Jean-Baptiste Bourguignon d'Anville

Jean-Baptiste Bourguignon d'Anville ( born in Paris July 11 , 1697, – January 28 , 1782) was a French geographer and cartographer who greatly improved the standards of map-making.

Quotes

• …the Indians, having never quitted their own country, have never mixed themselves with other people, we do not find that they have suffered at home any revolutions which have overset the constitution and custom of the country. The Scythians have formerly penetrated into India, and established themselves there; from thence it comes to pass, that we find Indo Scythia in the ancient Indostan. Several Mahomedan princes, and amongst others, Mahmud son of Sebah-takin, very zealous for Mussulmanism, have made conquests in India; and India has been governed for two centuries by a house whose origin is from Tartary, and whose religion is that of Mahomet. But these circumstances, which have unnaturalized, if we may be allowed the expression, other nations, have not had the same effect upon the Indians: they have preserved, besides several idioms which are proper to them, their religion and its ministers, Brachmans and Gymnosophists; their division into casts and tribes; distinguished every one by its profession, its rites and superstitions: in a word, all that is particular to themselves, and distinguishes them from other nations, since the earliest times.
  • quoted from Jain, M. (editor) (2011). The India they saw: Foreign accounts. New Delhi: Ocean Books.