CDS (I) 2022 General Knowledge · Question 53 of 120

Correct — A, Colonel Colin Mackenzie. The ruins of Hampi were surveyed in 1800 by Colin Mackenzie, a Scottish officer of the East India Company who later became the first Surveyor General of India. Hampi, the capital of Vijayanagara, had been pillaged and burnt over six months after the defeat at Talikota in 1565 and then abandoned; Mackenzie's survey drew its plans, copied its inscriptions and brought the site back into scholarly view, and his enormous collection of manuscripts, coins and inscriptions became one of the foundations of Indian antiquarian study. The site is now a UNESCO World Heritage property, inscribed in 1986.

• (b)James Prinsep — James Prinsep belongs to the next generation and to a different problem. As assay master at the Calcutta mint and secretary of the Asiatic Society, he is remembered for deciphering the Brahmi and Kharoshthi scripts in the 1830s, which is what made Ashoka's edicts readable.
• (c)William Jones — Sir William Jones was a judge at Calcutta who founded the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1784 and demonstrated the kinship of Sanskrit with Greek and Latin. His work was philological, and he died in 1794, six years before the Hampi survey.
• (d)James Rennell — James Rennell was a surveyor, and the confusion is understandable, but he was a generation earlier and worked in Bengal — Surveyor General of Bengal, author of the Bengal Atlas and of the first good map of Hindoostan. He is a cartographer of river country, not the man who recorded Hampi.

Hampi, on the Tungabhadra in Karnataka, was the capital of the Vijayanagara empire and one of the largest cities in the world in the early sixteenth century. It was sacked after the battle of Talikota in 1565 and left in ruins. British antiquarian interest in the site begins with Colin Mackenzie's survey of 1800; systematic archaeological work followed much later, and the Group of Monuments at Hampi was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1986.

All four names are British officials of roughly the same era and all four are associated with the recovery of India's past, so the question is asking which kind of recovery each performed. Mackenzie surveyed and collected; Prinsep deciphered scripts; Jones founded the Asiatic Society and worked on languages; Rennell mapped. Attaching one verb to each name is enough to answer any item drawn from this group. The additional detail worth carrying about Mackenzie is his office — first Surveyor General of India, from 1815 — which is the fact papers most often use to identify him, and which also explains why a soldier was walking a ruined city with measuring instruments in 1800.

• The ruins of Hampi were surveyed in 1800 by Colonel Colin Mackenzie, a Scot in the service of the East India Company.
• Mackenzie became the first Surveyor General of India in 1815 and assembled a vast collection of manuscripts, inscriptions and coins.
• Hampi-Vijayanagara was pillaged and burnt for six months after the battle of Talikota in 1565 and then abandoned.
• The Group of Monuments at Hampi was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1986.
• James Prinsep deciphered Brahmi and Kharoshthi in the 1830s; William Jones founded the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1784; James Rennell was Surveyor General of Bengal and made the first good map of Hindoostan.

• Confusing Mackenzie with Rennell because both were surveyors — Rennell mapped Bengal a generation earlier.
• Attributing the survey to Prinsep because he is the best known name in early Indian archaeology.
• Dating the survey to the Archaeological Survey era; Mackenzie's work predates that institution by decades.

As a who-did-what pairing among early British scholar-officials, or through the Vijayanagara chapter as a site-to-person question.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Who was the first Surveyor General of India?

  • (a)James Rennell
  • (b)Colin Mackenzie
  • (c)William Lambton
  • (d)George Everest

  Answer(b) Colin Mackenzie — appointed in 1815; Rennell was Surveyor General of Bengal, and Lambton and Everest led the Great Trigonometrical Survey.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Vijayanagara capital was sacked following which battle?

  • (a)Talikota
  • (b)Raichur
  • (c)Panipat
  • (d)Khanwa

  Answer(a) Talikota, in 1565 — after which the city was plundered for months and abandoned.