Sources and Early Indian History Questions and Answers

Answer: B

The Harappans made seals out of stone and gold vessels, so the answer is A and D only.

The NCERT chapter on the earliest cities says that Harappan seals were made of stone, usually with animals carved on them, and that gold and silver were used to make ornaments and vessels.

B and C are wrong. Harappan pots were decorated with beautiful black designs, not yellow ones. Their spindle whorls were made of terracotta and faience, not iron: iron was unknown to the Harappans, whose metals were copper, bronze, gold and silver. So every option containing B or C is wrong.

Answer: A

The reliable way is to look at the bone structures, so the answer is only A.

A skeleton's sex is identified from its bones, especially the shape of the pelvis and the skull. The NCERT chapter on megalithic burials warns that it is difficult to tell whether a skeleton is male or female just by looking at the things buried with it; some archaeologists assume that skeletons found with ornaments are women's, but men also wore ornaments, so this can mislead.

Size varies a great deal among individuals of both sexes and with age, and cooking utensils show nothing about who was buried, so the options adding B or C, or relying on D alone, are not appropriate ways of telling.

Answer: A

The order from the earliest is A, B, C, D, as given in the NCERT timeline.

1. Beginning of the composition of the Vedas: about 3500 years ago.
2. Beginning of the building of megaliths: about 3000 years ago.
3. Settlement of farmers at Inamgaon: dated in the NCERT text to between about 3600 and 2700 years ago.
4. Charaka, the physician who wrote the Charaka Samhita: about 2000 years ago.

This is the order of the list of dates in the NCERT chapter on books and burials, which the question follows. Inamgaon's long occupation overlaps the other two periods, so the question turns on the two ends: the Vedas are the earliest named beginning and Charaka, about 2000 years ago, is by far the latest. Options B, C and D put Charaka before the Vedas or the megaliths, or the Vedas last, so none of them can be right.

Answer: C

Going backward from the most recent, the order is C, D, A, B.

1. Settlement at the port of Arikamedu: from about 2200 to 1900 years ago.
2. Beginning of the composition of Sangam literature: about 2300 years ago.
3. Increase in the use of iron, the growth of cities and punch-marked coins: about 2500 years ago.
4. Beginning of the use of iron in the subcontinent: about 3000 years ago.

The beginning of iron use must come last in a backward order, since the increase in its use came about 500 years later. Option D puts B before A, which would make the beginning of iron more recent than its spread. Options A and B start with A, but Sangam literature and the Arikamedu settlement are both later than the spread of iron, cities and coins.

Answer: C

(A) is true but (B) is false.

Statement A is true: the cities of the Harappan civilisation, such as Harappa and Mohenjodaro, flourished on the banks of the Indus and its tributaries about 4700 years ago.

Statement B gives the wrong date. Cities developed on the banks of the Ganga and its tributaries, in the period of the mahajanapadas, about 2500 years ago, not 1500 years ago, which is how NCERT's history textbook dates them.

Answer: C

The earliest evidence is from the Sulaiman and Kirthar hills.

Some of the earliest evidence of farming in the subcontinent, wheat and barley cultivated by about 8000 years ago, comes from sites in the Sulaiman and Kirthar hills to the north-west, in present-day Pakistan, such as Mehrgarh. People there also began rearing sheep and goats.

The Garo hills in the north-east have early farming sites of their own, but not the earliest wheat and barley, and the Malabar and Nilgiri hills in the south are not where these crops first appear.

Answer: B

(A) is false, (B) is true.

Statement A describes the earlier tradition, not Mahayana. Before Mahayana, the Buddha's presence in sculpture was shown only by signs such as the bodhi tree, his footprints or an empty seat. In Mahayana Buddhism, statues of the Buddha himself began to be made, notably at Mathura and in Gandhara.

Statement B is true: the belief in Bodhisattvas, enlightened beings who stay in the world to help others reach liberation, is one of the defining features of Mahayana Buddhism.

Answer: A

The Jatakas were composed by ordinary people, written down and preserved by Buddhist monks.

The Jatakas are stories about the previous lives of the Buddha. The NCERT textbook explains that they were probably composed by ordinary people as popular tales, and were later written down and preserved by Buddhist monks.

The Jatakas belong to the Buddhist, not the Jaina, tradition, and they were composed by ordinary people rather than by monks, which rules out the other three options.

Answer: A

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

• Barygaza was the Greek name for the port of Bharuch in Gujarat, an important centre of trade with the Roman world (ii).
• Shrenis were associations of craftspersons and merchants, which trained workers, bought raw material and sold finished goods (iv).
• Arretine ware was a stamped red-glazed pottery made in Italy, found at Arikamedu in Tamil Nadu (i).
• Grihapatis (gahapatis) were the heads of households, independent landowning farmers (iii).

The other options misplace at least two of these pairs.

Answer: D

The statement that is not correct is He did not function as a Judge and policeman.

In the villages of the early kingdoms, the grama-bhojaka was the village headman. The position was usually hereditary, held by men of the same family for generations. He was often the largest landowner, with slaves and hired workers to cultivate his land. Because he was powerful, the king often used him to collect taxes from the village. And he also functioned as a judge, and sometimes as a policeman.

The first three statements are therefore correct, and only the fourth, which denies his role as judge and policeman, is wrong.