Presqu‘Isle De L‘ Inde deca la Gange, ou sont les Royaumes de Decan, de Golconde de Bisnagar, et le Malabar

1657

Copper engraving on paper

Print size: 7.75 x 9.75 in (20 x 25 cm)
Sheet size: 8.5 x 11 in (21.5 x 28 cm)

Sanson’s India: The Deccan, Golconda and Malabar in a Landmark French Map, 1657

Copper engraving, a finely detailed seventeenth-century French map of India by Nicolas Sanson (1600–1667), widely regarded as the father of French cartography during its golden age. Covering the subcontinent from the Gulf of Cambay and Gujarat across to Bengal and extending southward to Ceylon, the map offers an impressive level of geographic and political detail at a time when much of India’s interior remained only imperfectly known in Europe, decades before the systematic British surveys of the late eighteenth century.

Sanson delineates the principal kingdoms and regions of southern India—Deccan, Golconda, Bisnagar, and Malabar—rendered with dense toponymy, major river systems, and mountain chains, framed by the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal. Particularly notable is the large inset map of the Malabar Coast in the lower right quadrant, highlighting the commercially vital southwestern littoral and its port cities, including the Portuguese enclave of Goa. This dual-scale presentation reflects the strategic interest of European powers in India’s coastal trading hubs, central to the spice and textile networks of early modern global commerce.

The map’s clean linework and restrained decorative colouring exemplify Sanson’s rigorous, research-driven style, which helped shift the centre of cartographic excellence from Amsterdam to Paris in the later seventeenth century. Published in Paris by Nicolas d’Abbeville, the engraving belongs to the Sanson tradition of scholarly geographic synthesis that culminated in the first French world atlases issued by the Mariette firm.

Of additional interest, this map may be among the earliest European printed maps to mention the temple town of Tirupati, marking an early moment in the inclusion of South India’s sacred geography within Western cartographic knowledge.

A refined and historically resonant example of classical French mapping of Mughal and southern India, prized for its inset of Malabar, its commercial and political context, and its association with Sanson’s foundational cartographic legacy.

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