A lovely copy of this unlikely survivor: Indian cartographer Joynarain Biswass’s hitherto unknown plan of Cawnpoor (Kanpur, Utter Pradesh), printed in Allahabad. At that time, the city was home to over 7,000 European soldiers, Indian sepoys, and civilian merchants. It was considered the major British garrison of the Upper Doab.
Based upon the survey work of Revenue Surveyor (later Major-General) Saunders Alexius Abbott (1811-1894), this large, finely detailed plan depicts the entire civil station and adjacent cantonments stretching along the south bank of the Ganges at Cawnpoor (modern Kanpur) 15 years before the 1857 Indian Rebellion. Dozens of locations are given, and virtually every structure—military or civilian—is drawn in plan and labelled. A contemporary hand has added more than 200 red manuscript numbers, evidently creating a keyed property index that was likely prepared as an administrative tool.
The banks of the Ganges form the northern edge of the map, behind that lie the European Infantry Lines, European Cavalry Lines, Horse Artillery Lines, Foot Artillery Lines, East Artillery Lines, and Dragoon Lines (each with parallel rows of barracks), along with canteens, hospitals, riding schools, and powder magazines. South and east of the military core lie extensive parade grounds (labelled “Grand Parade”), a race stands beside the Grand Trunk Road, a Burial Ground, and the “Site of Old Cavalry Lines.” Across the cantonment boundary (shown by a dashed line and small pillars) the civil station spreads westward: here are the Collector’s Kutchery, Judge’s Kutchery, Treasury, Jail, Work House / Poor House, Subadar’s Tank, and the landmark Aga Meer’s Tomb. A neat compass rose, an ornamental title cartouche, and an inset list of twenty-one numbered Bazaars—from “General Gunge or Sudder” to “Native Cavalry” bazaars—complete the design.
Strung along the river road and interior lanes of the Cawnpoor cantonment, are a series of bazaars each named after the group it chiefly supplied. The larger “General Gunge” (or Sudder bazaar) served the whole station, while specialized markets catered to Horse and Foot Artillery, European and Native Infantry, the native Cavalry, and even porters, washermen, or farriers. Village stalls at Putkeepoor, Bujoo, Budloo, Maikoo, and Dukka bridged the cantonment with surrounding rural hamlets, and riverside landings at Gola Ghat and Old Gola Ghat handled ordnance and boat stores. Smaller squares such as Sutta Choura (“tobacco court”) or the Permit bazaar sold regulated liquor and luxuries under the cantonment magistrate’s eye.
The detail is incredible: villages such as Khulassie Lines (Khalasi Lines), Budloo Poora, Bujee Village, Maikoo Village, and Dukkea Village are plotted with their walled compounds, while smaller features—including tanks, wells, and cemeteries - are also included. Roads leading toward Allahabad and Mynpoorie are shown leaving the cantonment, underscoring the post’s strategic position on the Grand Trunk corridor.
Joynarain Biswass (or Biswas, dates unknown) was a Bengali cartographer and draftsman who served in the Surveyor-General’s establishment of British India from the 1830s-1860s. Contemporary records consistently style him a “Revenue Surveyor” or “Native Draftsman,” linking him to the Revenue Survey branch that prepared cadastral and topographical maps for administration.
The earliest map we can find by him is “Map of the Zillahm under the Superintendent of Police in the Western Provinces … Copied by Joynarain Biswess” (manuscript, 1832). It is one of several works bearing his name as a copyist from the 1830s. In 1842, the name Joynarain Biswas Del. & Lith. appeared on a map printed in Allahabad entitled “Map of the District of Bareill …” Later in his career, a lithographed sheet titled Districts Nagpoor and Wurdah carries the credit line “Drawn and written by Joynarain Biswas, Revenue Surveyor General’s Office, Febry 1863.“ An undated catalogue of historical Survey of India maps also attributes to him a Plan of Saugor Island and other manuscript plots, indicating a breadth of assignments that ranged from central-India districts to the Bengal coast.
Saunders Alexius Abbott (1811-1894) arrived in India in 1829 with the Bengal infantry. Appointed Assistant in the Revenue Survey under Henry M. Lawrence in 1836, he directed successive survey “charges” between 1838 and 1842, mapping hundreds of villages across the North-Western Provinces and Bundelkhand. These painstaking triangulation survey produced the cadastral base on which new settlements and tax assessments were imposed, and they gave Abbott a reputation for methodical field work and accurate cartography.
After the First Anglo-Sikh War, Abbott was appointed Deputy Commissioner of Umbala in 1847 and, two years later, of Hoshiarpur—frontier districts where revenue collection, policing, and canal administration all fell under his charge. During the 1857 uprising the Punjab remained largely quiet. Contemporary reports credit Abbott’s firm but even-handed governance in Hoshiarpur with helping to keep that sensitive district loyal, underscoring his value as a soldier-administrator able to translate survey-grounded local knowledge into effective civil control.
He served as Commissioner of Lucknow from 1858–1863, where he oversaw the re-establishment of courts, the resettlement of landed estates, and the reconstruction of municipal infrastructure—work that drew directly on his earlier experience aligning fiscal policy with the physical geography of a district. Abbott remained an honorary aide-de-camp to successive Governors-General until retiring in 1864 with the brevet rank of major-general, leaving a record that bridged the Company’s era of exploratory surveying and the Raj’s more formal apparatus of civil administration.
Under the Treaty of 1801 Nawab Saadat Ali Khan ceded Cawnpore and other “Ceded Provinces” to the East India Company. The British immediately recognized the high, dry riverbank as an ideal cantonment site: they declared Cawnpore a district headquarters on 24 March 1803 and began laying out infantry, cavalry, and artillery lines in a formal grid. Roads radiated toward Allahabad, Lucknow, and the Grand Trunk Road, while parade grounds, magazines, barracks, churches, courts, a treasury, and the Collector’s and Judge’s kutcherries (offices) defined a dual civil-military station. European merchants—especially clothiers, saddlers, and provisions dealers—followed the troops and set up depots along the new bazaars.
An important, apparently unrecorded, map of Cawnpore by an Indian lithographer. We find no trace of it in instutional holdings or through the trade.
