Having spent the better part of 30 years researching the collection at the David Sassoon Library and the Asiatic Library, Honawar says nothing stirs him more than these maps, which he inherited from his father, Vasant H Honawar, who founded the All-India Handicrafts Board and was also chairperson of the Crafts Council of Western India. Printed by Cassell and Company Ltd, Belle Sauvage Works, London, the collection provides an invaluable insight into the changing contours of India and the rest of the world before World War-I, when Japan was called Hondo, Germany was an undivided Thuringian States and South Africa had a Slave Coast.

The collection comprises geographical and political boundaries of the Kingdom of Saxony,the Alps, Persia, Hungary, the Highland of Judea (now Palestine), Constantinople, the Polynesian islands, the Antilles (now the West Indies) and the Malay Archipalego. Closer home, Honawar possesses some rare maps of India and its environs, with a military map occupying pride of place.

Says Honawar, a Mumbaikar who moved to Pune six years ago: ``There was the Bengal Army, the Bombay Army and the Madras Army. While the Bengal Army had the entire stretch from the North-East to Kashmir under its jurisdiction, the Bombay Army had the Rajputana and the central provinces, with the Madras Army's hold extended to Rangoon part of Farther India.''

Naturally, the maps ar a connoisseur's delight, a priceless collection for posterity. Each of them depicts villages, cities and states, with places of social, political, religious and military importance marked with extreme precision.

The graphic information about cantonement areas in Lucknow, Allahabad, Agra and Cawnpur (now Kanpur) is singular. ``Apart from this, itis difficult to say what stirs me the most,'' Honawar says. With each one being preserved carefully after more than a century the colours still look fresh some of the maps even have accompanying newspaper cuttings. ``Most of the maps then were drawn by colonists for military manoeuvres. Those of the Indian sub-continent, for instance, present an unmistakable picture of the British empire and its acquisitions. There are also maps for animal products, vegetable products, races, religions, telegraphic cables, minerals, Christian mission stations and the railways then the Rajputana State Railways and Delhi, Ambala, Kalka Railways.

After all these years, Honawar still cannot get over the old Bombay. ``It is interesting to see Bombay flanked by Kalyan and Thane, with Bandra, Byculla and Panwel featuring in an Indian map,'' he observes. Apart from the maps, Honawar also possesses a rare set of 40 lithographs made on lime-based paper of important personalities across the country in 1895. Seen through amagnifying lens, every dot, every stroke that went into the lithographs, made by Vincent Brooks Day and Son Lith, London, are visible.

He now plans to organise a travelling exhibition of the lithographs and maps.