India and the Silk Road, 3 sheets from the wall map Quattro Parte Del Mondo

The Indian and Central Asian sheets from Camocio’s extremely rare wall map of Asia, featuring one of the most detailed and accurate depictions of India derived from Portuguese sources.

These exquisitely rendered map sheets present a unique and important depiction embracing most of India and the Silk Road, being three sheets from an exceptionally rare gargantuan 12-sheet wall map of Asia, made by the Venetian master Giovanni Francesco Camocio. Featured here are the western two-thirds of the Indian Subcontinent, extending about as far east as modern day Odisha and Bihar. Camocio based his map on unspecified, but fairly advanced, Portuguese sources as the overall shape of the Indian Peninsula is a marked improvement upon other contemporary maps.
 
Camocio’s mapping features a wealth of information, including the labeling of many places that were central to Portuguese activities on the subcontinent. Observing the coastlines of India, from the west to the east, one will notice the common contemporary European misconception that the ‘Indu F.’ (Indus River) is shown to erroneously to flow through ‘Guzarate’ (Gujarat) and into the Gulf of Khambat. That being said, a number of ports on the west coast of India are labeled, approximately in their correct locations, including: Diu, ‘Cambaia’ (Cambay / Khambhat), Surat, ‘Caul’ (Chaul), Goa (the capital of Portuguese India), ‘Mangalor’ (Mangalore), ‘Cananor’ (Kannur), ‘Calecut’ (Khozikode), ‘Cochin’ (Kochi) and ‘Tranocore’ (Thiruvananthapuram).
Beyond ‘Capo Comari’ (Cape Comorin / Kanyakumari), can be found ‘Puduchiera’ (Puducherry), and ‘Malipur’ (Mylapore, now a part of Chennai) accompanied by the annotation ‘Qui é si corpo de San Thomaso apostole’ (‘Here is the body of St. Thomas the Apostle’). St. Thomas, often referred to as “Doubting Thomas”, was one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus Christ and travelled to India in 52 AD in order to spread the gospel. He spent many years in Kerala before moving on to the Coromandel Coast, where he died at Mylapore in 72 AD.
In the interior appears ‘Culconde’ (the great fortress of Golconda, in modern day Hyderabad), located just to the southeast of a note that reads ‘Qui sitroveno le Diomoenti’ (‘Here Diamonds are found’). Indeed, for many centuries the world’s largest and finest diamonds, including the ‘Kohinoor Diamond’, came from this region.