History

Manda lies on the Chenab in Jammu (the northernmost Harappan site) → 4.
Kalibangan is in Hanumangarh district of Rajasthan (ploughed field found here) → 3.
Rakhigarhi is in Hisar district of Haryana → 1.
Lothal is near the Gulf of Khambhat in Gujarat (dockyard) → 2.
So the code is 4, 3, 1, 2 = option (D).

Paleolithic (Old Stone Age) comes first, then Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age), then Neolithic (New Stone Age, farming begins), and then the Chalcolithic (copper + stone) cultures that lead into the Harappan period.
Order: IV → II → III → I = option (B).

Panini composed the Ashtadhyayi, the classic rule-book of Sanskrit grammar.
Sushrut Samhita is a medical text, Natyashastra (Bharata) is on drama and performance, and Abhijnana Shakuntalam is Kalidasa's play.

Chandragupta Maurya overthrew the Nanda dynasty (founded by Mahapadma Nanda) around 321 BCE, so the Mauryas succeeded the Nandas.
The Mauryas were followed by the Shungas (and the Kanvas came after the Shungas), so the other pairs are wrong.

Pataliputra began as the village Pataligrama. In the fifth century BCE the Magadhan kings shifted their capital from Rajagaha (Rajgir) to it, and it later became the Mauryan capital (modern Patna).

II is correct: Jains regard Mahavira as the 24th and last tirthankara.
IV is correct: non-violence towards all living beings is the core Jaina principle.
I is wrong – Mahavira lived in the 6th century BCE, not CE. III is wrong – Jains do not worship Shiva as Mahavira.

The well-preserved dome with harmika and chhatri, the stone railing and the carved toranas on a hilltop are the classic features of the Great Stupa at Sanchi (near Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh).
Amaravati's stupa was largely destroyed in the 19th century, so a complete standing dome like this points to Sanchi.

Abu'l Fazl, Akbar's court historian, wrote the Akbar Nama; its third volume is the Ain-i Akbari, the main source on Mughal agrarian society.
Babur Nama – Babur himself; Humayun Nama – Gulbadan Begum; Padshah Nama – Abdul Hamid Lahori (Shah Jahan's reign).

In 1565 Rama Raya, the chief minister of Vijayanagara, led the army against the combined forces of the Deccan Sultanates of Bijapur, Ahmadnagar and Golconda. Vijayanagara was routed and the city was sacked.

The Hazara Rama temple stands inside the royal centre and was probably used only by the king and his family. Its walls carry panels from the Ramayana.
Virupaksha and Vitthala are in the sacred centre and were public temples; Chidambaram is in Tamil Nadu.

Ibn Battuta, born in Tangier (Morocco), was a scholar of Islamic law. He reached Delhi in 1333 and Sultan Muhammad bin Tughlaq appointed him qazi of Delhi. His travel account is the Rihla.

Francois Bernier, a French doctor and philosopher who stayed in Mughal India (1656–1668), wrote Travels in the Mogul Empire, comparing Mughal India unfavourably with Europe.

Shaikh Nizamuddin Auliya's dargah is in Delhi (Ghiyaspur), not Agra.
The others are correct: Muinuddin Chishti – Ajmer; Qutbuddin Bakhtiyar Kaki – Delhi (Mehrauli); Fariduddin Ganj-i Shakar – Ajodhan (Pakpattan, Pakistan).

Nirguna bhakti is devotion to God without attributes or form. Guru Nanak rejected idol worship and held that the Absolute (rab) is formless and genderless, to be remembered through nam (the divine name).
Since the formless nature of God is exactly why his bhakti is called nirguna, R explains A.

After the very high revenue demand of the 1820s–30s was moderated, the period from about 1845 saw a steady rise in agricultural prices, and cultivation spread – new areas were brought under the plough and pasture land was converted to fields.
The major Deccan riots came later (1875), so III does not describe this decade; as per the marking scheme the answer is I and II.

Under the Permanent Settlement (1793) the revenue was fixed on zamindars, who passed the pressure on to the ryots through high rents. Ryots had to borrow from moneylenders (often jotedars) to pay, so exploitation and debt grew. Land ownership did not shift to peasants and landlordism was strengthened, not abolished.

George Washington commanded the Continental Army in the War of Independence (1775–83) and became the first President of the USA.
Lincoln led the Union during the American Civil War (1861–65) – the war that cut off American cotton and caused the cotton boom in the Deccan, which is how America comes into this chapter.

What alarmed the British was that sepoys, peasants, taluqdars, princes, Hindus and Muslims joined hands in many areas – a broad popular uprising, not just a mutiny. The revolt was largely confined to north India, so (D) is wrong.

Gonoo, a tribal cultivator of Singhbhum, led the Kol tribals of Chotanagpur.
Shah Mal led peasants in Barout pargana (Meerut area, UP); Kunwar Singh was the zamindar of Arrah (Bihar); Maulvi Ahmadullah Shah was active at Lucknow and Faizabad (Awadh).

Nehru moved the Objectives Resolution on 13 December 1946, and on 22 July 1947 he also moved the resolution adopting the tricolour with the chakra as the national flag.

As per the marking scheme: Sarojini Naidu – Bihar; Hansa Mehta – Bombay; Vijayalakshmi Pandit – United Provinces (UP); Rajkumari Amrit Kaur – Central Provinces.
Code c, d, b, a = option (B).

Any three points:
1. Marshall's tenure marked a major shift – he was a professional archaeologist who brought experience from Greece and Crete.
2. In 1924 he announced the discovery of a new civilisation in the Indus valley to the world.
3. He was interested in spectacular finds and large-scale excavation.
4. He excavated along regular horizontal units of uniform depth across the mound.
5. He ignored the stratigraphy (layers) of the site, so all objects from one unit were grouped together even if they came from different layers – valuable context was lost.
Common mistake: do not mix him up with R.E.M. Wheeler, who later corrected this by following stratigraphy.

Any three points:
1. Amaravati was discovered before scholars realised the importance of preserving finds where they were found (in situ).
2. In 1796 a local raja who wanted to build a temple came upon the ruins and decided to use its stone.
3. Walter Elliot (commissioner of Guntur) collected many sculpted slabs and took them to Madras.
4. Other slabs went to the Asiatic Society of Bengal in Calcutta and to the India Office in London.
5. Some sculptures ended up decorating the gardens of British officers, and each new official in the area kept removing more.
(Contrast: Sanchi survived because it escaped the eyes of such collectors and was protected.)

Any three points:
1. The Puranas were compiled by Brahmanas (from about the middle of the first millennium CE).
2. They contain material that had been composed and passed on for centuries.
3. They are full of stories about gods and goddesses (Vishnu, Shiva, the Goddess and their forms).
4. They were written in simple Sanskrit verse.
5. They were meant to be read aloud to everyone, including women and Shudras who had no access to Vedic learning – so they spread devotion widely.
6. Much of their content grew out of interaction between priests, merchants and ordinary men and women travelling and sharing ideas.

Any three points:
1. The state encouraged merchants; trade routes had inns and guest houses.
2. The post let merchants send information and remit credit over long distances and dispatch goods at short notice.
3. It was so fast that while the journey from Sind to Delhi took about fifty days, spies' reports reached the Sultan by post in only five days.
4. There were two kinds of post: the horse post (uluq) using royal horses stationed every four miles, and the foot post (dawa) with three stations per mile.
5. The foot post was actually quicker than the horse post and was often used to bring fruits from Khurasan.

Any three points:
1. Vijayanagara lay in one of the driest zones of the peninsula, so rainwater had to be stored and channelled to the city.
2. The Kamalapuram tank was built in the early fifteenth century and stored rainwater.
3. Its water irrigated nearby fields and was also carried by a channel to the royal centre.
4. The Hiriya canal was another key source; it drew water from a dam across the Tungabhadra.
5. It irrigated the cultivated valley between the sacred centre and the urban core.

Any three points (Paes was a 16th-century Portuguese visitor):
1. He found it a sprawling city spread across several ranges of hills.
2. He compared its size to Rome.
3. He found it very beautiful to look at.
4. It had many groves of trees, and houses had gardens.
5. Many water channels ran through it and there were lakes in places.
6. The king's palace had a palm grove and other fruit-bearing trees nearby.

Any three points:
1. As the revolt spread, the British were alarmed – they saw in it the spectre of 1857.
2. Police posts were set up in villages to frighten the rioters.
3. Troops were quickly called in.
4. Large numbers of peasants were arrested and many were convicted.
5. It still took several months to bring the area under control.
6. The Government of Bombay then set up a commission (Deccan Riots Commission) to enquire into the causes.

Any three points:
1. It was passed by the British Parliament (the colonial government), not by Indians.
2. It promised a form of representative government (provincial autonomy).
3. The electorate was small – not more than 10–15% of adults could vote; there was no universal adult franchise.
4. Legislatures elected under it worked within the colonial framework and were responsible to the Governor appointed by the British.
5. In the 1937 elections held under the Act, the Congress formed ministries in 8 of the 11 provinces.
The Constituent Assembly borrowed parts of this Act, which is why it is studied in this chapter.

Any eight points:
1. Technical limits: letters are often very faintly engraved, so readings are uncertain.
2. Inscriptions may be damaged and letters missing.
3. It is not always possible to be sure of the exact meaning of words used in them, some of which were specific to a place or time.
4. Several thousand inscriptions have been found but not all have been deciphered, published and translated.
5. Many more must have existed; only a small fraction has survived the ravages of time.
6. Not everything politically or economically significant was recorded – routine agricultural practices and the joys and sorrows of daily life rarely find a place.
7. Inscriptions usually project the perspective of the person who commissioned them (kings boasting of victories, donors of their gifts), so they are one-sided.
8. Hence epigraphy must be cross-checked with other sources such as texts, coins and archaeology.
9. Historians have also shifted from political history to social and economic history, for which inscriptions give limited data.
Tip: start with what epigraphy does give (names of rulers, grants, dates – e.g. Asoka's edicts deciphered by James Prinsep) and then list the limits.

Sources (any five):
1. Archaeological finds, especially sculpture.
2. Accounts of Megasthenes, the Greek ambassador at Chandragupta's court (surviving fragments).
3. The Arthashastra, parts of which were probably composed by Kautilya (Chanakya).
4. Jaina texts.
5. Buddhist texts, e.g. the Ashokavadana.
6. Puranic literature.
7. Sanskrit literary works.
8. Inscriptions of Asoka on rocks and pillars – the most valuable source.
9. Punch-marked coins.

Administration (any three):
1. Five major political centres – the capital Pataliputra and the provincial centres Taxila, Ujjayini, Tosali and Suvarnagiri.
2. These centres were carefully chosen; the empire covered very varied regions, from the Odisha coast to the hills of Afghanistan.
3. Control was strongest around the capital and provincial centres.
4. Communication along land and river routes was improved.
5. A large army kept peace and guarded the frontiers; Megasthenes describes a committee with six sub-committees to coordinate military matters (navy, transport, infantry, cavalry, chariots, elephants).
6. Asoka also used dhamma-mahamattas to spread dhamma.

Any eight points:
1. Agriculture kept expanding throughout the period.
2. Cultivation was based on individual ownership of land.
3. Abundant land, available labour and the mobility of peasants explain this constant expansion.
4. The main staples were rice, wheat, barley and millets, grown according to rainfall and soil.
5. The monsoon was the backbone of agriculture, but artificial irrigation (wells, tanks, canals) was also used.
6. Irrigation works got state support – e.g. canals in Punjab such as the Shah Nahar were repaired under Shah Jahan.
7. Farming was labour intensive; peasants used technology based on cattle power.
8. Simple tools – the wooden plough with an iron tip (ploughshare), hoe and spade – were used.
9. There were two main agricultural seasons: kharif (autumn) and rabi (spring).
10. Most areas produced at least two crops a year (do-fasla); where water was assured, even three.
11. The state encouraged 'perfect crops' (jins-i kamil) like cotton, sugarcane and oilseeds because they brought more revenue.
12. New crops reached India in the 17th century – maize (via Africa and Spain), potato, tomato and chillies from the New World.

Any eight points:
1. Production involved both men and women; men tilled and ploughed while women sowed, weeded, threshed and winnowed.
2. Biases linked to women's biology remained – menstruating women could not touch the plough or potter's wheel in western India or enter betel-leaf groves in Bengal.
3. Women did artisanal tasks – spinning yarn, sieving and kneading clay for pottery, embroidery.
4. As products were commercialised, demand for women's labour rose.
5. They also did all the household work.
6. Because they bore children in a society dependent on labour, women were an important resource; high mortality led to bride-price customs, and divorce and remarriage were considered legitimate among peasants and artisans.
7. Yet they were kept under strict control by the male members of the family and community.
8. Men could inflict harsh punishment if they suspected infidelity; women sometimes petitioned the panchayat for justice.
9. Among the landed gentry women had the right to inherit property.
10. Both Hindu and Muslim women inherited zamindaris which they could sell or mortgage – in 18th-century Bengal several big zamindaris were held by women.

Any eight points:
1. Gandhiji had gained experience in local struggles – Champaran, Kheda and Ahmedabad.
2. After World War I the British continued press censorship and detention without trial; the Rowlatt Act (1919) made these permanent.
3. Gandhiji called a countrywide campaign against it – shops shut and schools closed.
4. Protests were intense in Punjab; Gandhiji was detained on his way there; the Jallianwala Bagh massacre followed.
5. The success of the Rowlatt satyagraha led him to call for non-cooperation, joined with the Khilafat movement for Hindu–Muslim unity.
6. Students stopped going to government schools and colleges; lawyers boycotted courts.
7. The working class went on strike in many towns.
8. Peasants in Awadh refused to pay taxes; hill tribes in northern Andhra broke forest laws; peasants in Kumaun refused to carry loads for officials.
9. Gandhiji promised swaraj within a year if non-cooperation was effective.
10. The Raj was shaken to its foundations for the first time since 1857.
11. It turned the national movement into a mass movement and Gandhiji into a mass leader – which is why Fischer called it an 'epoch'.

Reasons (any four):
1. Anger after the all-white Simon Commission; at Lahore (Dec 1929) the Congress adopted Purna Swaraj as its goal.
2. The Congress decided to launch civil disobedience; Independence Day was observed on 26 January 1930.
3. Gandhiji chose salt because every household needed it.
4. The salt law gave the state a monopoly over making and selling salt.
5. People were forbidden to make salt even for domestic use and had to buy it at a high price.
6. Gandhiji argued that the state even destroyed salt that nature produced freely, which wasted national wealth and cost more money.
7. It deprived villagers of a valuable, easy village industry.
Significance (any four):
1. The march (Sabarmati to Dandi, 12 March – 6 April 1930) brought Gandhiji to world attention.
2. It was widely covered by the European and American press.
3. It was the first nationalist activity in which women took part in large numbers.
4. It made the British realise that their Raj would not last for ever.
5. They understood they would have to devolve some power to Indians – leading to the Round Table Conferences.

31.1 The Kauravas and Pandavas, both branches of the Kuru lineage, fought over control of land and the kingdom of Hastinapura – a struggle for supremacy and power.
31.2 Any one: making peace would honour his father, mother and well-wishers; greed and anger take a man away from his true gains; war brings no good, no dharma, no artha (profit) and no happiness; victory is never certain.
31.3 Any two: he wanted to be the sole ruler; he was jealous of and greedy for the Pandavas' share; he refused to make peace with them (the epic also shows the patrilineal rule that sons inherit, which he would not share).

32.1 The ruler sent the deeds of ownership of two gardens and a large amount of land, together with the provisions and tools needed to maintain them, and declared he gave up all rights over them.
32.2 The Shaikh did not accept the gift; he lamented that he had nothing to do with gardens, fields and land, and that none of his spiritual masters had ever indulged in owning property.
32.3 Shaikh Fariduddin accepted the money because it was meant for the dervishes – he would distribute it to them so they could buy food and clothes. Sufis lived on futuh (unsolicited charity) and spent it immediately on the community; owning land would have tied them to the state and to worldly wealth, which they shunned.

33.1 Assessed as a whole: Hanwant Singh was bitter that the British had examined titles and seized lands held by his family since time immemorial; the British had subdued the land and removed its king. Out of honour he protected the officer, but with the people risen he would now lead his men to expel the British.
33.2 Any one: under the Nawabs of Awadh the taluqdars controlled land and power in the countryside; they kept armed retainers; they had forts; they enjoyed considerable autonomy as long as they accepted the Nawab's suzerainty.
33.3 Any two: after annexation (1856) the British disbanded taluqdars' armies and destroyed forts; the Summary Settlement of 1856 removed taluqdars from their land wherever possible, treating them as mere intermediaries; they lost more than half of the villages they had held; their position and authority were undermined. So, along with the sepoys (many of them from Awadh villages), they joined the revolt.