Class Notes NCERT Solutions for CBSE Students
Question: List the Junctions performed by men and women who live in your city and village. In what ways are these similar to those performed by people who lived in Mathura? In what ways are they different?
Answer: In the city I live, I see men and women working to feed their families. Mostly men work in offices and other establishments. Women also work in offices these days. In a city like Mathura, people worked to provide food items to the city- folks because it was located at the intersection of two major trade and travel routes. Life of people of our cities and that in Mathura was in no way much different.
Question: What steps were taken to increase agricultural production?
Answer: Iron tools such as axes and iron ploughshare began to be used. Axes were used for clearing forests and the ploughshare was useful for increasing agricultural production. Apart from these new tools, irrigation was also used for this purpose. Irrigation works that were built during this time included canals, wells, tanks, and artificial lakes.
Question: Who was the grama bhojaka? Write about him in brief.
Answer: The grama bhojaka was the village headman in the northern part of the country. His post was hereditary. He was the largest landowner in the village who kept slaves and hired workers to cultivate the land. He collected taxes from the village for the king. He also functioned as a judge and sometimes as a policeman
Question: What do you know about Sangam literature?
Answer: Some of the earliest works in Tamil came to be known as Sangam literature. These earliest works were composed around 2300 years ago. These texts were called Sangam because they were supposed to have been composed and compiled in assemblies of poets. These assemblies were known as Sangams. They were held in the city of Madurai.
Question: What kind of information do we get from several inscriptions found in Mathura?
Answer: The inscriptions found in Mathura record gifts made by men and women to monasteries and shrines. These were made by kings and queens, officers, merchants and crafts people who lived the city. The inscriptions from Mathura make us aware that people were engaged in several occupations such as — weaving, basket making, garland making etc. There were also goldsmiths and blacksmiths.
