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NCERT Solutions for Class 7th Social Science Chapter 15 The queens of Sindh in the Chachnāma — LET’S EXPLORE

Book page 91 Updated on2026-09-19

Q1.
What does this suggest about the way the indigenous people responded to invasions?
Answer

That resistance did not end when the king fell — it continued, and it came from every part of society, not only the army.

Look at the sequence in the chapter. King Dāhar fought from the back of an elephant and “was killed by an arrow, following which his army was routed.” In most accounts of a conquest, that is the end. Here it is not:

  • His widowed queen “put up a brave resistance” even after the battle was lost and the king dead.
  • Another queen paid and inspired the surviving soldiers, distributing her treasure and rousing them “to stand against the invaders”.
  • The chiefs came back. “Within two years of Qasim’s death, Indian chiefs rebelled and regained most of the conquered territory.”
  • Other kingdoms joined in. Nāgabhaṭa I “crushed the large army of the powerful Mlechchha king”, and Lalitāditya of Kashmir defeated an Arab chief three times.

The result over three centuries. The geographer al-Istakhri observed that after three centuries of unremitting effort, Arab dominion in India was limited to two petty states in Sindh and Punjab — and even there it survived only by giving up iconoclasm and working with local Hindus and Buddhists.

Why this made conquest so hard: when resistance depends on one ruler, killing him ends the war. When it is spread across queens, chiefs, soldiers and neighbouring kings, there is no single point of collapse — the invader wins the battle and still has to win the country. This is exactly why the chapter says Arab armies “achieved military successes elsewhere” but “struggled for a long time” in India.
Tip on the source: the Chachnāma is a 13th-century Persian rendering of an older Arabic account — written long after the events, and from the conquerors’ side. It is worth noticing that even such a source records the courage of the defenders. Details of a single episode may be uncertain; the pattern it describes is confirmed by other evidence.
Q2.
Why do you think the queen chose to give away her treasure?
Answer

Because at that moment the treasure was worth more as courage than as gold. The kingdom was about to fall; hoarded wealth would simply have become the conqueror’s loot. Given to the soldiers, it could still buy something the treasury could not.

  • To keep an army in the field. Soldiers whose king is dead have no pay, no orders and every reason to go home. Payment kept them together when the state that employed them had collapsed.
  • To deny it to the enemy. The Chachnāma itself records what happened to the wealth of Debal — the temple destroyed, the town plundered. Wealth distributed among defenders could never become the invader’s prize.
  • To lead by example. She gave away everything she owned. A queen who keeps nothing back is asking her soldiers for the same, and has the right to ask. The chapter says she “inspired them to stand against the invaders” — the gift and the inspiration are one act.
  • To honour the brave. The treasure went specifically to “the brave soldiers”. It is a reward as well as a payment — recognition that outlasts the battle.
The underlying idea: the queen was doing what kings did in peacetime for a different reason. Harṣha gave away his wealth at Prayāga to turn treasure into loyalty and reputation. She did the same thing in the last hours of a kingdom. In both cases the lesson is the one this period keeps teaching — wealth is only useful when it is moving.
Q3.
What does this reveal about the role of women in warfare?
Answer

That women were not standing outside the war — they took command, financed the fighting and made their own decisions about how to face defeat. Two queens appear in these few lines and each acts differently.

The queenWhat she didWhat role that is
Dāhar’s widow“Put up a brave resistance”, and when the situation became hopeless, immolated herself along with other ladiesMilitary leadership after the king’s death; then a choice about her own fate rather than capture
Another queenOrdered her treasure distributed among the brave soldiers and inspired them to stand against the invadersCommand of the treasury and of morale — the strategist’s role, not the fighter’s

Set beside the rest of the chapter, this is not an exception. Queen Diddā of Kashmir “consolidated her power through strategic alliances” in the late 10th century. Tribhuvana Mahadevi I of the Bhauma-Karas “strengthened the dynasty, suppressed rebellions, demonstrated strong administrative skills” and ruled as ‘supreme sovereign empress’. Bāṇabhaṭṭa’s Harṣhacharita shows women working in agriculture and crafts and serving in courts, and many inscriptions record women funding temples and water works.

Why we hear so little about this otherwise: most inscriptions were commissioned by kings about kings, so women appear only when they cannot be left out — when they rule, or when they fund something, or when a chronicler happens to record them. The chapter says plainly that a woman’s position “would vary widely from one region to another and from one social layer to another”. So the honest conclusion is not that women commonly commanded armies; it is that when circumstances demanded it, they could and did — and no one at the time appears to have found it strange.
Think about it further: the second queen’s act is the harder one to carry out. Fighting is a decision made in a moment; deciding how to spend the last of the treasury, and persuading beaten soldiers to fight on, takes authority that the court must already have recognised.
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