NCERT Solutions for Class 7th Social Science Chapter 16 Chapter opening — The Big Questions

Because in these two centuries the political map of north India begins to change hands — foreign rule starts in parts of it — while everything else in Indian life carries on. A transition is not a clean break. The chapter’s own summing-up in ‘Taking Stock’ says it exactly: “Like every transitional period, this one saw both change and continuity.”

What changed.

• Invasions went deeper than before. The Arabs of the previous chapter made “repeated attempts” and their incursions “had little overall impact on India”. Now “invasions by Turkic powers penetrated much deeper into north India, despite stubborn resistance from native kingdoms.”
• Raiding turned into ruling. Mahmūd of Ghazni conducted 17 campaigns and went home each time with booty; he “did not attempt to establish a permanent base in India beyond Punjab”. Muhammad Ghūrī, a century and a half later, was different — “unlike Mahmūd, who merely plundered and withdrew, he sought territorial conquest”. He left behind his general Qutb-ud-din Aibak, who later founded the Delhi Sultanate.
• A new creed entered the religious landscape. The chapter calls this “the spread of Islam as a new creed in India’s religious landscape”.
• Centres of learning were destroyed. Bakhtiyār Khiljī destroyed Nālandā and Vikramaśhilā. “There is a consensus among historians of Buddhism that this destruction of its large centres of learning precipitated the decline of Buddhism in India, although a few other factors may have also played a role.”
• One administrative change. Muhammad Ghūrī’s system was “more centralised” and “granted temporary land assignments to officers in return for revenue collection and military service”.

What did not change.

• Most of India was never touched. “Large parts of northern India and all of south India remained outside the hold of the Turkic invaders.”
• Trade kept growing. “Despite the political disturbances we have seen, India’s trade with China and Southeast Asia kept growing during this period,” and “the merchant guilds survived and adapted”.
• Building and writing never stopped. Khajuraho, Belur, Halebidu, Warangal, Thanjavur, Gangaikoṇḍacholapuram, Puri — all belong to these very centuries; so do the Līlāvatī, the Mānasollāsa, the Gītagovindam and Basavaṇṇa’s vachanas.

Two foreign powers and about seven Indian ones. The foreign powers are the Ghaznavids (capital Ghazna, today’s Ghazni) and, after them, the Ghūrids from Ghūr — earlier vassals of the Ghaznavids who “seized the opportunity to take control of Ghazni and build up their power”.

Military. The chapter is blunt about the cost of so much warfare: “every powerful king needed to keep a sizable army. This involved considerable resources to employ the soldiers, supply them with weapons, maintain horses and elephants (and, in parts of north India, camels for transport of provisions).” On the invaders’ side, what proved decisive for Mahmūd was “his large army’s rapid marches and daring cavalry attacks, with archers on horseback”. The Cholas add a fourth arm — a navy strong enough to cross the Bay of Bengal.

Administrative. “Powerful kingdoms therefore needed an efficient administration to collect tributes from vassals and taxes from the traders.” The chapter says there is no major change from the system described in the previous chapter — except Muhammad Ghūrī’s, “which was more centralised and granted temporary land assignments to officers in return for revenue collection and military service”. The best Indian example given is the Kākatīyas: “a strong local administration based on village self-governance… an efficient revenue system and an irrigation infrastructure that supported agricultural prosperity.”

Economic. Three legs:

• Agriculture — “the mainstay of the economy… which remains true even today.” Rice and barley in the Ganga plains and Bengal, saffron from Kashmir, spices from Kerala, ginger from Bengal, wheat from northwest India, cotton from western India and the Deccan.
• Irrigation as royal duty. Kākatīya irrigation works; Chola “tanks, wells and canals for irrigation, and artificial lakes”; Bhoja’s vast lake between Bhojpur and Bhopal. These “could, to some extent, mitigate the vagaries of seasonal rains”.
• Trade, inland and overseas. Growing trade with China and Southeast Asia, “supported by a few powerful guilds”; the west coast “had many seaports as well as shipyards manufacturing seafaring ships”, and foreign coins and pottery have been found there.

The same two centuries that saw the worst destruction also produced some of India’s finest buildings, books and ideas. That is the chapter’s central point, and here is the evidence it gives.