Indian History Previous Year Questions (PYQ) with Answers – Page 20

Raiyat, muzarian and asami were all used for the peasant in Mughal-period sources, while majur means a labourer. The Indo-Persian sources of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries most often called the peasant raiyat (plural riaya) or muzarian; the words kisan and asami also appear.

In 1800 Colin Mackenzie, an engineer and surveyor of the East India Company, prepared the first survey map of the ruins of Hampi.

In 1865 the overland line through the Ottoman Empire and Persia was joined to a submarine cable in the Persian Gulf, and messages could pass between Britain and India for the first time.

The Unionist Party spoke for the landholders of Punjab and was against the partition of India. Founded in 1923 by Sir Fazl-i-Husain and Sir Chhotu Ram, the Unionist Party brought together Muslim, Hindu and Sikh landowners and peasants of Punjab on a platform of rural interests rather than religion.

The order is Kheda (1918), Bardoli (1928), the Gandhi–Irwin Pact (March 1931) and the Second Round Table Conference (September–December 1931).

The Arthashastra records all three rules about slavery. Kautilya's Arthashastra, the treatise on statecraft linked to the Mauryan court of Chandragupta Maurya, has a section on dasas, or slaves.

"Kulah-Daran" means wearers of the peaked cap, a name given to the Sayyids in medieval India. In Persian, kulah is a tall, pointed cap and daran means those who wear or hold it.

He patented the flying shuttle in England in 1733. The flying shuttle let a single weaver send the thread across the loom by pulling a cord, so wider cloth could be woven much faster.

Parishishtaparvan and Trishashtilakshana Mahapurana are Jaina works, while Nettipakarana and Avadanashataka are Buddhist.

The Cripps proposals let any province stay out of the new Union and deal with Britain separately, but the provincial members of the Constituent Assembly were to be elected, not nominated.

Of the three, only Rash Behari Bose worked actively with the Ghadar Party. The Ghadar Party was founded in 1913 at San Francisco by Indians in North America, with Lala Har Dayal and Sohan Singh Bhakna among its leaders.

The fanam was a small gold (and later silver) coin used widely in South India in medieval times. The word comes from the Tamil 'panam', meaning money.

Mahishmati, an important city of ancient central India, stood on the Narmada and is usually identified with Maheshwar in present-day Madhya Pradesh, though some scholars place it at Mandhata (Omkareshwar).

The Tolkappiyam, written by Tolkappiyar, is the oldest surviving work of Tamil grammar. The Tolkappiyam belongs to the early Sangam tradition.

Xuan Zang, also written Hiuen Tsang, travelled in India in the seventh century of the Christian era, during the reign of Harshavardhana of Kannauj, which is roughly fourteen hundred years before our own time.

In the Battle of Colachel in 1741, the forces of Marthanda Varma of Travancore defeated the Dutch East India Company.

Manigramam and Nanadesi were powerful trade guilds of south India in the early medieval period. In the age of the Pallavas, Cholas and later Chalukyas, merchants organised themselves into guilds that ran long-distance and overseas trade.

The English East India Company was chartered in 1600 and the Dutch company in 1602, and Vasco da Gama landed near Calicut in May 1498.

In 1639 the English Company obtained a grant of land at Madraspatam on the Coromandel coast and built Fort St. George there.

Harishena was the court poet and minister of the Gupta ruler Samudragupta and wrote this praise-poem in his honour. The Prayaga Prashasti, also called the Allahabad Pillar Inscription, is in elegant Sanskrit and is engraved on the same pillar that carries an edict of Ashoka.