NCERT Solutions Exploring Society: India and Beyond Chapter 2 Theme: Tapestry of the Past — The Big Questions
Book page 21 Updated on2026-09-05
Q1.
How did foreign invasions and the rise of new dynasties reshape India's political boundaries during this period?
Answer
They redrew the map again and again. Between the 11th and the 17th centuries no single arrangement of borders lasted even one lifetime: an empire would swell to its greatest size, then break into regional powers, and a new dynasty would rise in the gap.
The chapter lets you watch this happen on three maps. Compare what they show:
Map
What it shows
What that tells you
Fig. 2.3 (Page 24)
Extent of the Tughlaq dynasty in 1335 reaches from Peshawar in the northwest to Madurai in the far south. The Lodi dynasty in 1479 is only the Ganga plains — Delhi, Gwalior, Jaunpur.
In under 150 years the Sultanate lost almost everything it had gained.
Fig. 2.12 (Page 33)
The south is now full of separate powers: the Gajapati kingdom (1458) on the Odisha coast, the Bahmani Sultanate (1477) in the Deccan, and Vijayanagara — much larger under Krishnadevaraya in 1529.
The territory Delhi could not hold did not stay empty. New states filled it.
Fig. 2.16 (Page 39)
The Mughal Empire under Akbar (1605) across the north; Aurangzeb's expansion (1700) adds the Deccan and the east coast down to Kanchipuram. The same map already marks Rajput territories (1751), the Ahom kingdom (1826) and the Sikh Empire (1839).
The powers that would replace the Mughals are drawn on the very map of the Mughals' greatest extent.
The dated milestones the chapter chooses to keep make the same point in order:
The chapter's own timeline (Fig. 2.2, pages 22–23), redrawn vertically. Notice how often a date marks a new kingdom being founded rather than an old one being extended.
Why it happens: two forces worked against stable borders. First, conquest by itself does not create a frontier — an army that marches away leaves behind a governor who may declare independence, exactly as Harihara and Bukka Raya did in the 1330s and as the Bahmani tarafdars did later. Second, succession in the Sultanate was usually violent: almost two sultans out of three seized power by eliminating their predecessor, so a sultan's average reign was hardly more than nine years. A ruler who expects to be overthrown fights to survive; he does not consolidate a boundary.
Did you know? Under Muhammad bin Tughlaq, most of the Subcontinent came under one ruler for the first time since the Mauryan Empire. The chapter is careful to add that this dominance “proved to be short-lived”.
Q2.
How did Indian society respond to invasions? How did India's economy adapt during times of political instability?
Answer
Society responded in three ways at once — by fighting, by negotiating, and by holding on to its own traditions. The economy adapted by becoming, in effect, independent of whoever happened to be ruling.
1. Armed resistance. The chapter gives example after example, from every region:
The Eastern Ganga kingdom of Kalinga repelled multiple inroads of the Sultanate; Narasimhadeva I also defeated the Sultanate's governor of Bengal, and built the Sūrya temple at Konark partly to commemorate these victories.
The Hoysalas fended off several attacks and remained the only independent kingdom in the south — until internal conflict and repeated attacks wore them down.
The Musunuri Nayakas rallied over 75 chieftains and expelled Muhammad bin Tughlaq's army from Warangal around 1330–1336.
Rana Kumbha held Mewar against Delhi and the later sultanates; Maharana Pratap refused Mughal suzerainty and fought a guerrilla war from the Aravallis, supported by the Bhils, who joined as archers and contributed their knowledge of the terrain.
Rani Durgavati of the Garha kingdom led her outnumbered troops against Akbar's general in 1564; the Jat peasantry put 20,000 men in the field; the Bhils, Gonds, Santhals and Kochs fought annexation and taxation.
The Ahoms defeated a Mughal force of 30,000 with 10,000 men at Saraighat in 1671; the Sikhs formed the Khalsa in 1699.
2. Alliance and accommodation. Not every response was a battle. Several Rajput states allied with the Mughals through diplomacy and marriage alliances; Rajput and regional leaders entered Akbar's court and Hindu officials were appointed to high positions. The chapter treats this as a real strategy, not a surrender — “Mughal authority thus remained limited in Rajasthan”, even so.
3. Cultural persistence. “Communities, too, strove to maintain or revive their traditions, many of which adapted to changing circumstances” — and the interaction between traditions produced a shared heritage.
The economy adapted by decentralising. Its strength lay in institutions that did not depend on the ruler:
Institution
How it worked
Why it survived political change
śhreṇis (guilds) and jātis
Production and skills organised by community, not by the state
A weaver's guild does not stop weaving when a sultan is deposed
The hundi
A written instruction to make payment to an individual
Money crossed political borders without currency being carried, so it could not be plundered on the road
Trader communities such as the Marwaris
Parallel systems of credit and trust
They “functioned independently of official structures” and worked across different regimes
Temple economies
Land and wealth (dāna) held in trust; markets, irrigation tanks, dharmaśhālās and chhatrams
Temples provided merchants with credit and funded internal and maritime trade
Overseas trade
Exports through Calicut, Mangalore, Surat, Masulipatnam, Hooghly
India imported much less than it exported, so wealth kept flowing in
Why it happens: the state in this period taxed the economy but did not run it. Land revenue was typically one-fifth of the produce (some sultans raised it to one-half), and infrastructure — roads, bridges, canals, new cities — did expand. But credit, skills, guilds and trust networks were built and maintained by communities. That is why the Subcontinent “remained one of the wealthiest regions in the world” through centuries in which the political map was being torn up and redrawn.
Keep in mind: the chapter does not let this become a happy ending. Plunder “affected trade networks and agricultural production”; the peasantry suffered several severe famines, with relief depending on the ruler's benevolence; and by the late 1600s many peasants lost their land and became bonded labourers.
Q3.
What impact did this period have on the lives of the people?
Answer
For most people the period was hard, and unevenly hard. India as a whole stayed rich; the people in it mostly did not get richer. The chapter states both halves plainly, and a good answer has to keep both.
What weighed on people:
Warfare on top of ordinary life. Military campaigns “raided villages and cities, and plundered and destroyed temples and seats of learning”. Frequent warfare “caused forced displacement of population”. Timur's attack left Delhi — “then a thriving city” — in ruins, with large numbers killed or enslaved. Vijayanagara city was sacked over several months after 1565, with much of its civilian population massacred.
Taxes. Land revenue was typically one-fifth of the produce and sometimes one-half. Taxes were levied on trade at every stage, but “the burden fell most heavily on the peasantry”, and some accounts report considerable cruelty in collecting it.
The jizya, imposed by some sultans and again by Aurangzeb, was “a source of economic burden and public humiliation” for non-Muslim subjects, and an incentive to convert. Aurangzeb also reimposed a pilgrimage tax on Hindus.
Slavery. Enslaved people “provided free labour or were sent away to distant Central Asia to be sold”.
Attacks on sacred places. The period “witnessed numerous attacks on sacred or revered images in Buddhist, Jain and Hindu temples”, motivated by plunder and by iconoclasm. Later, temples at Banaras, Mathura and Somnath, and Jain temples and Sikh gurudwaras, were destroyed under Aurangzeb's 1669 order.
Famine and debt. By the late 1600s, after taxes and payments to intermediaries, peasants were often left with a small share of their produce; many lost their land and became bonded labourers.
What held up, and even grew:
Agriculture and irrigation expanded, allowing multiple crops — rice, wheat, barley, pulses, sugarcane and spices, and cotton, silk, wool, dyes, timber and jute.
Craftspeople made everything from weapons to jewellery; ship-building developed considerably; merchants from Arabia, Persia and Central Asia settled in Indian ports.
Art flourished under most rulers — the Taj Mahal, Humayun's tomb, the Red Forts, Mughal miniature painting and calligraphy, and in the south the Vitthala temple with its musical pillars.
Traditions were preserved and blended: “a fair degree of interaction resulted in the creation of a shared heritage”.
Why it happens: wealth was created widely but held narrowly. The chapter says it directly — India was still a land of abundance, “but the wealth was largely concentrated in the hands of the rulers, courtiers, high officials and the merchant class”. That gap, not the total, is what decided how ordinary life felt.
The chapter's own conclusion: “Through it all, India endured, economically prosperous on the whole but often politically unstable… It is a tale not only of hardship but also of resilience.” On relations between communities it is equally careful: there were clashes, “especially over sacred sites that had been desecrated or destroyed under the rulers' sanction”, but “by and large, people of different faiths and communities lived peacefully side by side, economically dependent on each other”.