Class 7 NCERT Solutions History Chapter 1 - Tracing Changes Through A Thousand Years
Tracing Changes Through A Thousand Years Exercise 14
Solution 1
In the past, any stranger who was not a part of a particular culture or society was seen as a foreigner. The terms 'pardesi' and 'ajnabi' were used for foreigners in Hindi and Persian languages respectively. In those times, a person living in the city might have seen a forest dweller as a foreigner and vice versa.
Solution 2
(a) False
(b) True
(c) True
(d) False
Solution 3
(b) Ziyauddin Barani was a fourteenth-century chronicler.
(c) Potatoes, corn, chillies, tea and coffee were some of the new crops introduced into the subcontinent during this period.
Solution 4
Some of the significant technological changes associated with this period include the ‘Persian wheel’ in irrigation, the invention of firearms in combat and the spinning wheel in weaving.
Tracing Changes Through A Thousand Years Exercise 15
Solution 5
Some of the important religious developments during this period include the worship of new deities, building of new temples by the royalty, increase in the importance of the priestly class, the introduction of Holy Quran and Islam in public life and the emergence of the Bhakti cult.
Solution 6
Historically, the term ‘Hindustan’ did not have the political and national connotations that it has today. In the 13th century, it was used to denote the dominion of the Sultan of Delhi and did not include the southern peninsula. The first Mughal Emperor Babur used the term Hindustan in order to describe the geography, the culture and the fauna of the Indian subcontinent. In the present times, however, ‘Hindustan’ stands for the nation-state of India.
Solution 7
The jatis, as social groupings, formed their own rules and regulations in order to control the conduct of their members. Such rules and regulations were enforced by an assembly of elders from the jati, known as the ‘jati panchayat’. However, the jati panchayats were not completely sovereign and had to conform to the village system of rules enforced by the village chieftain.
Solution 8
The term ‘pan-regional empire’ stands for an empire that encompasses several regions. Examples of pan-regional empires include the Mughal Empire, the Maratha Empire, the Chola Empire, the Tughluq and the Khalji sultanates, etc.
Solution 9
While using manuscripts for the purpose of historical research, historians have to take into consideration several difficulties. Since, as the name suggests, manuscripts were handwritten, there might be small but significant changes between two copies. Since the authors could introduce arbitrary changes to the content according to their bias, the changes could grow over centuries and thus transform the document substantially from its original version. As a result, historians are often compelled to read different manuscript versions of a text in order to determine the authenticity and credibility of the content.
Solution 10
Historians categorise the past into periods based on certain social and economic determinants. In this endeavour, they encounter two problems. Firstly, economic and social factors do not exist in a stasis, they have a tendency to change constantly. Therefore, definite boundaries cannot be formulated by the historians. Secondly, the ‘medieval’ epoch is contrasted with the modern period. The term ‘modernity’ implies a sense of material and intellectual progress. This further implies that there was no progress before, which is not true.
