Class 7 History
Chapter 1 – Tracing Changes through a Thousand Years
NCERT Solutions
Q.1. Who was considered a “foreigner” in the past?
Ans: The term 'Foreigner' is used to refer to any stranger who appeared in any village. The words 'Pardesi' and 'Ajnabi' were synonymous of the word Foreigner. These words were used by citizens of that place or village to refer to any person who arrived for some work for a short time and who was not a part of that society or culture.
Q.2. State whether true or false:
(a) We do not find inscriptions for the period after 700.
(b) The Marathas asserted their political importance during this period.
(c) Forest-dwellers were sometimes pushed out of their lands with the spread of agricultural settlements.
(d) Sultan Ghiyasuddin Balban controlled Assam, Manipur and Kashmir.
Ans:
(a) False
(b) True
(c) True
(d) False
Q.3. Fill in the blanks:
(a) Archives are places where ___________ are kept.
(b) _____________ was a fourteenth-century chronicler.
(c) _______, ________, ________, ________ and _______ were some of the new crops introduced into the subcontinent during this period.
Ans:
(a) manuscripts
(b) Ziyauddin Barani
(c) Potatoes, corn, chillies, tea, coffee
Q.4. List some of the technological changes associated with this period.
Ans: The technological changes are
• Use of Persian wheel in irrigation.
• Use of spinning wheel in weaving.
• Use of firearms in battlefield.
Q.5. What were some of the major religious developments during this period?
Ans: Some of the major religious developments during this period were as follows
• People started worship of new deities.
• Rulers helped in the construction of temples.
• Importance of Brahmanas, the priests class grew.
• Sanskrit became the language of learned Brahmanas and were patronised by emperors.
• Merchants and migrants brought holy Quran with them.
• Idea of bhakti emerged among all the people.
Q.6. In what ways has the meaning of the term “Hindustan” changed over the centuries?
Ans: The term 'Hindustan' has changed over the centuries in the following ways
• For the first time, in the 13th century, Minhaj-i-Siraj used the term 'Hindustan'. By 'Hindustan' he meant the areas of Punjab, Haryana and the land between Ganga and Yamuna rivers.
• The poet Amir Khusrau used this term in his poems in 14th century.
• In the 16th century, Babur used the term to describe the geography, the fauna and the culture of the inhabitants of the subcontinent.
• Important point is that the term 'Hindustan' did not carry the political and national meanings as we use it today.
Q.7. How were the affairs of Jatis regulated?
Ans: The affairs of Jati were regulated in the following ways:
Jatis were grouped or divided as per their family backgrounds and occupations that their family carried on. People had to accept these rules.
Jatis were the sub-castes as per the power, influence and resources controlled by members of the Jati.
An assembly or group of elders was responsible for enforcing these regulations and were called as Jati Panchayat. However, the Jati or caste of one area vary from that of other areas in many aspects.
Q.8. What does the term pan-regional empire mean?
Ans: By 700 AD, many regions of Indian sub-continent already possessed distinct geographical dimensions and their own language and cultural characteristics. An empire comprises of the areas of many smaller regions or smaller kingdoms. Pan-regional empire was developed in different dynasties, e.g., the empires of Chola, Tughluqs and Mughals without losing their distinctiveness.
Q.9. What are the difficulties historians face in using manuscripts?
Ans: In early days manuscripts were handwritten. They used palm leaves which was difficult to maintain.
Later paper became cheaper and more widely available. People used it to write holy texts, chronicles of rulers, letters and teachings of saints etc.
There was no printing press in those days, so scribes copied manuscripts by hand. As scribes copied manuscripts, sometimes they introduced changes according to their own. So, the different manuscripts of the same text became substantially different from one another over the centuries. Historians have to read the different versions and guess what the author had originally written.
Q.10. How do historians divide the past into periods? Do they face any problems in doing so?
Ans: For any historians, time is not just passing of hours, days or years. Instead, it is the reflection of social, economic, cultural and religious changes that occur through the ages.
Division of past events, happenings into large segments, that is periods, make it easy to study time for any historians. British historians divided the history of India into three periods: Hindu, Muslim and British. This division was based on the idea that the religion of rulers was the only important historical change. But this division ignored the rich diversity of the Indian subcontinent.
Most historians take social and economic factors into account in order to characterise the major elements of different moments of the past. Historians thus faced difficulties to describe the entire period as one historical unit.
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