Indian Social Structure

Early Tamil literature (the Sangam texts) also mentions the different categories of people living in the villages. Match the following columns of these categories with the people in the social strata.

Why could the tribesmen no longer live under the same roof?

Directions: Choose the most correct answer based on the given reading.

Families formed as an answer to the questions faced by growing tribes in the early times. When the number of people of an early human tribe kept on growing, space became short. It became impossible to keep on sharing common roofs. The grazing, hunting, and farming grounds close to the home of the tribe were no more enough to feed all. People had to cover greater distances in a day to get food. It became more and more difficult to carry back food from where it was found.

When people grew in skills and knowledge, it made life easier and plentiful. There was no more any need to share most of their belongings. So, people started to have personal belongings and attachments. This gave rise to greed and envy. Greater numbers of people meant greater differences among them. Everybody had his or her own tastes. So, it became harder to please everybody by common cooking. To find an answer to these problems, the tribe divided into smaller groups called families that started to live and cook separately. Families built themselves around providers, or the persons who put food on the table, and were made up of blood relations of the main provider. Thus, the tribe grew from a family-less group to a group of families.

The author while talking about barter system in India refers to jajmani system. Besides highlighting the barter system prevalent in India, what else does this system convey?

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.

Directions: In the following question, four statements are provided. These statements form a coherent paragraph when properly arranged. Select the alternative representing the proper and logical sequencing of these statements.

A. Brahmanism was the ethnic religion of India in this period and the caste system got a fresh incentive. B. However, the caste system had not assumed that rigidity in this period which we associate with it in the Muslim or in the beginning of the British period, in respect of, inter-marriage, inter-dining and professions. C. While the foundation stone for the revival of Brahmanism was laid in the Sunga, Kanva and Kushan dynasties, its real development came in the Gupta period (300 A.D. - 500 A.D.), the period called the Golden Age of Hinduism or the period of Hindu Renaissance. D. The prehistoric view that the Sudras should be content merely to become the servants of the twice-born was neither accepted in theory nor followed in practice.