rosary with 100 beads rather than the usual 108. Every tenth bead was larger and represented 1000 paces, the smaller beads representing 100 paces. The results were inscribed and kept among the prayers in the cavity of the hand-held prayer wheel. Infor­ mation about topography, culture andpolitics was also recorded. A compass could be placed in the semi-precious stone in the centre of the drum of the prayer wheel or in the head of a hollowed-out stick, which served also as a repository for gold and silver coins. A watch, boiling-point thermometer (for altitude), barometer and sextant were carried in various guises. After training at the Survey headquarters at Dehra Dun, each pundit was tested along a known route before being despatched on a mission. All Mont­ gomerie's proposals were approved by the Government of India in 1863. The ftrst pundit, Abdul Hamid, was despatched to Yarkand the same year. Yarkand was chosen because not only was it an important centre, but its position had been incorrectly placed on contemporary maps and intel­ ligence was needed about the region. Hamid, a Moslem, already had some surveying knowledge, and after training for a month at Montgomerie's camp, he joined a caravan disguised as a trader. Leaving Leh on 23 August 1863 he crossed the Karakoram Pass and on 30 September reached Yarkand where he remained throughout the winter. Eventually the Chinese became suspicious so, with his friend Awaz Ali, he returned by the same route. Sadly, he died after eating poisonous rhubarb, but luckily his notes and instruments were rescued by WH Johnson, who happened to be camping close by. This fIrst secret journey was a great success from the point of view of the Survey, and Montgomerie capitalised on it by sending more pundits into Turkestan. The secret exploration of Central Asia now began in earnest. The two most outstanding pundits were Nain Singh and Kishen Singh. ~~ S~(i1I (1830-1882) For the initial exploration of Tibet and the independent Himalayan Kingdoms, Montgomerie selected Nain Singh and his cousin Mani Singh from Milam on the advice ofEdmund Smyth, Education Officer of Kumaon. They were sons of the Singh family who had helped Moorcroft and Hearsey in their exploration of western Tibet in 1812. Son of Lata Burha, Nain Singh was born in Milam in the Upper Johar Valley of Kumaon in 1830. Milam, situated at the foot of the glacier which is the source of the Gori Ganga river, is inhabited in summer only. Trade with western Tibet was in flour, rice and British manufactured goods, which were exchanged for wool, salt, gold-dust, ponies and borax. Each Johar • Salf:u (Tunhullng) [)LopNor ~_.,.-=",,- Maralbashl Taklimokon Desert; TSAI DAM Koko Wakhan ..,. ~Nor Khotan• • Tengefik "'-p.,..,., • Keda Go/mud. Gilgit- 0-p KZ UN .,.~ L UN N Kun/un 35' ... • Polu Pass Jr. YuZhu 617BM ?~ . -p ~.s' "".., O'~ • Ghumbollk Let!. C H A N G TAN G L}'" """ Tagchugp'u Ri Z ~ "+: • 641Bm • 62.6m 1"-4", " ,n' t'!1 rango~"-t' " v_ rl CiGvl ~AIVG£ ....-\1. Nga"glongKangrl mayer""'ng .... "-4 Demchok ....~~ J( Tap/cia o • Lahore c:: Gia~hu'ra1'~ ThokJ~u ;<l ~"~': t~G{tn,k••• ~~kDaurakPa z > Tolfng .' • MtKailas "'-~ t'"' 30' ..y ,_""::'---'B'La~Man(Js(Jrow(Jr ~~Q E NTANOLHA Dehrll Dun ~_.. '-~ • I N:e 'Cl ~J ..... GARHWAL - ~ y" 'Cl ...... / .Milam "Tradom Lhasa 00 ...... KUMAON "_- ~~_~hi~e Gyantse rsa"g ....... ... ..;!ZAJ.'Musta\.g • Tennr/.. - -- '.. C"'19 NAIN SINGH .....:-... -4 .~ ..~ '" Yamdrok Tawang ......... I<lron9~ Everrst TSQ 1865-66 ......-'..._, L A A • Pharly A J+ 1867 Kathmandu DlIrJeellng·. • ewan91ri 1873-74 ForsythMission SaxaDuar -11- 1874-75 Kilometres 500 ! so' 90 THE SUR V E Y 0 FIN D r A AND THE PUN D r T S 63 trader had a Tibetan colleague or mitra who was identified by the splitting of a stone, each keeping one half.
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