Colin Mackenzie - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Colonel Colin Mackenzie (1754–1821) was Surveyor General

Surveyor General of India

The Surveyor General of India is the Head of Department of Survey of India, a Department under the Ministry of Science and Technology of Government of India. He also happens to be the senior most member of the Survey of India Service, an organized engineering service under the Union of India....

of India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

, and an art collector and orientalist

Orientalism

Orientalism is a term used for the imitation or depiction of aspects of Eastern cultures in the West by writers, designers and artists, as well as having other meanings...

.

Mackenzie was born in Stornoway

Stornoway

Stornoway is a burgh on the Isle of Lewis, in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland.The town's population is around 9,000, making it the largest settlement in the Western Isles and the third largest town in the Scottish Highlands after Inverness and Fort William...

, Outer Hebrides

Outer Hebrides

The Outer Hebrides also known as the Western Isles and the Long Island, is an island chain off the west coast of Scotland. The islands are geographically contiguous with Comhairle nan Eilean Siar, one of the 32 unitary council areas of Scotland...

, Scotland

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

. He produced many of the first accurate maps of India

India

, and his research and collections contributed significantly to the field of Asian studies.

He began his career as a customs officer

Customs officer

A customs officer is a law enforcement agent who enforces customs laws, on behalf of a government.-Hong Kong:4 931 posts, of which nine are directorate officers, 3 804 are members of the Customs and Excise Department, 504 are Trade Controls Officers and 614 are staff of the General and Common...

in Stornoway, but at age 28, joined the British East India Company

British East India Company

The East India Company was an early English joint-stock company that was formed initially for pursuing trade with the East Indies, but that ended up trading mainly with the Indian subcontinent and China...

as an officer

Engineer Officer

An Engineer Officer is one type of officer in the UK Royal Navy. There are also Warfare Officers and Logistics Officers supported by additional branches such as Medical or Dental Officers, or the Chaplaincy Service....

in the engineer

Madras Engineer Group

Madras Engineer Group are a regiment of the Corps of Engineers of the Indian Army. The Madras Sappers draw their origin from the erstwhile Madras Presidency army of the British Raj. This regiment has its HQ in Bangalore...

s. In 1799, he was part of the British force in the Battle of Seringapatam

Battle of Seringapatam

The Siege of Seringapatam was the final confrontation of the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War between the British East India Company and the Kingdom of Mysore. The British achieved a decisive victory after breaching the walls of the fortress at Seringapatam and storming the citadel. Tippu Sultan, Mysore's...

, where Tipu Sultan

Tipu Sultan

Tipu Sultan , also known as the Tiger of Mysore, was the de facto ruler of the Kingdom of Mysore. He was the son of Hyder Ali, at that time an officer in the Mysorean army, and his second wife, Fatima or Fakhr-un-Nissa...

, Maharaja

Maharaja

Mahārāja is a Sanskrit title for a "great king" or "high king". The female equivalent title Maharani denotes either the wife of a Maharaja or, in states where that was customary, a woman ruling in her own right. The widow of a Maharaja is known as a Rajamata...

of Mysore

Kingdom of Mysore

The Kingdom of Mysore was a kingdom of southern India, traditionally believed to have been founded in 1399 in the vicinity of the modern city of Mysore. The kingdom, which was ruled by the Wodeyar family, initially served as a vassal state of the Vijayanagara Empire...

was defeated by the British. He led the Mysore survey between 1800 and 1810. The survey consisted of a team of draftsmen and illustrators who collected material on the natural history, geography, architecture, history, customs, and folk tales of the region.

He later spent two years in Java, during the period of British occupation during the Napoleonic Wars

Napoleonic Wars

The Napoleonic Wars were a series of wars declared against Napoleon's French Empire by opposing coalitions that ran from 1803 to 1815. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the French Revolution of 1789, they revolutionised European armies and played out on an unprecedented scale, mainly due to...

.

He used his military career and salary to support his research into the history, religion, philosophy, ethnology, folklore, art, and mathematics of India and Java. He hired learned Brahmin

Brahmin

Brahmin Brahman, Brahma and Brahmin.Brahman, Brahmin and Brahma have different meanings. Brahman refers to the Supreme Self...

s to assist him with surveys and translations of manuscripts. He researched Indian mathematics

Indian mathematics

Indian mathematics emerged in the Indian subcontinent from 1200 BCE until the end of the 18th century. In the classical period of Indian mathematics , important contributions were made by scholars like Aryabhata, Brahmagupta, and Bhaskara II. The decimal number system in use today was first...

and India's system of logarithm

Logarithm

The logarithm of a number is the exponent by which another fixed value, the base, has to be raised to produce that number. For example, the logarithm of 1000 to base 10 is 3, because 1000 is 10 to the power 3: More generally, if x = by, then y is the logarithm of x to base b, and is written...

s.

He died in 1821 in Calcutta (Kolkata

Kolkata

Kolkata , formerly known as Calcutta, is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal. Located on the east bank of the Hooghly River, it was the commercial capital of East India...

), India), where he is buried. Much of his collection of documents, manuscripts, artifacts, and artworks is now in the British Museum

British Museum

The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...

and the Oriental and India Office Collections

Oriental and India Office Collections

The Asia, Pacific and Africa Collections previously called the Oriental and India Office Collections form a significant part of the holdings of the British Library in London, England.-India Office collection:...

of the British Library

British Library

The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom, and is the world's largest library in terms of total number of items. The library is a major research library, holding over 150 million items from every country in the world, in virtually all known languages and in many formats,...

, though part of it remains in the Government Oriental Manuscripts Library in Chennai

Chennai

Chennai , formerly known as Madras or Madarasapatinam , is the capital city of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, located on the Coromandel Coast off the Bay of Bengal. Chennai is the fourth most populous metropolitan area and the sixth most populous city in India...

(Madras).

External links

Further reading