NCERT Solutions for Exploring Society: India and Beyond Chapter 7 India S Cultural Roots
Updated on 2026-09-05
About this chapter
Indian culture is drawn as a tree — many roots, one trunk, many branches. The chapter opens with that image and closes with a photograph of a banyan . The roots go back thousands of years, some of them as far as the Indus-Sarasvatī civilisation of Chapter 6. From the roots grows a common trunk of shared ideas, and out of the trunk grow branches — art, literature, science, medicine, governance, martial arts, and many schools of thought , that is, groups of thinkers or spiritual seekers who share similar ideas about human life and the world. The Vedas are India's oldest texts, and they were memorised, not written. The word comes from Sanskrit vid , 'knowledge'. There are four — the Ṛig, Yajur, Sāma and Atharva Veda — made of thousands of hymns , prayers in the form of poems and songs, compos
- Chapter opening
- The Vedas and Vedic Culture
- b. Vedic society
- c. Vedic schools of thought
- Buddhism
- Jainism
- Folk and Tribal Roots
- The chapter in four points
- End-of-chapter exercise
Exercises
- Chapter opening — The Big Questions Page 105
- The Vedas and Vedic Culture — In-text Questions Page 106
- b. Vedic society — LET'S EXPLORE Page 109
- c. Vedic schools of thought — THINK ABOUT IT Page 110
- Buddhism — LET'S EXPLORE Page 115
- Jainism — LET'S EXPLORE Page 118
- Jainism — THINK ABOUT IT Page 118
- Why the chapter says ‘schools of thought’ and not ‘religions’ — THINK ABOUT IT Page 119
- Folk and Tribal Roots — In-text Questions Page 120
- Folk and Tribal Roots — In-text Questions Page 121
- The chapter in four points — Before we move on … Page 122
- End-of-chapter exercise — Questions, activities and projects Page 123
- End-of-chapter exercise — True or false Page 123
- End-of-chapter exercise — Class activity Page 123