Mapping the Sacred City Varanasi - Mahesh Gogate

About the Speaker -
Mahesh Madhav Gogate (Ph.D.), is affiliated with Centre for Indic Studies and studying the sacred and fluid geography of Varanasi city, India (Bharat). His research focuses on the transformation of sacred water heritage sites and urban water management.

About the Talk -
This presentation explores the contrast between European cartography notions and practices and the Indian way of understanding space and its distinct representational approaches. The presentation briefly introduces the spatial texts of Purāṇa-s and other Hindu literary texts and how these texts
subtly influenced the process of producing ‘pictorial maps’ of the sacred city of Varanasi, India. In this process, the indigenous pictorial maps are juxtaposed with the European scientific topographical maps primarily produced by colonial scholars and officers. Amongst these topographical, the 1822 map produced by East India Company officer and scholar James Prinsep was referred to as the first ‘accurate’ topographical map of the city. This map subtly reveals the land and water separation and distinguishes the dry and wet attributes of the fluid geography. In contrast to European topographical maps the indigenous ‘pictorial maps’ show the continuum between water and land. The anonymous map makers hint toward the sacred landscape of Varanasi which is not static but dominated by flowing water.

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