I am mimicking the title of William Dalrymple’s (Willy D from here on) “The White Mughals” to write this brief note on Col. Colin Mackenzie (1754-1821), the first Surveyor General of India. I came across Col. Mackenzie's name as I was looking up information on Ahobilam, a South Indian temple town. An article on that town mentioned a Ahobilam “Kaifiyat” (Arabic for "narrative") - a digest from "kaviles" or village archivists working under Mckenzine, containing information on the political, social, religious and other conditions of the villages in Deccan - found in the State Archives in Hyderabad, which records (echoing Arun Kolatkar's Jejuri poems: "scratch a rock/ and a legend springs") the mythologies of Ahobilam.

Col. Mackenzie was a Scotsman (as many British of the Raj were), who went to India as a part of the Madras Engineers when he was at an advanced age of 28. There he developed deep interests in the fields of Indian history, religion, philosophy, art, ethnology, folklore and mathematics. After the defeat and death of Tipu Sultan in the Battle of Seringapatam, in which Mackenzie took part, he conducted a large scale survey of the Mysore / Deccan region. Apart from mapping Mysore (the predominant concern of Kim's 'Great Game'), this survey is said to have employed a massive team of draughtsmen and illustrators to collate material on historic architectural sites, Hindu caste customs, folk tales, plant life etc.

While I am sure this collection and Col. Mackenzie's life await discovery by someone who wants to go Willy D's route (aside: for some reason I harbor this feeling/notion that if a 'native' did what Willy D has done with Indian history in his books, the native's work may have never become such a hit), the helpful folks at the British Library have made available in their online archives few peices of the Mackenzie collection. The maps and drawings Mackenzie’s survey produced when he stumbled upon the forgotten ruins of the great Buddhist town Amaravati on the banks of River Krishna are worth taking a look. The question to ponder is do examples such as Col. Mackenzie somewhat support the thesis of Emprie apologists that its representatives also brought their Enlightenment driven minds to play in the darkness of the East, and were more that simple agents of "guns, germs and steel"?

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Another not to be missed visual treasure box is the British Library's Images Online page, where you can spend many happy hours exploring "thousands of images from the British Library’s unparalleled collections." Here are some finds:

View from Malabar Hill. Where the hell are the buildings, the slums, and the madness of Maximum City! Another view of Bombay Tank in the Shiva Temple, Chidambaram, Madras Pagoda at Ramisseram aka. Rameswaram