Untitled [Index Nos. 56,64,65: Official Administrative and Intelligence Maps of Eastern India, with Original Invoice]

1st January 1921 (each)

Offset print on paper (each)

Index 56
Print size: 12.5 x 16.5 in (31.9 x 42.1 cm)
Sheet size: 13.5 x 19 in (34 x 48.3 cm)
Index 64
Print size: 12.5 x 8.25 in (32 x 21.2 cm)
Sheet size: 13.5 x 10.75 in (34.3 x 27.3 cm)
Index 65
Print size: 12.5 x 16.75 in (32 x 42.3 cm)
Sheet size: 13.5 x 19 in (34 x 48.3 cm)

Survey of India—Official Index Maps of Eastern India (Nos. 56, 64, 65), with Original 1923 Invoice

This cohesive group comprises three official Survey of India index maps—Index Nos. 64, 65, and 66—together with their original typed invoice documenting purchase in June 1923. Corrected to 1 January 1921, the maps belong to the mature phase of late colonial administrative cartography, when the Survey of India functioned as a central instrument of territorial governance, data control, and bureaucratic coordination.

Each sheet presents eastern India organised within a rigid grid framework, subdivided into systematically numbered squares corresponding to one-inch, half-inch, and quarter-inch survey sheets. Districts are colour-coded in red and pink, while blue circular symbols and marginal tables indicate publication status, survey currency, and revision history. The accompanying printed legends explain distinctions between modern surveys, older series, and unpublished areas, revealing the dynamic and continuously updated nature of colonial mapping practice. Prominently printed instructions direct applications to the Map Record & Issue Office at 13 Wood Street, Calcutta, confirming the maps’ restricted institutional circulation.

Of exceptional significance is the survival of the original invoice dated 13 June 1923, recording the official purchase of all three index maps. Such documentation is rarely preserved alongside working survey material, which was typically revised, superseded, or discarded. Together, the maps and invoice form a rare administrative ensemble, offering tangible insight into how geography was indexed, monetised, and operationalised by the colonial state in the final decades of British rule.

These items should be considered together as a single archival ensemble rather than as discrete objects. The three index maps are functionally interdependent, forming a continuous reference system within the Survey of India’s national grid. The invoice provides documentary proof of their official procurement and use, anchoring the maps within a precise administrative moment between post-war consolidation and the late colonial period.

The ensemble illustrates not merely the cartographic representation of territory but the bureaucratic processes by which knowledge was ordered, priced, distributed, and controlled. As surviving evidence of the Survey of India’s internal mechanisms—rather than its public-facing outputs—this group possesses heightened rarity and scholarly value, standing as a material record of colonial governance through cartography.

(Set of three)

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