Sources and Early Indian History Questions and Answers

Answer: B

The key gives the horse.

Indus seals depict many animals, the humped bull, elephant, tiger, rhinoceros, buffalo and the 'unicorn', but no clear depiction of the horse. On this basis the standard textbook view holds that the horse was not known to the Harappans and became important only with the Vedic people.

A few finds, such as bones claimed as horse at Surkotada, have been debated, but the textbook position is the one the question follows. The bull and the elephant were certainly known, so options naming them are wrong.

Answer: D

The answer is None of the above: both statements are wrong.

The two pilgrims are swapped. Fa-Hien (Faxian) visited India in the early fifth century, during the reign of the Gupta king Chandragupta II. Hiuen Tsang (Xuanzang) came in the seventh century, during the reign of Harsha, and stayed at Nalanda.

Since each statement pairs the pilgrim with the wrong king, neither is correct.

Answer: A

The correct match is a-2, b-1, c-4, d-3.

• Charaka wrote the Charaka Samhita, a foundational text of Ayurvedic medicine (2).
• Brahmagupta was a seventh-century mathematician and astronomer who wrote the Brahmasphutasiddhanta (1).
• Varahamihira wrote the Brihat Samhita and works on astrology (4).
• Vishakhadatta was the playwright of the Mudrarakshasa (3).

The other codes misplace at least two of these.

Answer: B

The Nitisara was written by Kamandaka.

The Nitisara of Kamandaka, composed around the Gupta period, is a verse treatise on statecraft and politics. It summarises and builds on the ideas of Kautilya's Arthashastra, to which it pays homage.

Kautilya (Chanakya) wrote the Arthashastra itself, not the Nitisara, and Charaka was the author of the medical Charaka Samhita.

Answer: D

Tools made of limestone were found at Hunsgi.

Hunsgi, in Karnataka, is a Palaeolithic site where a number of early stone tools have been found, many of them made of limestone, which was available locally. Some of the sites there were factory sites, where tools were made.

Koldihwa (Uttar Pradesh) and Inamgaon (Maharashtra) are known for later Neolithic and Chalcolithic remains, such as early rice at Koldihwa and the village settlement at Inamgaon. Brahmagiri (Karnataka) is known for its Neolithic site and megaliths. None of them is the limestone Palaeolithic site.

Answer: C

The correct matching is (a) - (iv), (b) - (iii), (c) - (ii), (d) - (i).

• Punch-marked coins were stamped with symbols using dies (iv).
• Northern Black Polished Ware is an extremely fine, thin pottery with a glossy black finish, found at many sites in the north (iii).
• Amphorae were tall double-handled jars that carried liquids such as wine and olive oil (ii).
• Arretine ware, named after Arretium in Italy and found at Arikamedu, is stamped glazed pottery (i).

All four options agree on punch-marked coins. The other three swap at least one pair: options pairing Northern Black Polished Ware with 'stamped glazed pottery' or amphorae with 'extremely fine pottery' confuse the two kinds of pottery with each other or with the jars.

Answer: C

Features i, ii and iii distinguish Neolithic sites, so the answer is (i), (ii) and (iii) only.

Neolithic people grew crops and settled down. At their sites, such as Mehrgarh, archaeologists find mortars and pestles used for grinding grain (i), pots used for storing and cooking food (ii), and evidence that cloth was woven from cotton and other materials (iii). None of these appears at Palaeolithic sites of hunter-gatherers.

Statement iv is wrong. Stone tools were used throughout the Palaeolithic, the Old Stone Age, so their use did not begin in the Neolithic. What changed in the Neolithic was that tools were ground and polished. Options containing iv are therefore wrong.

Answer: A

The keyed answer is copper.

Harappan craftsmen smelted copper, brought from sources such as the Khetri region of Rajasthan and Oman, and cast and hammered it into tools, weapons, vessels and ornaments. Copper was the base metal of their metalwork, which is why the Harappan period is described as Chalcolithic or copper-using.

They also alloyed copper with a little tin to make bronze, as in the bronze dancing girl from Mohenjodaro, so bronze is not foreign to the Harappans; the key takes copper, the metal underlying all their metallurgy, as the answer. Iron was unknown to them; it came into use in the subcontinent much later. Brass, an alloy of copper and zinc, belongs to a later age too.

Answer: B

Statements B and C are correct, so the answer is B and C.

Mehrgarh, near the Bolan Pass in Baluchistan, is one of the earliest places where people learned to farm, but the crops were wheat and barley, not rice and maize. Maize was not grown in the subcontinent at all until it came from the Americas many centuries later, so statement A is false.

Excavations found the bones of animals, including wild animals such as deer and the bones of sheep and goat, which shows the change from hunting to herding (B). Remains of square or rectangular houses, some with several rooms, were also found (C). Every option containing A is therefore wrong.

Answer: A

The earliest manuscripts were written on palm leaves.

In ancient India, manuscripts were commonly written on palm leaves, cut into strips and tied together, and on the specially prepared bark of the birch tree (bhurja) in the Himalayan region. NCERT's Class VI history book uses this as its example of manuscripts.

Writing on stone produces inscriptions, not manuscripts. Paper came into use in India much later, around the eleventh to thirteenth centuries, and wood was not the usual writing material.