Prshant Lahoti’s love for maps started one afternoon when he was in Edinburgh, UK. Since his train was late, he decided to take a stroll down the town, where he came upon an antique store that sold maps. That was 14 years back.
By now, Prshant has 3,000 maps, 70 of which will be displayed at a show, Cosmology to Cartography, at the National Museum, Delhi. “I couldn’t buy maps from that store in Edinburgh, so I came back and placed an order for 13 maps of India and that’s how I started my collection,” says Prshant whose first map was the Faden Map of India from 1793. “I wanted to share my love for maps with many more people... so when the chance to display at the National Museum, Delhi, came, I grabbed it,” he says.
The exhibition will be divided into three segments, the first one deals with the Jain cosmic maps (abstract maps), the second deals with pilgrimage maps (semi-abstract maps) and then you have cartography, maps that were created after proper surveys. Among the collection of maps, the oldest happens to be one from 1482, printed 16 years before Vasco de Gama came to India. Prshant says, “Around the 1700s, many maps were not done according to surveys, but they have an aesthetic and antique value, something the modern maps lack that,” Prshant says.
Did any of his maps need restoration? “Restoration is very expensive so I try to avoid it, but sometimes it becomes imperative. For instance take the Calcutta map that is 7 ft by 3½ ft. The map was in a bad condition so I ended up spending 10 times the amount I paid while buying the map,” he explains. These maps don’t just provide information, but they also take you back to a time when the landscape was different, when countries were still together and islands weren’t combined. “Take for instance the Mumbai map, when the islands were not combined. You’ll also find that many cities and places are not part of the country now,” he says. “Of all the maps, I really like the Ganges map. The map was divided into three pieces and I was able to buy only two; the other piece was already bought by someone,” he adds.
Some of the maps on display are manuscripts, which means that they are one of its kind. “The National Museum has shared two of their maps and one of them is about Hyderabad,” he says.
