Notes on botany that made its way from Edinburg to Tipu's library

He was a physician but today he is more known for his contribution in the field of botany, zoology and geography. He studied medicine in the University of Edinburg and also botany under John Hope.

Hope (1725-1786) was a Scottish physician and botanist. He is best known as an early supporter of  Carl Linnaeus system of classification. The genus Hopea is named after him.

He was a fairly good student and he had taken detailed notes on botany when he attended several lectures on the subject, including those from Hope.

However, he soon joined the Merchant Navy and then service in the East India Company. He was a physician to William Hastings, the Governor-General and he was asked to survey the province of Mysore in 1800 after the death of Tipu Sultan in Srirangapatna in 1799.

He conducted the first scientific survey of south India and described in detail the plants, customs, tradition, anthropology, social and economic condition of the people of the Mysore Kingdom.  

He started his journey for the survey from Madras and came to Vellore and from there halted at Bangalore. When in Bangalore, he saw and described Lalbagh for the first time and from there he proceeded down south towards Srirangapatna.

He stayed back in Srirangapatna for a little over two weeks and with the help of a Kannadiga who could also speak Sanskrit he met the officials and royals of the Mysore Kingdom.

During one of his visits to the palace of Tipu Sultan where the wives and sons of Tipu still resided, this Englishman was handed over the notes he had made on botany at Edinburg. He was told by the Englishman in charge of Tipu’s library that the notes were found neatly bound in Tipu’s library when the British stormed Srirangapatna and took the fort town.

The notes belonged to none other than Francis Buchanan and it was Buchanan himself who had been asked to undertake the survey of Mysore.

Buchanan recalled that the detailed notes on botany that he had taken down was in the summer of 1780 and that he had handed the notes to his friend, Boiswell.

Bosiwell had accidentally left the notes in a trunk when Tipu had defeated the British in a battle in south India. When the book was presented to him as part of the booty seized from the British camp, Tipu had released that it dealt with botany, a subject dear to his heart.

Tipu had the notes bound in tooled leather and kept in a prominent place in his personal library. When the British took Srirangapatna and overran the town, they came across this book in Tipu’s vast library.

Tipu's library was listed by Major Ogg and later all the books were shifted to the Asiatic Societies of Calcutta and of London. When they realised that Buchanan had been engaged by Hastings to commence his survey of Mysore Kingdom, they had kept the book aside in Srirangapatna itself and handed it back to him when he came to Srirangapatna on May 23, 1800, a little more than an year after Tipu died.

Buchanan noticed that all the volumes that had been rebound at Srinangapatna and “that they have the names of God, Mohammed, his daughter Fatima, and her sons Hasan and Hasain, stamped in a medallion on the middle of the dover, and the names of the first four Khalifs on the four corners. At the top is “The government given by God” and at the bottom, “God is sufficient”.

A few books were stamped with the private signet, “Tipu Sultan”. The Buchanan manuscript was similarly decorated.

Buchanan brought back his notes to Scotland and the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburg, where it remains even today.

The geographical centre of India

Which is the centre of India?

It is a small plot of agricultural land and the Government of India acquired it soon after Independence. Mind you, there was no developmental work in progress here. No dam was being constructed nor was any road being formed.  The Government acquired this plot of land and gave the farmer exactly the same size of the land it had acquired at a different place. The reason: This was exactly the centre point of new India (minus Pakistan).

Before Independence, the centre point of undivided Indian was Nagpur. But after 1947, when India came to be divided into Pakistan and India and of course East Pakistan (which was  a part of Pakistan), Indian surveyors had to redraw the topography of India.

The centre of India then shifted from Nagpur to a small village in Madhya Pradesh. The surveyors discovered that the centre was right in the farm of a villager. It acquired his land and constructed a small sign.

However, this village is still obscure and not many know about it

and it is still the center of nowhere.

The village is Karondi located in Seoni district of Madhya Pradesh. It has a population of about 498 persons living in around 82 households.

What would have imagined that this nondescript village would emerge as the centre point of India. The village has nothing to show off. It has no structures worth seeing nor is it known for anything , save the centre point.

Actually, Kalyanapur is the correct middle point of India. The correct middle point is logged in the office of the Surveyor General of India as the zero point for map work. But the geographical centre is at the coordinates, 24 degrees 7 minutes 11 seconds North and 77 degrees 41 minutes 49 seconds East.

These coordinates would be located somewhere near the jungles of  Karondi. Since the village of Karondi, whose coordinates were the closest among the three contenders to the spot being officially declared as the centre of India, it was chosen.

The best way to reach Karondi is to first touch Jabalpur by either train or road. However, beware, only a handful of people even know that a small village nearby is the centre of India.

Head to the district of  Sihora, a little away from Jabalpur. The road to the village is dusty and  meanders into a village road. The road passes through heavily forested area and the village of  Karondi suddenly emerges situated in a large clearing.  

There is an ashrama of  Maharishi Mahesh Yogi here called the Vedic Vishwavidyalaya, which trains Brahmin in shastras and Vedic rituals.

There is a small memorial near the ashrama which says this is the centre of Bharat or India. The memorial is nothing but a cement replica of  Emperor Ashoka’s four headed lion. The replica is at the erstwhile farm of Ramesh Singh Thakur.                                                                             
Look around you and you will find the forest teeming with wildlife. The nearby Kechua Hills are a perfect backdrop to the isolated village.
The village is about 63 kms from Jabalpur.

Coming back to Nagpur, you can still find the zero mile point here. This point was set up by the British when they measured scientifically the geographical area of  undivided India.

The Zero Mile Stone consists of four horses and a pillar made up of sandstone. It is located on the south east of  Vidhan Bhavan.

It is from here, that distances were first calculated.

However, neither of the two points-Nagpur and Karondi-are known. Is it not the duty of the Government to make people aware of these geographical milestones.