India, Sept. 6 -- Mapping a territory is perhaps one of the foremost ways of establishing dominion over it. Thus, when the British East India Company occupied this city after defeating the Marathas in the Battle of Delhi in 1803, one of the first things they did was to map its localities.

More than a century before the popular landmarks and grand avenues of the imperial capital came into being, Mehrauli was 'Mouralee ', Indraprastha 'Indiput ', the Yamuna was 'Jumnah ' and Okhla 'Okilluh' to the British surveyors who put Delhi on paper for the first time - some four years after establishing dominion over the city.

The 1807 map captures a Delhi that feels familiar, and yet almost unrecognisable: the walled city of Shahjahanabad, the Yamu...