NCERT Solutions for Class 7th Social Science Chapter 20 Temples as the banks of ancient India — THINK ABOUT IT

Book page 202 Updated on2026-09-19

Q1.

In ancient India, temples acted like banks. Although they did not accept public deposits like modern banks, they lent money to artisans, merchants, and the local government for building infrastructure. Contracts between the temples and the concerned party were etched on copper plates. These have survived to give us a glimpse of how they functioned.

Answer

The point to think about is that the idea of credit is very old in India — only the institution has changed. A temple in ancient India did one of the two things a modern bank does, and did it in much the same spirit.

	Ancient temple	Modern bank
Took deposits from the public?	No — the chapter is careful to say they “did not accept public deposits like modern banks”. Their funds came from offerings, endowments and grants	Yes — deposits are the bank’s main source of money
Lent money?	Yes — to artisans, merchants and the local government	Yes — to individuals, businesses and the government
For what?	Craft and trade, and “for building infrastructure”	Houses, vehicles, education, machinery, raw materials
Charged interest?	Yes — the Kodumbalur inscription records an agreement to pay interest	Yes
Where the terms were written	Etched on copper plates (Fig. 8.11, Pandya kingdom)	Loan documents, and entries in a passbook

Why it happens: a lender must be three things — rich enough to lend, permanent enough to be repaid years later, and trusted by both sides. A large temple was all three. It held wealth, it was not going to disappear, and no borrower would lightly break a promise made to it. Modern banks earn that same trust in a different way: through the RBI’s supervision and written law.

Did you know? Copper was chosen for these contracts precisely because it lasts. A palm-leaf agreement would have rotted centuries ago; the copper plates are why we can still read the terms today.

Q2.

One such example is an inscription from Kodumbalur in Tamil Nadu, dating back to the 13th century, which refers to communities that borrowed money from the Tirumudukunramudaiya-Nayanar temple with an agreement to pay interest.

Answer

This one inscription contains every element of a modern loan. Set it beside the chapter’s definition of a loan — “an amount borrowed from banks or financial institutions, with the obligation to repay it with interest at a later time” — and the parts line up exactly.

Part of a loan	In the Kodumbalur inscription
Lender	The Tirumudukunramudaiya-Nayanar temple
Borrower	Communities of the locality — not one individual but a whole group, jointly responsible
Terms	An agreement to pay interest
Record	Cut into stone and copper, so that it could be checked by anyone, at any time
Date	13th century, in Tamil Nadu

Why historians value it. An inscription is evidence of a kind that a story is not. It was written at the time, by the people involved, for a practical purpose — and it was meant to be public. That is why the chapter says these plates “have survived to give us a glimpse of how they functioned”: we are not guessing that temples lent money, we are reading their own record of it.

Why it happens: the borrowers here are communities, and that tells us something about the risk. When a whole community stands behind a debt, the lender is far safer than when one person does — the same logic a bank uses today when it spreads its lending over thousands of borrowers instead of one.

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