The Survey of India was established in 1767 – just a decade after the Battle of Plassey (1757), which reshaped political power in the subcontinent. In other words, mapping came on the heels of conquest, as British authorities sought to document and manage the land they now ruled.
What began as military and administrative necessity soon became one of the most ambitious cartographic projects in the world. Over the next century, British surveyors systematically measured, classified, and recorded South Asia’s landscapes, transforming terrain into legible data for governance and control.
These maps marked infrastructure, resources, wells, trade routes, places of worship, and settlements, translating complex lived landscapes into administrative knowledge. Today, that cartographic knowledge-project is becoming newly accessible.
A new open-access search-portal brings together metadata for 🗺️ 1,200+ historic Survey of India maps – with hundreds digitised, and free to access.
The Mapping Archaeological Heritage in South Asia (MAHSA) project, in collaboration with Cambridge University Library and the British Library, has launched a digital search platform for historic Survey of India maps.
The database brings together geospatial data and 400+ high-resolution scans, made openly accessible via IIIF (under a CC BY NC license). This means you can view, download, and work with many of these maps for research, teaching, or creative exploration (but NOT for commercial use).
You can access it here.
Using the MAHSA search database
Using search-by-terms
If you already have a rough idea of what you’re looking for, the search bar is a good place to begin. Typing in terms such as “forest” surfaces suggested matches as you type. Selecting a result marked as Historic Maps immediately does two things: it zooms the map on the right to the present-day location, and it surfaces a corresponding record in the results panel on the left.
This dual view (map and list view) makes it easier to move between geography and individual map sheets, even if the interface takes a little getting used to.
Filtering by location and time
The search tools in the top-right corner allow you to refine results further. By default, the database opens in map search mode, but you can also switch to Advanced Search or use the calendar icon to filter by date.
The map search is the most intuitive entry point. You can search using present-day place names, and the interface will surface historic map records linked to that area. Clicking through a result takes you to a record page, which includes metadata and a link to a zoomable IIIF image.
You can also click directly on purple-highlighted areas on the map, which indicate locations with available resources. The saved queries icon (next to the calendar icon) offers useful shortcuts, including a filter for records with images only.
As I explored the database using the map tool, I found myself drawn to places I’m already familiar with, tracing their cartographic histories backward in time.
Zooming into legends and symbols can reveal a lot
From the record page, the IIIF image link takes you to the map sheet hosted by Cambridge University Library.
Zooming in reveals the dense visual language of the maps: wells, streams, forests, trade routes, and settlements.
Later maps feature police stations, post offices, Dak bungalows, and so on – markers of expanding administrative presence.
Viewing and downloading maps
The Cambridge University Library interface allows you to download a 2000px image directly from the viewer. While this is useful for reference or print, the IIIF zoom experience is far more revealing, especially when examining dense areas or reading fine symbols. For close looking, zooming beats downloading.
The MAHSA search database makes it possible to move back and forth between geography, metadata, and image, piecing together how the landscape was seen and recorded.
From a research point of view, this is already a compelling tool and serves an important function. Looking forward, it isn’t difficult to imagine how future integrations with tools like Wikidata could deepen the experience by connecting map sheets to broader place histories.
Once upon a time, these maps were instruments of empire. Today though, they offer an opportunity for critical readings and new ways of looking. If this resource sparks new questions or perspectives, we’d love to hear from you.
