NCERT Solutions for Exploring Society: India and Beyond Chapter 4 New Beginnings: Cities and States

About this chapter

India's ‘First Urbanisation’ ended, and city life vanished for a thousand years. In the early 2nd millennium BCE the Indus / Harappan / Sindhu-Sarasvatī civilisation disintegrated. Cities were abandoned or reverted to a village lifestyle, because every part of the Harappan urban order had gone — big private and public structures, crowded streets and busy markets, specialised occupations, a writing system, a sanitation system, an administration and a state structure with a ruling class. The ‘Second Urbanisation’ began in the 1st millennium BCE in the Ganga plains, parts of the Indus (Sindhu) basin and neighbouring regions, and spread across the Subcontinent. We know it from two sources: archaeological excavations and ancient literature (late Vedic, Buddhist and Jain). This phase has continu

• Chapter opening
• How we know about the Second Urbanisation
• Janapadas and Mahājanapadas
• Reading the map of the sixteen mahājanapadas (Fig. 4.3)
• Comparing the First and the Second Urbanisation
• The Varṇa–Jāti System
• The chapter in three points
• End-of-chapter exercise