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Tracing Changes Through a Thousand Years

Introduction: Tracing Changes Through a Thousand Years

Geographical Influence on History

  • Geography directly or indirectly affects the history of a region.
  • Favourable environments lead to:
    • Dense population
    • Cultural interaction with outsiders/travellers
  • Unfavourable environments lead to:
    • Sparse population
    • Less external cultural influence

Maps and Medieval India

  • Cartography is the art/science of making maps.
  • A cartographer is a person who studies or creates maps.
  • Ancient Indians did not know about map-making.
  • Medieval trade and empire expansion increased the need for accurate maps.
  • Arabs and Europeans first developed the science of Cartography.
  • Contact with Arabs and Europeans helped Indians learn map-making.
  • Map-1 (by Arab geographer Al-Idrisi, 1154 CE):
    • Shows South India and Sri Lanka at the top
    • Place names are in Arabic
    • Spellings differ from what we know today
  • Map-2 (by French cartographer Guillaume de l'Isle, 1720s):
    • Shows South India and Sri Lanka at the bottom (like modern maps)
    • More familiar to present-day viewers
    • Based on updated information
  • Historians study maps in the context of the time they were made.

📘 New and Old Terminologies

  • Language and meanings change over time depending on the context in which information is produced.
  • Historical records are written in different languages, which have changed significantly over the years.
  • Medieval Persian is different from modern Persian, not just in grammar and vocabulary but also in word meanings.
  • 🌍 The Term “Hindustan”
    • Today, "Hindustan" means India, the modern nation-state.
    • In the 13th century, chronicler Minhaj-i-Siraj used "Hindustan" to refer to Punjab, Haryana, and the lands between the Ganga and Yamuna.
    • He used it in a political sense, for lands under the Delhi Sultanate.
    • The areas included under “Hindustan” changed with the Sultanate’s expansion but never included South India.
    • In the 16th century, Babur used "Hindustan" to describe geography, animals, and culture, not politics.
    • Amir Khusrau (14th-century poet) also used the term "Hind" in a cultural and geographical sense.
    • The idea of India as a region existed, but “Hindustandid not have the political or national meaning it has today.
  • 👨‍🏫 Historians and Use of Terms
    • Historians must be careful while using terms from the past because meanings have changed over time.
    • The word “foreigner” today means someone who is not Indian.
    • In medieval times, a “foreigner” was any stranger who did not belong to a specific village or culture.
    • Example: A city-dweller might call a forest-dweller a foreigner.
    • But two peasants from the same village were not foreigners to each other, even if they had different religions or castes.
    • Words used to describe foreigners:
      • In Hindi: Pardesi
      • In Persian: Ajnabi

📚 Historians and Their Sources

  • 🔍 Nature of Historical Sources.
    • Historians use different types of sources based on the time period and the nature of their study.
    • For the period 700 to 1750, historians use:
      • Coins
      • Inscriptions
      • Architecture
      • Textual records
  • 🔁 Continuity and Change in Sources
    • There is continuity in the use of older sources (like coins, inscriptions), but also discontinuity due to the increase in textual records.
    • During this period, paper became cheaper and widely available, making writing more common.
  • 📝 Types of Textual Records
    • People used paper to write:
      • Religious texts
      • Royal chronicles
      • Letters and teachings of saints
      • Petitions and court records
      • Registers of accounts and taxes
    • Manuscripts were preserved by:
      • Rulers
      • Wealthy people
      • Monasteries
      • Temples
    • These were kept in libraries and archives and are important but difficult to use.
  • ✍️ Problems with Manuscripts
    • There was no printing press, so scribes hand-copied manuscripts.
    • Copying by hand caused errors – scribes:
      • Misread original text
      • Introduced small changes (e.g., a word or sentence)
    • Over centuries, copies of the same text became quite different, creating a challenge for historians.
    • Original manuscripts are rarely available – historians depend on copies made by later scribes.
    • To understand the original content, historians compare different versions of the same manuscript.
  • 📖 Example: Ziyauddin Barani
    • Ziyauddin Barani, a 14th-century chronicler, wrote a historical chronicle in:
      • 1356 (first version)
      • 1358 (revised version)
    • The two versions differ from each other.
    • The first version was discovered only in the 1960s in a large library collection.
    • This shows that some important texts remained unknown for centuries.

✅ Assertion and Reason Questions

Choose the correct option for each below question based on the given assertions and reasons:

a) Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A

b) Both A and R are true, but R is not the correct explanation of A

c) A is true, but R is false

d) A is false, but R is true

  1. Q1
    • Assertion (A): Historians rely only on coins, inscriptions, and architecture to study the period from 700 to 1750.
    • Reason (R): Textual records were not available in that period.
  2. Q2
    • Assertion (A): Paper became cheaper and widely available during the period 700–1750.
    • Reason (R): This led to the increase in writing of texts like religious books, chronicles, and court records.
  3. Q3
    • Assertion (A): Scribes introduced small changes while copying manuscripts.
    • Reason (R): Copying manuscripts by hand was a simple and error-free process.
  4. Q4
    • Assertion (A): Historians often find the original manuscript written by an author.
    • Reason (R): Manuscripts were carefully preserved and printed using the printing press.
  5. Q5
    • Assertion (A): Historians compare different versions of the same manuscript to understand the original text.
    • Reason (R): The original manuscripts are rarely available and copies often differ due to manual copying errors.
  6. Q6
    • Assertion (A): Ziyauddin Barani’s first chronicle was lost and discovered only in the 1960s.
    • Reason (R): Historical manuscripts often remain hidden in large libraries and archives for centuries.

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