Some Notes on Himalayan Mapping

1975 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 795-797
Author(s):  
Allen G. Noble ◽  
Richard Palmieri

The Himalaya, the southern frontier of Central Asia, has been for centuries a geographic enigma akin to the headwaters of the Nile and the wanderings of the Lop Nor. The earlier problems of location and elevation were solved, for the most part, by the pioneering efforts of the Surveyor General of India and the Survey of India, conducted since the mid-nineteenth century. Unfortunately, virtually all of the maps produced by the Surveyor General of India are officially restricted and thus normally not available. Far from satisfying our curiosity of the Himalaya, the Surveyor General and the Survey generated a host of questions regarding the population, cultures, and human ecology of that mountain system. These questions have attracted the full attention of numerous scholars representing many disciplines. Among geographers interested in the Himalaya, the cartographic work of Professor Pradyumna P. Karan is well known.

1984 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 657-675
Author(s):  
L. P. Morris

When great powers quarrel their lesser neighbours are often worst affected. Cajoled and wooed, they are drawn into conflicts they would prefer to avoid. Such involvement may exacerbate internal weaknesses and end by damaging them long after the causes of the original dispute have faded. Nineteenth-century Iran became drawn into Anglo-Russian rivalries in Central Asia as each sought to secure her assistance. Spectators of the so-called ‘Great Game’ were not allowed: the boxes were part of the field of play.


1904 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 460-468
Author(s):  
J. C. Ewart

In the time of Pallas and Pennant, as in the days of Oppian and Pliny, it was commonly believed true wild horses were to be met with not only in Central Asia, but also in Europe and Africa. But ere the middle of the nineteenth century was reached, naturalists were beginning to question the existence of genuine wild horses; and somewhat later, the conclusion was arrived at that the horse had long “ceased to exist in a state of nature.”


2021 ◽  
Vol 62 ◽  
pp. 18-33
Author(s):  
Pitambar Gautam

A bibliometric survey of the Himalaya-Karakoram-Hindukush-Tibet (HKHT) region, the largest mountain system on Earth, for research publications recorded in the Web of Science (WOS) during 1901-2018 revealed 46,746 citable documents (articles, reviews, letters and notes) showing exponential growth mainly after 1980s. The HKHT publications that cover 244 WOS subject categories (SCs) have been used to determine the relative shares by HKHT units, countries, research organizations and publication sources. Nine WOS SCs related to “earth, environmental and agricultural sciences” exhibit highest shares (22.6% to 3.2% of the total) by the whole counting method. Further analysis of the 1994-2018 subset related to 4 broader disciplinary classes (Geosciences, Environmental Sciences & Technologies, Agricultural Sciences, and Ecological Sciences) attributed to “field sciences” with particular emphasis on the high impact (TOP10% globally by citation) documents enables to capture the most prolific, representative (both in space and time) and impactful research. This study identifies the prolific countries, institutions, journals, etc. characterizing the cross-disciplinary research transcending national boundaries and involving international teams. Science mapping of high impact publications (4,561 documents) using the co-occurrence of keywords restricted to noun phrases reveals six prominent clusters that reflect the prolific and high impact research themes in field science for the whole HKHT region: five of them related to earth and environmental sciences (climate change including monsoon regime, tectonic evolution of the Himalaya-Tibet orogen, India-Asia collision and associated crustal phenomena, activities on major thrusts, channel flows and inverted metamorphism), and one contrasting theme concerning the genetic diversity of plants mainly of medicinal values.


2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 289-341
Author(s):  
Peter W. Fritsch ◽  
Lu Lu

The last taxonomic revision of Gaultheria series Trichophyllae (Ericaceae), a clade of high-elevation species endemic to the Himalaya-Hengduan Shan region of east-central Asia, was published in 1941. Since then, a number of new species have been described and other taxonomic changes have occurred in the group, prompting the need for a comprehensive revision. The present treatment of the series comprises 21 species, including Gaultheria x biluoensis, a newly described hybrid between G. crassifolia and G. major. A key to species and species descriptions is provided, and lectotypes are newly designated for G. cardiosepala, G. gonggashanensis, G. marronina, and G. stenophylla.


Human Ecology ◽  
1989 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 131-145 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Fricke
Keyword(s):  

Author(s):  
JOHN BOARDMAN

This chapter discusses the interest of the west in the history of Central Asia. It explains that central Asia has been studied by many western scholars and explorers, including British archaeologist Aurel Stein and traveller Sir John de Maundeville. Central Asia figured prominently in the days of political concerns about the safety of British India in the nineteenth century and this generated the interest of scholars. Today, the boom in Central Asian studies is further encouraged by the presence in Britain of those who have worked in this field and the source of many new publications on both prehistoric and historic periods.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
James Pickett

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the Islamic scholars of Bukhara during the long nineteenth century. Islamic scholars were among the most influential individuals in their society, and that power rested on their mastery of diverse forms of knowledge rather than birthright. Instead of imagining those varied competencies and practices as embodied by separate professions, this book conceptualizes them as distinct practices and disciplines mastered by a single milieu. Instead of imagining stratified castes of “ulama” as against “sufis” as against “poets,” there is a unified social group of multitalented polymaths selectively performing sharia, asceticism, and poetry as circumstances dictated. These polymaths of Islam were the custodians of the only form of institutionalized high culture on offer in Central Asia. Their authoritative command over many different forms of knowledge — from medicine to law to epistolography and beyond — allowed them to accumulate substantial power and to establish enduring family dynasties. The Turkic military elite relied on these scholars to administer the state, but the ulama possessed an independent source of authority rooted in learning, which created tension between these two elite groups with profound ramifications for the region's history.


2017 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lachlan Fleetwood

East India Company surveyors began gaining access to the high Himalaya in the 1810s, at a time when the mountains were taking on increasing political significance as the northern borderlands of British India. Though never as idiosyncratic as surveyors insisted, these were spaces in which instruments, fieldbook inscriptions, and bodies were all highly prone to failure. The ways surveyors managed these failures (both rhetorically and in practice) demonstrate the social performances required to establish credible knowledge in a world in which the senses were scrambled. The resulting tensions reveal an ongoing disconnect in understanding between those displaced not only from London, but also from Calcutta, something insufficiently emphasized in previous histories of colonial science. By focusing on the early nineteenth century, often overlooked in favor of the later period, this article shows the extent to which the scientific, imaginative, and political constitution of the Himalaya was haphazard and contested.


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