Multiple choice

The passage is an exposition on

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

 

The history of money and coins takes us back to when man first felt the need to exchange goods and services. Early palaeolithic man lived by hunting and fishing, sharing the flesh or fish obtained by the members of a group, each a self-sufficient unit in clash or conflict with neighbouring groups, from whom things of value could be had only through robbery or violence. With more peaceful forms of contact, trade began as simple barter of commodities; and gradually, instead of jealously guarding their resources, men began to go in search of products of other tribes and regions.


In India a form of barter of goods and services survived till recently in its jajmani system, where services rendered by members of hereditary castes of potters, carpenters, masons, weavers of goods, barbers, washer men, weavers, cooks, pundits and astrologers were traditionally paid for in kind—gram, oil, raw sugar, dairy products etc.But barter had its limitations: there had to be a simultaneous need to buy and sell and there had to be some standards of value. It therefore gave way, as the market place developed and widened choices, to a more precise way of using some durable products of intrinsic value. A seller could accept in exchange a product, which although he did not need to buy then, or not at all, could be used as a store of value and medium of exchange in the future.

Limestone money was in use in the Yap Islands till after the Second World War. Not cheap by current standards, a stone ‘a foot in diameter cost about seventy-five US dollars. A stone man-high was worth many villages and plantations, and a stone two-men high was beyond price’, according to William Price. He adds, ‘our experience in trying to make United States dollars legal tender on Yap is somewhat humbling. Yesterday it was the Japanese; today it is the Americans; tomorrow it could be somebody else.

Shells, particularly cowries, remained in universal use in Asia, China, Africa and Europe till not so long ago. In the Punjab, till the late 1920s, cowries valued at much less than a pice (sixty-four to a rupee) were sold by old women in markets from heaps piled in front of them as a subsidiary currency for marginal adjustment of prices. The cowry shell had a special value for rituals and ceremonies, for warding off the evil eye because of its resemblance to an eye, and a as a symbol of fertility and reproduction for its shape.

 

 

  1. how the early men lived and did business

  2. how the barter system worked in palaeolithic period

  3. shells and cowries in use

  4. how the money system evolved

  5. how the jajmani system worked in India
Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
D Correct answer
Explanation

(1) The passage does indeed talk about the early men, but only by way of an illustration or in reference to something larger. It partly answers the question. (2) There is an elaborate expose on how the barter system worked in the Stone Age. But here too, it is meant to address a larger question for which this expose works as a point of reference. (3) There is a reference to it as shells and cowries are shown as part of a system of what evolved as money system in the later days. Cowries, also for their religious overtone. (4) The entire passage can be seen as a treatise on how the money system evolved from the palaeolithic period to the present age. It helps understand the principle of money and commerce. (5) Jajmani system is specific to India. Even as it shows how it helped the barter system as also how it added up to the evolution of money, its applicability was restricted and limited to India. It does not answer the larger question.

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