The Pundits selected by the Indian Survey were trained to become precision scientific instruments, drilled to pace out distances precisely and to secretly keep count with cunningly disguised tools like this prayer wheel. One rotation of the wheel every hundred paces kept up the appearance of a pious lama, but the count could be recorded on an accompanying rosary and the day’s results kept on notes hidden inside the wheel.
Rudyard Kipling’s 1901 novel Kim is set against the backdrop of The Great Game, and describes the title character’s training in surveying and espionage:
“But as it was occasionally inexpedient to carry about measuring-chains, a boy would do well to know the precise length of his own foot-pace, so that when he was deprived of … ‘adventitious aids’ he might still tread his distances.”(1)
