page_title: Cartography of India
section_title: Antiquity
hierarchical_section_title: Cartography of India / Antiquity
context_page_description: The cartography of India begins with early charts for navigation and constructional plans for buildings. Indian traditions influenced Tibetan and Islamic traditions, and in turn, were influenced by the British cartographers who solidified modern concepts into India's map making.
  A prominent foreign geographer and cartographer was Hellenistic geographer Ptolemy who researched at the library in Alexandria to produce a detailed eight-volume record of world geography. During the Middle Ages, India sees some exploration by Chinese and Muslim geographers, while European maps of India remain very sketchy.
  A prominent medieval cartographer was Persian geographer Abu Rayhan Biruni who visited India and studied the country's geography extensively.
  European maps become more accurate with the Age of Exploration and Portuguese India from the 16th century. The first modern maps were produced by Survey of India, established in 1767 by the British East India Company. Survey of India remains in continued existence as the official mapping authority of the Republic of India.
context_section_description: Cartography of India as a part of the greater continent of Asia develops in Classical Antiquity.
  In Greek cartography, India appears as a remote land on the eastern fringe of Asia in the 5th century BCE (Hecataeus of Miletus). More detailed knowledge becomes available after the conquests of Alexander the Great, and the 3rd-century BCE geographer Eratosthenes has a clearer idea of the size and location of India. By the 1st century, at least the western coast of India is well known to Hellenistic geography, with itineraries such as the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea. Marinus and Ptolemy had some knowledge of the Indian Ocean (which they considered a sea) but their Taprobana (Sri Lanka) was vastly too large and the Indian peninsula much reduced. They also had little knowledge of the interior of the country.
  Native Indian cartographic traditions before the Hellenistic period remain rudimentary. Early forms of cartography in India included legendary paintings; maps of locations described in Indian epic poetry, for example the Ramayana. These works contained descriptions of legendary places, and often even described the nature of the mythological inhabitants of a particular location. Early Indian cartography showed little knowledge of scale, the important parts of the map were shown to be larger than others (Gole 1990). Indian cartographic traditions also covered the locations of the Pole star, and other constellations of use. These charts may have been in use by the beginning of the Common Era for purposes of navigation. Other early maps in India include the Udayagiri wall sculpture—made under the Gupta empire in 400 CE—showing the meeting of the Ganges and the Yamuna.
caption: Southeast Asia in a Renaissance map constructed after Ptolemy's Geography, rediscovered by Maximus Planudes in Constantinople c. 1300.
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