NCERT Solutions for Class 9th Social Science Chapter 5 Chapter opening — The Big Questions

They organised themselves in layers, and the layers grew larger and more formal over time — from kinship to territory, and from custom to law.

Society organised itself first. The chapter defines society as a system of social relationships among people who share a common territory, culture and a sense of belonging, made up of units such as families and institutions such as marriage. Its key feature is that it is regulated primarily by customs and practices rather than formal laws. In early India that meant a nested set of units:

Cutting across these were gotra (a patrilineal lineage traced to a Vedic ṛiṣhi, which regulated marriage), the four varṇas, the growing number of jātis, the four āśhramas (brahmacharya, gṛihastha, vānaprastha, saṁnyāsa) and the four puruṣhārthas (dharma, artha, kāma, mokṣha).

The State organised itself as societies grew larger and more complex. A State, in the chapter's definition, is an organised political system based on rules and laws, with defined rights and duties of rulers and subjects, mechanisms of governance and institutions for enforcing law and order. Its development can be tracked in three stages:

• Kin-based polity — the rājā as clan chief who led in warfare and protected members, advised and checked by the assemblies sabhā, samiti and vidhata.
• Territorial polity — janapadas between about 1000 and 600 BCE, then the sixteen mahājanapadas from about 600 BCE to 300 CE, in two forms: monarchies (rājyas) and republics (gaṇas or saṁghas).
• Empire — Magadha grew into the Mauryan empire; later the Satavāhanas, Guptas, Pallavas, Chālukyas, Gurjara-Pratihāras, Pālas, Rāṣhṭrakūṭas and imperial Cholas. Here the king ruled through a mantri-pariṣhad and a graded machinery of provinces, districts, groups of villages and villages.

They spread by moving down the river valleys — from the northwest to the Ganga plains, and then across the Deccan and the far south — and the chapter dates each move with archaeological and literary evidence.

1. Northwest first. The earliest sections of the Ṛigveda were composed in Sapta-Sindhu — the Indus, its five tributaries and the Sarasvatī. This is the same region in which the Sindhu–Sarasvatī civilisation had flourished.
2. Then the Ganga plains. While early Vedic culture was most prominent in the Indus and Sarasvatī valleys, the later Vedic period saw the Ganga plains become the main centre. Fig. 5.3 shows the archaeological trace: iron finds and megalithic sites spread right across the subcontinent in the first millennium BCE, with a dense cluster in the Ganga region. By about 600 BCE the region had substantial growth in agriculture, larger political units and more complex social institutions.
3. Sixteen mahājanapadas. Fig. 5.4 shows their spread — from Kamboja and Gandhāra in the northwest, through Kuru, Pañchāla, Śhūrasena, Matsya in the upper Ganga–Yamuna region, to Kosala, Kāśhī, Vatsa, Malla, Vṛijji, Magadha, Anga in the middle and lower Ganga, and southwards to Chedi, Avanti and Aśhmaka in the Deccan.
4. The Deccan and the far south. In the Deccan the Mauryan empire was succeeded by the Satavāhana empire, which lasted nearly 500 years (2nd century BCE to 3rd century CE). Further south were the Cholas (lower Kaveri valley), Pandyas (Tamraparni and Vaigai valleys), Keralaputras (the Cheras, in Kerala) and Satiyaputras (northern Tamil Nadu).
5. Regional empires, 3rd–10th centuries CE. Fig. 5.6 maps them together: Śhāhī, Puṣhyabhūti, Maukharī, Gupta, Gurjara-Pratihāra, Maitraka, Pāla, Sena, Rāṣhṭrakūṭas, Badami Chālukya, Eastern Chālukya, Pallava, Chola, Chera and Pandya.

Dharma gave the whole subcontinent a shared standard for judging rulers and subjects; chakravarti samrāṭ gave rulers everywhere the same map to aspire to. Together they made a single moral and geographical horizon that outlasted every individual dynasty.

1. Dharma unified social values. Dharma here does not mean religion. It means duty, obligation, righteousness and moral conduct — a way of life in which each person performs the duties appropriate to their role. Because it was a standard of conduct rather than of birth or region, it applied equally in Magadha and in Tamilakam. The chapter shows it working at both ends of the period:

• Aśhoka's edicts promoted dhamma — moral conduct, respect within the family, ethical behaviour in everyday life, non-violence and compassion.
• Nearly 1,200 years later, the 10th-century Uttaramerur inscription requires candidates for village assembly elections to have “honest earnings” and be “pure” of mind.

The same idea is carried by samatva, the principle of sameness, and by the ideal — repeated in the epics — of the good person and ruler as “one who works for the welfare of all beings.”

2. Chakravarti samrāṭ unified the political imagination. Early Indian monarchs did not think only of their own borders. Their geopolitical awareness was expressed through terms such as Jambudvīpa, Bhāratavarṣha, aśhvamedha and rājasūya yajña, prithivi and chakravarti kśhetra. The Arthaśhāstra makes the geography explicit:

And rulers acted on it, in every century and from every direction:

• Aśhoka (3rd century BCE) says his “energetic exertions” (pakama; Sanskrit parākrama) brought significant changes in the spiritual life in Jambudvīpa.
• Nedunjeral Adan, a Chera king of the early Sangam period, is described as winning the rank of adhirāja and extending his conquests up to the Himalayas — a southern king measuring himself against the northern limit.
• Rajendra I, the Chola ruler, took the title Gangaikonda in the 11th century CE to commemorate his conquest of regions along the Ganga.

They took shape mainly around what people did — occupation — and they were held together by shared institutions: assemblies, guilds, temples, texts and a common ethical vocabulary.

Social groups. The four varṇas appear first in the Puruṣhasūkta, a hymn in Book 10 of the Ṛigveda, and came to be linked with specific roles. But the chapter is careful: early Vedic texts do not indicate any fixed social status strictly based on birth. Social identity was shaped by ethnicity, subgroup, region, village affiliation, gotra, language and — especially — occupation. Later, jātis formed through intermarriage among varṇas, migrating communities becoming endogamous, and territorial differences. Varṇas stayed four; jātis multiplied without limit.

Administrative groups. A whole professional class grew up: amātyas and later kumārāmātyas, the sāndhivigrahika (minister of peace and war, new in the Gupta period), pradeśhikas (district governors), city governors, and grāmikas (village headmen). Village assemblies elected variyams for irrigation, gardens, temples, justice and taxes.

Occupational groups. Traders, artisans and merchants organised into guilds (śhreṇīs); the Jātaka literature refers to eighteen types. In the south, the Tolkappiyam names Arasar (kings), Vanigar (traders), Velar (farmers) and Antanar (brāhmaṇas), and the Pattinappalai describes merchants, salt-makers, fishermen, artisans, agriculturists and warriors interacting actively.

How they came together culturally. The evidence is in the inscriptions, and it is evidence of groups crossing their supposed boundaries: