NCERT Solutions For Class 7 Social Science Chapter 3
Tracing Changes Through a Thousand Years

The term ‘pan-regional empire’ means ‘an empire spanning diverse regions’.

In the medieval period, a “foreigner” was any stranger who appeared, say, in a given village; someone who was not a part of that society or culture.

(a) Archives are places where documents and manuscripts are kept.

(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.

(i) Jatis framed their own rules and regulations to manage the conduct of their members.

(ii) These regulations were enforced by an assembly of elders, described in some areas as the jati panchayat.

(iii) But jatis were also required to follow the rules of their villages; several villages were governed by a chieftain.

(i) In the thirteenth century by Minhaj-I Siraj, a Persian chronicler, used the term “Hindustan” to indicate the areas of Punjab, Haryana and the lands between the Ganga and Yamuna; he used the term for lands that were a part of the dominions of the Delhi Sultan.

(ii) In the early sixteenth century, Babur used the term “Hindustan” to describe the geography, the fauna and the culture of the inhabitants of the subcontinent.

(iii) Today, the term “Hindustan” means “India”, the modern nation state, from Kashmir to Kanyakumari.

The following technological changes are associated with this period:

• the Persian wheel in irrigation
• the spinning wheel in weaving
• firearms in combat

(i) Historians divide the past into periods by analyzing economic and social factors to characterise the major elements of different moments of the past.

(ii) Yes, historians face problems in their task of dividing the past into periods. For example, the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries were quite different from the eighth or the eleventh. Therefore, describing the entire period as one historical unit is having its own limitations.

(iii) Moreover, the “medieval” period is often contrasted with the “modern” period.

(v) “Modernity” carries with it a sense of material progress and intellectual advancement.

(vi) This portrays the medieval period as lacking any significant economic and social change. But, the medieval period too did witness its own change and development.

(i) Manuscripts were collected by wealthy people, rulers, monasteries and temples. They were preserved in libraries and archives.

(ii) There was no printing press in those days so scribes copied manuscripts by hand.

(iii) In the process of copying, they also introduced small changes in words and sentences.

(iv) These small differences grew over centuries of copying until manuscripts of the same text became substantially different from one another.

(v) This is a serious problem. The original manuscript of the author is not available. Historians are totally dependent upon the copies made by later scribes.

(vi) As a result, they have to read different manuscript versions of the same text to guess what the author had originally written.

(i)During this period, important changes occurred in Hinduism. People started worshipping new deities.

(ii)Rulers and kings constructed temples.

(iii)The importance of Brahmanas, the priests, as dominant groups in society grew gradually.

(iv)The development of the idea of Bhakti was another significant feature. The Bhakti was an idea of a loving, personal deity that devotees could reach without the aid of priests and his rituals.

(v)During this period, new religions like Islam came to the subcontinent with migrants and merchants who brought the teachings of the Quran, the Holy book of Muslims. Many rulers became patrons of Islam and the ulama (learned theologians and jurists).

(a) False

(b) True

(c) True

(d) False