the grounds that no oriental could handle the managerial and critical work. James Prinsep declared that "..The qualifications of Cavelly Venkata for such an office, judging of them by his 'abstract,' or indeed of any native, could hardly be pronounced equal to such a task...". Lechmiah was the only Indian admitted to the Madras Literary Society which was founded in 1817 and in 1833, Lechmiah founded a parallel Madras Hindu Literary Society as a means of continuing his work. Sir Alexander Johnston supported this venture which also got the support of Captain Henry Harkness (author of a book on Indian scripts) and George Norton (a radical Advocate-General who was against government support for Christian missionaries support for but this organization did not survive long. A missionary in Madras, William Taylor was chosen for the job. Taylor has been described as a poor scholar (with a defective knowledge of the Devanagari script) if not a deranged antiquarian by Dirks (1993). Lechmiah received a monthly pension of 300 rupees and was given a grant of a Shotrium (or Shrotrium), land given as a reward for Civil officers. Three other brothers Ramaswamie, Narasimhalu (Naraseemoloo) and Sitayya (Seetiah) also worked for Mackenzie but the latter two were mainly as minor assistants. Ramaswamie later published extensively in English. His works included a book on the cities of the Deccan (Descriptive and Historical Sketches of Cities and Places in the Dekkan...), a biography of Deccan poets (1829), a cookbook translated in 1836 from a Telugu book written by Saraswati Bai (Pakasastra, otherwise Called Soopasastra, or the Modern Culinary Receipts of the Hindoos), a book on caste in 1837. Studies of the maps made by Mackenzie's survey are considered to have the potential to highlight interesting archaeological sites as well as provide information on the organization and structure of poligar chiefdoms which were dismantled after British takeover. References Further reading Mackenzie, W. C. (1952) Colonel Colin Mackenzie, first Surveyor-General of India. Edinburgh: W&R Chambers. Wolffhardt, Tobias (2010) Wissensproduktion als Staatsaufgabe Colin Mackenzie (ca. 1753-1821) und das Projekt eines umfassenden Survey in Indien. PhD Dissertation. Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, München. (in German) External links Mahalingam, T.V. (1976) Mackenzie Manuscripts. Summaries of the Historical Manuscripts in the Mackenzie Collection. Volume II. University of Madras. Colonel Colin Mackenzie 'The man who mapped India' Illustrations in the British Library from the Mackenzie collection Talk by Jennifer Howes recorded in November 2010 at the Royal