CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION:

WHAT, WHERE, HOW AND WHEN?

Rasheeda’s question
Rasheeda sat reading the newspaper. Suddenly, her
eyes fell on a small headline: “One Hundred Years
Ago.” How, she wondered, could anyone know what
had happened so many years ago?

Finding out what happened

Yesterday: you could listen to the radio, watch
television, read a newspaper.
Last year: ask somebody who remembers.
But what about long, long ago? Let us see how it
can be done.

What can we know about the past?

There are several things we can find out — what
people ate, the kinds of clothes they wore, the
houses in which they lived. We can find out
about the lives of hunters, herders, farmers,
rulers, merchants, priests, craftspersons, artists,
musicians, and scientists. We can also find out
about the games children played, the stories they
heard, the plays they saw, the songs they sang.

Where did people live?

Find the river Narmada on Map 1 (page 2). People
have lived along the banks of this river for several
hundred thousand years. Some of the earliest
people who lived here were skilled gatherers, —
that is, people who gathered their food. They knew
about the vast wealth of plants in the surrounding
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 Now find the Sulaiman and Kirthar hills to the
northwest. Some of the areas where women and
men first began to grow crops such as wheat and
barley about 8000 years ago are located here.
People also began rearing animals like sheep, goat,
and cattle, and lived in villages. Locate the Garo
hills to the north-east and the Vindhyas in central
India. These were some of the other areas where

Map : 1
Physical Map of the Subcontinent

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 agriculture developed. The places where rice was Facing Page: This is a map
of South Asia (including
first grown are to the north of the Vindhyas.
the present countries
Trace the river Indus and its tributaries of India, Pakistan,
(tributaries are smaller rivers that flow into a larger Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan
river). About 4700 years ago, some of the earliest and Sri Lanka) and the
cities flourished on the banks of these rivers. Later, neighbouring countries
of Afghanistan, Iran,
about 2500 years ago, cities developed on the China and Myanmar.
banks of the Ganga and its tributaries, and along South Asia is often called
the sea coasts. a subcontinent because
Locate the Ganga and its tributary called the although it is smaller than
a continent, it is very large,
Son. In ancient times, the area along these rivers
and is separated from the
to the south of the Ganga was known as Magadha rest of Asia by seas, hills
now lying in the state of Bihar. Its rulers were very and mountains.
powerful, and set up a large kingdom. Kingdoms
were set up in other parts of the country as well.
Throughout, people travelled from one part of
the subcontinent to another. The hills and high
mountains including the Himalayas, deserts, rivers
and seas made journeys dangerous at times, but
never impossible. So, men and women moved in
search of livelihood, as also to escape from natural
disasters like floods or droughts. Sometimes men
marched in armies, conquering others’ lands.
Besides, merchants travelled with caravans or
ships, carrying valuable goods from place to place.
And religious teachers walked from village to village,
town to town, stopping to offer instruction and
advice on the way. Finally, some people perhaps
travelled driven by a spirit of adventure, wanting
to discover new and exciting places. All these led
to the sharing of ideas between people.
Why do people travel nowadays?
Look at Map 1 once more. Hills, mountains and
seas form the natural frontiers of the subcontinent.
While it was difficult to cross these frontiers, those
who wanted could and did scale the mountains
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 and cross the seas. People from across the frontiers
also came into the subcontinent and settled here.
These movements of people enriched our cultural
traditions. People have shared new ways of carving
stone, composing music, and even cooking food over
several hundreds of years.

Names of the land

Two of the words we often use for our country are
India and Bharat. The word India comes from the
Indus, called Sindhu in Sanskrit. Find Iran and
Greece in your atlas. The Iranians and the Greeks
who came through the northwest about 2500 years
ago and were familiar with the Indus, called it the
Hindos or the Indos, and the land to the east of
the river was called India. The name Bharata was
used for a group of people who lived in the north-
west, and who are mentioned in the Rigveda, the
earliest composition in Sanskrit (dated to about
3500 years ago). Later it was used for the country.

Finding out about the past

A page from a palm leaf
manuscript. There are several ways of finding out about the
This manuscript was past. One is to search for and read books that were
written about a thousand written long ago. These are called manuscripts,
years ago. The palm because they were written by hand (this comes from
leaves were cut into
the Latin word ‘manu’, meaning hand). These were
pages and tied together
to make books. To see a usually written on palm leaf, or on the specially
birch bark manuscript, prepared bark of a tree known as the birch, which
turn to page 35. grows in the Himalayas.

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 Over the years, many manuscripts were eaten
away by insects, some were destroyed, but many
have survived, often preserved in temples and
monasteries. These books dealt with all kinds of
subjects: religious beliefs and practices, the lives
of kings, medicine and science. Besides, there were
epics, poems, plays. Many of these were written in
Sanskrit, others were in Prakrit (languages used
by ordinary people) and Tamil.
We can also study inscriptions. These are writings
on relatively hard surfaces such as stone or metal.
Sometimes, kings got their orders inscribed so
that people could see, read and obey them. There
are other kinds of inscriptions as well, where men An old inscription.
and women (including kings and queens) recorded This inscription dates
what they did. For to about 2250 years
ago, and was found in
example, kings Kandahar, present-day
often kept records Afghanistan. It was
of victories in battle. inscribed on the orders
Can you think of of a ruler named Ashoka.
the advantages of You will read about him
in Chapter 7. When we
writing on a hard write anything, we use a
surface? And what script. Scripts consist of
could have been letters or signs. When
the difficulties? we read what is written,
There were many or speak, we use a
language. This inscription
other things that was inscribed in two
were made and different scripts and
used in the past. languages, Greek (top)
Those who study and Aramaic (below),
these objects are called archaeologists. They study which were used in this
area.
the remains of buildings made of stone and brick,
paintings and sculpture. They also explore and
excavate (dig under the surface of the earth) to
find tools, weapons, pots, pans, ornaments and
coins. Some of these objects may be made of stone,
others of bone, baked clay or metal. Objects that
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 Left : A pot from an old
city.
Pots like these were used
about 4700 years ago.
Right : An old silver coin.
Coins such as this one
were in use from about
2500 years ago.
In what ways is the coin
different from the ones we
use today?

Archaeologists also look for bones — of animals,

birds, and fish — to find out what people ate in the
past. Plant remains survive far more rarely — if
seeds of grain or pieces of wood have been burnt,
they survive in a charred form. Do you think cloth
is found frequently by archaeologists?
Historians, that is, scholars who study the
past, often use the word source to refer to the
information found from manuscripts, inscriptions
and archaeology. Once sources are found,
learning about the past becomes an adventure,
as we reconstruct it bit by bit. So historians and
archaeologists are like detectives, who use all these
sources like clues to find out about our pasts.

One past or many?

Did you notice the title of this book, Our Pasts?
We have used the word ‘pasts’ in plural to draw
attention to the fact that the past was different for
different groups of people. For example, the lives
of herders or farmers were different from those
of kings and queens, the lives of merchants were
different from those of craftspersons, and so on.
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 Also, as is true even today, people followed different
practices and customs in different parts of the
country. For example, today most people living in
the Andaman Islands get their own food by fishing,
hunting, and collecting forest produce. By contrast,
most people living in cities depend on others for
supplies of food. Differences such as these existed
in the past as well.
Besides, there is another kind of difference. We
know a great deal about kings and the battles they
fought because they kept records of their victories.
Generally, ordinary people such as hunters, fishing
folk, gatherers, farmers or herders did not keep
records of what they did. While archaeology helps
us to find out about their lives, there is much that
remains unknown.

What do dates mean?

If somebody asks you the date, you will probably
mention the day, month and year, 2000 and
something. These years are counted from the date
generally assigned to the birth of Jesus Christ,
the founder of Christianity. So, 2000 means 2000
years after the birth of Christ. All dates before the
birth of Christ are counted backwards and usually
have the letters BC (Before Christ) added on. In
this book, we will refer to dates going back from
the present, using 2000 as our starting point.

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 Letters with dates
BC stands for ‘Before Christ.’
You will sometimes find AD before dates.
This stands for two Latin words, ‘Anno Domini’,
meaning ‘in the year of the Lord’ (i.e. Christ). So
2012 can also be written as AD 2012.
Sometimes CE is used instead of AD and BCE
instead of BC. The letters CE stand for ‘Common
Era’ and BCE for ‘Before Common Era’. We use
these terms because the Christian Era is now
used in most countries of the world. In India we
began using this form of dating from about two
hundred years ago.
And sometimes, the letters BP meaning ‘Before
Present’ are used.
Find two dates mentioned on page 3. Which set
of letters would you use for them?

Imagine
You have to interview an archaeologist. Prepare a list of
five questions that you would like to ask her/him.

KEYWORDS
travelling Let’s recall
manuscript
1. Match the following:
inscription
archaeology Narmada Valley The first big kingdom
historian Magadha Hunting and gathering
source
Garo hills Cities about 2500
decipherment
years ago

Indus and its tributaries Early agriculture

Ganga Valley The first cities

2. List one major difference between manuscripts and

inscriptions.

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 SOME IMPORTANT
Let’s discuss DATES
3. Return to Rasheeda’s question. Can you think of some the
 beginning of
answers to it? agriculture (8000
years ago)
4. Make a list of all the objects that archaeologists may the
 first cities on the
find. Which of these could be made of stone? Indus (4700 years
ago)
5. Why do you think ordinary men and women did not
generally keep records of what they did? cities
 in the Ganga
valley, a big kingdom
6. Describe at least two ways in which you think the in Magadha (2500
lives of kings would have been different from those years ago)
of farmers.
the
 present (about
2000 AD/CE)

Let’s do

7. Find the word craftspersons on page 1. List at least

five different crafts that you know about today. Are
the craftspersons — (a) men (b) women (c) both men
and women?

8. What were the subjects on which books were written

in the past? Which of these would you like to read?

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