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NCERT Solutions Exploring Society: India and Beyond Chapter 4 Reading the map of the sixteen mahājanapadas (Fig. 4.3) — LET'S EXPLORE

Book page 70 Updated on2026-09-05

Q1.
The most powerful of these new states were Magadha, Kosala, Vatsa and Avanti. Looking at the map, can you identify their capitals? Also, how many can you match with Indian cities of today?
Answer

Read the four red stars on Fig. 4.3. Every one of these four capitals is a living Indian city today — all four match.

MahājanapadaCapital on the mapCity todayState today
MagadhaRājagṛihaRajgirBihar
KosalaŚhrāvastīShravasti (Sahet-Mahet)Uttar Pradesh
VatsaKauśhāmbīKosam, near PrayagrajUttar Pradesh
AvantiUjjayinīUjjainMadhya Pradesh

Now do the same for the rest of the map — the count of matches is the real surprise:

MahājanapadaCapital (Fig. 4.3)Matches today
AngaChampāChampapur / Champanagar near Bhagalpur, Bihar
Vṛijji (Vajji)VaiśhālīVaishali, Bihar
MallaKushīnāraKushinagar, Uttar Pradesh
KāśhiVārāṇasīVaranasi, Uttar Pradesh
KuruIndraprasthaDelhi
PāñchālaAhichchhatraRamnagar, Bareilly district, Uttar Pradesh
ŚhūrasenaMathurāMathura, Uttar Pradesh
MatsyaVirāṭaBairat, Rajasthan
ChediTripuriTewar near Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh
GāndhāraTakṣhaśhilā, PushkalavatiTaxila and Charsadda, in today's Pakistan
Kamboja(no capital marked)Region across the far northwest
Aśhmaka(no capital marked)Along the Godavari, in today's Maharashtra/Telangana
Why so many still exist: the capitals were placed where a city works — on a river, on a trade route, in fertile country, on defensible ground. Those advantages did not go away, so people never left. As the chapter puts it, these are ‘modern’ cities that are often 2,500 years old.
Check it yourself: the English map (Fig. 4.3) labels fifteen names but leaves the orange region between Vatsa and Magadha unnamed. The Hindi edition of the same map labels it — it is Kāśhi, with its capital Vārāṇasī, the sixteenth mahājanapada.
Q2.
Compare this map with the map of the regions mentioned in the Mahābhārata (see Fig. 5.4 in the chapter ‘India, That Is Bharat’ in Grade 6) and list the names common to both maps. What do you think this implies?
Answer

Names that appear on both maps (Fig. 4.3 of this chapter and Fig. 5.4 of Grade 6):

#Name common to both mapsWhere it lies
1GandhāraNorthwest
2KambojaFar northwest
3MatsyaToday's eastern Rajasthan
4ŚhūrasenaMathurā region
5PāñchālaUpper Ganga–Yamuna doab
6ChediCentral India
7KosalaMiddle Ganga plains
8KāśhiAround Vārāṇasī
9MagadhaSouth Bihar
10AngaEast Bihar
11AvantiMalwa
12AśhmakaGodavari region

So 12 of the 16 mahājanapadas carry names already listed in the Mahābhārata. The four that do not appear on Fig. 5.4 are Kuru (though Kurukṣhetra is named in the Grade 6 text), Vatsa, Malla and Vṛijji — and the Mahābhārata map has many names, such as Videha, Kalinga, Vidarbha, Surāṣhṭra, Kerala, Chola and Pāṇḍya, that are not mahājanapadas.

What this implies — three reasonable conclusions:

  • Continuity of names and territories. The regional names of India are very old and remarkably stable. The same names travel from the epic tradition into the political map of the 1st millennium BCE, and several travel on into modern India — Gandhāra → the Gandhara region, Kāśhi → Varanasi, Magadha → the Magadh division of Bihar, Kerala → Kerala.
  • The Mahābhārata preserves real geography. It is a poem, not a history book, but the land it describes was a land people actually knew. That is why archaeologists and historians take its region-names seriously as evidence, alongside excavation.
  • The change was political, not cultural. What changed between the two maps is the kind of unit — loose regions and clans became organised states with fortified capitals, coins and taxes. The people and their sense of place stayed put.
Try this: draw a two-column list in your notebook, ‘On both maps’ and ‘On only one map’, and add today's state for each name. You will end up with a rough map of India that you can recognise.
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