Rennell and the Surveyors of India

Abstract

T T then i was asked to give a popular lecture on the Survey of India to mark tke V V two hundredth anniversary of the appointment of James Rennell to be the first Surveyor General of Bengal, it was at once apparent that the subject was too large for adequate treatment in the time available. I decided therefore to confine myself largely to the actions and characters of some of those who developed survey? ing in India. In doing this I must necessarily make little or no reference to many activities and people who would have been mentioned had there been more time. Before I begin my story proper, I think we should consider what was known of the geography of India before the time of Rennell. Surveying had been practised in India chiefly for revenue assessments long before the coming of the European, but these indigenous surveys gave no indications of geographical positions or bearings, so were of little help to the geographer. Such geographical information as there was of the interior of the country came largely from the work of Jesuit missionaries and other travellers, who in their journeys sometimes observed bearings and distances, checked by astronomical observations. The coastline had been roughly charted by sailors. As an indication of the ignorance of Europeans of Indian geography before the time of Rennell, existing maps showed a river called the Ganga rising in the Deccan and flowing north of east into the Bay of Bengal on the coast of Orissa. The Ganges mentioned by European classical writers was shown as a completely different river flowing from the north in roughly its correct position. Rennell's work showed that the river from the Deccan did not exist, and it was realized that the Ganges and the Ganga, the sacred river of the Hindus, were one and the same. Following the battle of Plassey in 1757, the East India Company found itself responsible for the administration of huge tracts of country, of the geography of which they knew very little. Surveyors were brought in and given the task of survey? ing routes and important areas. One of these was James Rennell a young officer of engineers in the service of the East India Company. He showed such zeal and ability that when Clive, then in his second term of office as Governor of Bengal, decided on the production of a general map of all his territory he appointed Rennell, then only just 24 years old, to be Surveyor General, and gave him the task of making it. This was in 1767. I quote from Clive's letter to the Court of Directors in London. After referring to the need for surveys he continues; 'We have appointed Captain Rennell, a young man of distinguished merit in this branch, to be Surveyor General, and directed him to form one general chart from those already made. . . . This though attended with great labour does not prevent him from prosecuting his own surveys, the fatigue of which with the desperate wounds he has lately received in one of them, have already left him but a shattered constitution . . .' Who was this Captain Rennell and what were his qualifications? Rennell was born in 1742, the son of an artillery officer killed on service in the Low Countries. He joined the navy at the age of 14 and here he learnt his surveying. Three years later he volunteered for service in the East Indies, and after an adventurous five years voyaging and surveying in many parts of this area, he transferred to the East India Company's forces for employment on survey duties. The desperate wounds to