The Imperial Gazetteer of India was a gazetteer

Gazetteer

A gazetteer is a geographical dictionary or directory, an important reference for information about places and place names , used in conjunction with a map or a full atlas. It typically contains information concerning the geographical makeup of a country, region, or continent as well as the social...

 of the British Indian Empire, and is now a historical reference work. It was first published in 1881. Sir William Wilson Hunter

William Wilson Hunter

Sir William Wilson Hunter KCSI CIE was a Scottish historian, statistician, a compiler and a member of the Indian Civil Service, who later became Vice President of Royal Asiatic Society.-Early life and education:...

 made the original plans of the book, starting in 1869.

The 1908, 1909, and 1931 "New Edition"s have four encyclopedic volumes covering the geography

Geography

Geography is the science that studies the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of Earth. A literal translation would be "to describe or write about the Earth". The first person to use the word "geography" was Eratosthenes...

, history

History

History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...

, economics

Economics

Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...

, and administration 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...

, 20 volumes of the alphabetically arranged gazetteer

Gazetteer

A gazetteer is a geographical dictionary or directory, an important reference for information about places and place names , used in conjunction with a map or a full atlas. It typically contains information concerning the geographical makeup of a country, region, or continent as well as the social...

, listing places' names and giving statistics and summary information, and one volume each comprising the index and atlas. The New Editions were all published by the Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK.

Editions

The first edition of The Imperial Gazetteer of India was published in nine volumes in 1881. A second edition, augmented to fourteen volumes, was issued in the years 1885–87. A revised form of the article on India, greatly enlarged and with statistics brought up to date, appeared as an independent volume in 1893, under the title of The Indian Empire: Its Peoples, History, and Products.

All of these were edited by Hunter, who formed the original plan of the work in 1869.

A parallel series of publications known as the Imperial Gazetteer of India: Provincial Series were prepared.

The multi-volume set has been made available online.

Editors

• Sir William Stevenson Meyer
• Sir Richard Burn
• James Sutherland Cotton
• Sir Herbert Hope Risley
  Herbert Hope Risley
  Sir Herbert Hope Risley KCIE CSI was a British ethnographer and colonial administrator, a member of the Indian Civil Service who conducted extensive studies on the tribes and castes of Bengal. He is also remembered for the formal application of the caste system to the entire Hindu population of...