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George Everest’s Survey that Placed Vidarbha at India’s Centre
- thenewsdirt
- Oct 6
- 7 min read
Mount Everest’s namesake was not a mountaineer but a British surveyor who spent years mapping the plains and plateaus of India.
Colonel Sir George Everest, Surveyor General of India from 1830 to 1843, led an extraordinary scientific project that put the Vidarbha region of central India on the map with unprecedented accuracy.
In the early 19th century, he took charge of the Great Trigonometrical Survey, a massive effort to chart the subcontinent, and pushed its measurements through Vidarbha’s terrain.
His work brought precision to the coordinates of this heartland, ultimately designating Nagpur as the geographic centre of British India.
Today, traces of Everest’s contributions endure in Vidarbha, from a forgotten grave in a small town to a towering Zero Milestone in Nagpur, reminders of how this Welshman’s passion for surveying shaped the region’s identity and place in history.
The Great Survey Reaches Vidarbha
The story of George Everest in Vidarbha begins with the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India, a monumental mapping effort launched in 1802 by his predecessor, Lieutenant-Colonel William Lambton.
Lambton spent two decades measuring a chain of triangles up the length of India using giant theodolites and 100-foot steel chains.
By 1822, he had extended the survey’s reach into present-day Vidarbha, marking one of the first systematic scientific explorations of this central region.
The triangulation network pushed northward toward Nagpur at a time when few Europeans had ever conducted such precise work in these parts.
This extension into Vidarbha was driven both by British colonial ambition, expanding accurate maps into newly conquered territories, and by scientific curiosity to measure the curvature of the Earth across a vast span of the subcontinent.
Lambton’s final days were spent in Vidarbha. In January 1823, while the survey camp was stationed at the town of Hinganghat (Wardha district), the 70-year-old Lambton fell ill and died. He was buried in that town, leaving behind an incomplete task but a robust foundation for mapping India.
At the time of his death, Lambton had completed a continuous meridional survey from the southern tip of India northward to the 18°N latitude line, an enormous geodetic arc that cut through Vidarbha’s latitude. It fell upon his chief assistant, George Everest, to carry this work forward.
Everest had joined the project in 1818 and had proven himself an adept surveyor under Lambton’s mentorship.
When Lambton passed away in Vidarbha, Everest assumed leadership of the Great Trigonometrical Survey, inheriting both the scientific mission and the considerable challenges of charting India’s heartland.
Everest Takes Charge of the Survey
Taking command in 1823, George Everest embarked on completing Lambton’s grand project and even expanding its scope. He was officially appointed Surveyor General of India in 1830, which gave him authority to modernise and intensify the survey operations.
Everest introduced state-of-the-art surveying instruments of the day, dramatically improving precision in measurements.
For instance, he acquired high-quality theodolites, refined distance chains, and precision levels that reduced errors due to terrain and temperature. Under his leadership, survey teams adopted more rigorous methods, formed systematic triangulation chains across the landscape and conducted astronomical observations at night to fix exact latitude and longitude.
Everest insisted on checking and re-checking data; notably, he measured new baseline segments in different parts of India to verify that the long triangulation from south to north had maintained accuracy.
These innovations paid off: the calculations remained so accurate that when a new base was measured hundreds of miles from the starting point, the position error was only a few inches, a testament to the survey’s extraordinary precision.
Everest’s tenure saw the survey traverse beyond Vidarbha to connect with the Himalayas in the north.
By the late 1830s, the Great Trigonometrical Survey had measured a continuous meridian arc spanning about 11 and a half degrees of latitude, from Cape Comorin at India’s southern tip up to the Himalayan foothills.
This painstaking work fixed with great accuracy the coordinates and elevations of a vast number of locations across India, including towns and landmarks in Vidarbha.
It also yielded groundbreaking scientific insights. The data from the survey was used to calculate a new mathematical model of Earth’s shape, known as the “Everest Spheroid” or Everest Ellipsoid (named in his honour). This model of the slightly oblate Earth became the standard geodetic reference in India and much of Asia for well over a century.
The survey’s measurements even contributed to early studies of gravity and geology. Differences observed in plumb-lines and pendulums during the project provided evidence for what would later be explained by the theory of isostasy (the balancing of Earth’s crust on the denser fluid layers beneath).
Perhaps the most famous outcome of Everest’s survey work was the measurement of the world’s highest mountain.
In the 1840s, using the network of triangulation that Everest had extended, surveyors were able to calculate the height of Peak XV in the Himalayas. It was later confirmed as the tallest mountain on Earth and, in 1856, was named “Mount Everest” in tribute to Sir George Everest’s leadership of the survey.
Ironically, Everest himself never climbed or even saw the mountain that bears his name. His role was behind the theodolite, not on the peaks, but the honour reflected the impact of his cartographic achievements.
By the time Sir George Everest retired in 1843, the Great Trigonometrical Survey had charted the Indian subcontinent’s backbone with an accuracy unimaginable just a few decades earlier.
This legacy included putting central India and Vidarbha on a scientifically mapped grid, tying the region into a single coordinate system that stretched across the whole of South Asia.
Nagpur: The Survey’s Central Point
One direct outcome of George Everest’s work in Vidarbha was the recognition of Nagpur as the geographical centre of India.
This was not only a mathematical curiosity but also carried administrative significance. When British authorities declared Nagpur the “Zero Mile” of India, they were asserting that from this point, distances to all major cities would be measured.
Nagpur’s central location made it ideal for coordinating governance, communications, and transport across a far-flung colonial domain.
By the early 20th century, this idea was solidified in stone. In 1907, a Zero Milestone monument was erected in Nagpur’s Civil Lines area, marking the city as the reference point for distance calculations. This unassuming sandstone pillar, rising about 6.5 metres and topped by four carved horses, served as the surveying benchmark for the subcontinent.
The pillar’s base carries inscriptions of distances to cities like Hyderabad, Kolkata, Mumbai and others, all calculated using the triangulation network that Everest and his team had established decades before.
The top of the monument was engraved with its precise elevation above sea level (310.948 metres, or 1,020.17 feet), a number derived from painstaking levelling surveys that connected Vidarbha all the way to coastal tide gauges.
Though the Zero Mile monument was built after Everest’s time, it stands as a tangible symbol of his contributions to Vidarbha. The very existence of such a marker was only possible because Everest’s survey had provided exact coordinates and a geodetic framework for India.
In essence, Nagpur’s Zero Mile is the end-point of the Great Trigonometrical Survey, the central hub in the wheel of triangulation that covered the country.
For Vidarbha, this meant the region was firmly and accurately mapped, its cities and villages located with scientific exactitude on imperial maps. This new geographic knowledge had practical benefits: it facilitated the planning of railways and roads through central India and improved resource administration, since officials could rely on credible maps and distance data.
Culturally, it also put Vidarbha on the figurative map, colonial writings began referring to Nagpur as the “heart of India,” a status that the region carries in popular imagination even today.
The legacy of George Everest’s work in Vidarbha is visible not just in Nagpur but also in quieter corners of the region.
In Hinganghat, where Lambton was laid to rest, a small memorial stands in a crowded neighbourhood, locally nicknamed Kala Gota (“Black Stone”). Few locals realise this weathered black obelisk marks the grave of the man who began the great survey, continued by Everest.
Nearby, an old G.T.S. benchmark from 1907 lies in a resident’s courtyard, a waist-high stone post left by later surveyors to indicate a precise elevation reference.
These relics, though neglected, connect Vidarbha to the era of Everest’s survey. They remind us that the mapping of India was not an abstract exercise done from afar, but one that unfolded on the ground in places like Vidarbha, involving years of hard fieldwork under the sun and stars.
Every hilltop triangulation station, every measured baseline across a dusty plain, and every astronomical observation at a village camp in this region fed into a larger picture, one that George Everest helped piece together.
Sir George Everest’s contributions to Vidarbha were part of a larger saga of mapping that forever changed India’s geography. He completed and enhanced a project that brought scientific rigour to charting the land, tying Vidarbha into a nationwide grid of survey points and coordinates.
In doing so, he elevated Nagpur to a special status as the country’s central point and ensured that this once little-charted region was measured with extraordinary accuracy. The impact of that work still resonates: modern cartography and GPS systems trace their lineage back to the benchmarks and baselines laid by Everest’s team.
From the Zero Milestone in downtown Nagpur to the enduring use of the Everest geodetic datum in Indian surveying, the imprint of his 19th-century efforts is unmistakable. More than 150 years later, Vidarbha continues to benefit from the clarity and connectivity that Sir George Everest’s survey brought, standing as a testament to one man’s meticulous mission to measure the heart of India.
References
The News Dirt. (2025, August 18). Nagpur’s Zero Milestone: The Precise Pillar That Marked the Heart of Imperial India. Retrieved from https://www.thenewsdirt.com/post/nagpur-s-zero-milestone-the-precise-pillar-that-marked-the-heart-of-imperial-india
The News Dirt. (2023, August 17). Lost Survey Genius: William Lambton and Hinganghat’s Overlooked Memorial. Retrieved from https://www.thenewsdirt.com/post/lost-survey-genius-william-lambton-and-hinganghat-s-overlooked-memorial
Lokhande, K. (2015, July 23). Hinganghat: Here rests the great surveyor of India… [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://kartiklokhande.blogspot.com/2015/07/hinganghat-here-rests-great-surveyor-of.html
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. (n.d.). Sir George Everest – British geodesist. In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved October 5, 2025, from https://www.britannica.com/biography/George-Everest
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