ncert history

• Finding out what happened

  • Yesterday: you could listen to the radio, watch television, read a newspaper
  • Last year: ask somebody who remembers
  • Long, long ago: several ways to find out
• What can we know about the past?
• Things we can find out about the past

  • What people ate
  • Kinds of clothes they wore
  • Houses they lived in
  • Lives of hunters, herders, farmers, rulers, merchants, priests, craftspersons, artists, musicians, scientists
  • Games children played
  • Stories they heard
  • Plays they saw
  • Songs they sang
• Gatherers


  People who gathered their food from the surrounding forests
• Early people who lived along the Narmada river


  • Skilled gatherers
  • Knew about the vast wealth of plants in the surrounding forests
  • Collected roots, fruits and other forest produce for food
  • Also hunted animals
• Agriculture


  Growing crops such as wheat and barley, rearing animals like sheep, goat, and cattle, living in villages
• Tributaries


  Smaller rivers that flow into a larger river
• Some of the earliest cities flourished on the banks of the Indus and its tributaries


  About 4700 years ago
• Cities developed on the banks of the Ganga and its tributaries, and along the sea coasts


  About 2500 years ago
• Kingdoms


  Set up in different parts of the country
• Travelling in the subcontinent

  • Hills and high mountains including the Himalayas, deserts, rivers and seas made journeys dangerous at times, but never impossible
  • People travelled in search of livelihood, to escape natural disasters, as armies, as merchants, as religious teachers, driven by a spirit of adventure
• Movements of people enriched our cultural traditions
• India and Bharat


  • Two words used for the country
  • India comes from the Indus, called Sindhu in Sanskrit
  • Bharata was used for a group of people who lived in the northwest, and who are mentioned in the Rigveda
• Manuscripts


  Books written by hand, usually on palm leaf or birch bark
• Inscriptions


  Writings on relatively hard surfaces such as stone or metal
• Advantages of inscriptions


  • Kings got their orders inscribed so that people could see, read and obey them
  • Men and women recorded what they did
• Archaeologists


  Those who study remains of the past, such as buildings, paintings, sculpture, tools, weapons, pots, pans, ornaments and coins
• Historians


  Scholars who study the past, using manuscripts, inscriptions and archaeology as sources
• The past was different for different groups of people
• We know more about kings and battles they fought because they kept records, while ordinary people did not keep records
• Dates


  • Counted from the date generally assigned to the birth of Jesus Christ
  • BC (Before Christ) for dates before the birth of Christ
  • AD (Anno Domini) or CE (Common Era) for dates after the birth of Christ
  • BP (Before Present) for dates before the present
• In India, the Christian Era dating system began to be used about two hundred years ago
• Ordinary men and women did not generally keep records of what they did
• Lives of kings


  Different from those of farmers
• Crafts


  • Crafts practised by both men and women
• Subjects on which books were written in the past

  • Religious beliefs and practices
  • Lives of kings
  • Medicine and science
  • Epics, poems, plays