NCERT Solutions for Class 7th Social Science Chapter 15 The chapter in six points — Before we move on …

This is the political shape of the whole chapter, and the second sentence explains the first.

Why no one could win. The three great powers of the Tripartite Struggle were evenly matched in exactly the three things that decide a long war:

• Military strength. The Rāṣhṭrakūṭas had “innumerable” troops and elephants (Al-Masūdī); the Gurjara-Pratīhāras had the finest cavalry in India (Sulaiman); the Pālas ruled “much of eastern and northern India”. No one had a weapon the others lacked.
• Administrative systems. All of them ran the same machinery — direct rule at the core, sāmantas beyond it, provinces, districts and self-governing villages. So none could out-govern the others or raise revenue faster.
• Strategic approaches. All three wanted the same prize for the same reasons, and all three could reach it. Look at Fig. 3.3 again — Kannauj lies open to west, east and south.

The evidence that it stayed a draw. The three “repeatedly warred against each other, with fluctuating outcomes and no lasting victor”. The Rāṣhṭrakūṭas briefly occupied Kannauj and later destroyed it — and even that only “hastened the disintegration” of the Pratīhāras without making the Rāṣhṭrakūṭas masters of the north.

Two different stories, set side by side.

The old pattern — assimilation. Part 1 of this textbook covered the Greeks, Śhakas and Kuṣhāṇas; this chapter adds the Hūṇas, and the pattern is the same. Defeated by the Aulikaras of Daśhapura, they then dissolved into Indian society: soldiers and local officials, one of them on a temple’s administration council; Sanskrit and Prakrit inscriptions; Gupta-style titles and coin designs; Lakṣhmī, Viṣhṇu and Śhiva on their money. Fig. 3.26 is the visible proof — Toramāṇa’s coin next to Skandagupta’s.

What changed with the Arabs. Islam arrived as a faith that came with its own law, its own scripture and its own idea of conquest — bin Qasim quotes the Quran to King Dāhar in the Chachnāma, and Debal’s temple was destroyed. That kind of invader does not simply merge into the local order.

Why it still took so long. The chapter is careful to say the Arabs “struggled for a long time”:

• 637 — naval raids on Thānā, Bhārukachchha and Debal, with no lasting territorial control. Early attempts on the Afghan kingdoms also failed “as they met with fierce resistance”.
• 712 — Sindh conquered, Dāhar killed. But within two years of Qasim’s death, Indian chiefs rebelled and regained most of it.
• Pushes into Rājputāna and Mālwā were short-lived; Nāgabhaṭa I and Lalitāditya beat them back.
• After three centuries, al-Istakhri records Arab rule reduced to two petty states in Sindh and Punjab — surviving only by giving up iconoclasm and working with Hindus and Buddhists.

Every major dynasty in this chapter supports the first half of this point.

Why this was possible. The chapter explains it in the THINK ABOUT IT box on page 69: “in ancient India, the concept of religion was more fluid than it is today… people often did not regard belief systems involving Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism as separate, but rather as branches of a common philosophical tree.” The traditions shared central concepts such as dharma and karma, shared sacred spaces and artistic motifs, and sometimes shared deities.

And then bhakti. From the 6th century, devotion “addressed to a deity” — which had existed much earlier — spread “among all layers of society and across India”. The spark came from the Tamil south: the 12 Ālvārs, devotees of Viṣhṇu (one of them, Āṇḍāḷ, a woman), and the 63 Nāyanārs or Nāyanmārs, devotees of Śhiva (including three women). More saints followed elsewhere, from diverse social backgrounds, composing mostly in regional languages.

Here is the whole harvest of the chapter, in one place.

Both halves are true at once, and the chapter proves each with its own evidence.

More complex. Traditional jātis “multiplied, with many new ones based on occupation or region”. Local tribes, border populations, foreign migrants and occupational or religious groups were absorbed into the varṇa-jāti system, while some — foreign traders, for example — remained outside. Marriage mostly took place within the group, so the new divisions hardened into communities. The Kāyasthas are the chapter’s worked example: an open profession of scribes and clerks in the 10th century became a distinct jāti.

Still flexible.

• Groups moved up. Several sources indicate that the Pālas and the Kākatīyas “were originally Śhūdras… but in the course of time, they would have been regarded as Kṣhatriyas.” A dynasty could change its varṇa standing.
• The rules were not the same everywhere. “The system varied widely across regions, showing that varṇa and jāti were flexible rather than rigid.”
• Groups merged. In Bengal, Brāhmaṇa surnames such as Vasu, Ghosha, Datta and Dama came to be associated with the Kāyasthas — “a fusion of Brāhmaṇa and non-Brāhmaṇa families.”
• People worked together. Different varṇas and jātis “often functioned cooperatively, as they depended on each other’s work and function, at least at the economic level.”
• Bhakti cut across all of it. “Several bhakti saints, for instance, were Śhūdras.”

Trade in this period ran on three scales at once, and each fed the next.

What made the goods available. Land grants brought new land under cultivation; irrigation works and tanks were built; “with better irrigation and agricultural growth, cash crops thrived, supporting agro-based crafts and industries.” A surplus is what a trade route needs.

What trade did to the cities. The chapter takes on a disputed claim here. Some historians have suggested urban decline in this period; “the evidence paints a different and more complex picture.” In north India most older cities remained occupied and new ones emerged — Xuanzang saw Kauśhāmbī and Śhrāvastī declining but Sthāneśhvara, Kānyakubja and Kāśhī thriving. In south India, cities “continued to flourish as political, economic, and religious hubs, with temples acting as centres of commerce and ports fuelling maritime trade.”

What trade carried besides goods. A set of Chera copper-plate inscriptions “significantly refers to the presence of Christian, Muslim and Jewish traders from West Asia, showing again how India was a hub of international trade” — three faiths living and trading on the Indian coast. And with the ships came words: chandana → sandal, pippalī → filfil, mawsim → monsoon.