Hello everyone, in today's video we are going to see the NCRT explanation of Kings, Farmers and Towns. In this one video, I will explain you the entire NCRT line by line. Plus, you will get to see the highlighted NCRT and you will also get to see the important questions in the site.
You will get all these things in the PDF in the description. And in the description, you will also get the link to our app and telegram channel from where you can download our notes free of cost. So let's start with the explanation of this chapter In chapter 1 we talked about 1900 BCE Now we will come back to 600 BCE And we will start talking from there till 600 CE After the end of Harappan civilization in 1500 years There were a lot of changes in the Indian subcontinent People living near the tributaries of Indus and Sauras Composed Rigveda We, our In North India, Deccan Plateau and some parts of Karnataka we see agricultural population which was doing agriculture At the same time, in Deccan and southern regions we see pastoral population which was raising animals Apart from this, in South India and Central India we see megaliths What are megaliths? Where dead bodies were buried big stone structures were being built there plus with dead Many weapons and iron tools were also being used This date is 6th century BCE You will see this date many times in this chapter After 6th century BCE, we see new states, empires and kingdoms developing We will talk about these in this chapter We see new agricultural organizations New towns And we get to know about all these things from different inscriptions We have got many artifacts from text, coins, visual materials, which we are going to talk about in this chapter.
So let's start this interesting chapter, whose first topic is Principle and Teodosy. Before moving ahead in the topic, let's clear some terms. Epigraphy means studying inscriptions.
What are inscriptions? All the writing that we get to see on hard surfaces, like metal, rock, pottery, we call them inscriptions. Most of the inscriptions were engraved in the style of the kings.
We also get to see their date in many inscriptions. In those that don't have a date, we use paleography. That is, we study the writing style to find out which time period it belonged to.
Apart from this, most of the inscriptions we got in ancient India were written in Prakrit languages. Now we come back to our topic. In the 1830s, our... James Princip was a Mint worker of an East India company Mint means where coins were made He deciphered Brahmi and Kharosti, two scripts Decipher means he read them and understood them Now these two, Brahmi and Kharosti, are not languages, they are scripts What is script and language made of? Like Hindi is a language, the system of writing it is called script We can write it in Devanagari or in Latin script So, Brahmi and Kharosti are two scripts which are mostly used in writing natural languages.
And we get to see most of the inscriptions in natural languages. James Princip saw that King is denoted with the Piazasi term, which means pleasant to behold. And in some inscriptions, King is called Ashoka. This was a brief introduction. Now, let's see how he deciphered Brahmi and Kharosti.
You might have noticed one more thing. that Ashoka's spelling is wrong here. The reason for that is that in the Prakrit languages, Ashoka was written like this.
By the way, Prakrit is not a language that we have in ancient India. Local languages were the language of ordinary people. We gave them the term Prakrit. So, under Prakrit, many languages come.
After the deciphering of Brahmi and Kharosti, our historians had found new directions to do their investigation. European and Indian scholars have now started using inscriptions and texts, studied them to study our major dynasties and their lineages and reconstruct their timeline. Dynasty for example was Mughal dynasty, so again and again Humayun Akbar became its lineage. Similarly, we are going to read about rulers in this chapter. In the early decades of 1900s, our historians figured out the timeline and after that they started answering new questions like whether it was linked to political, social and economic life.
We got the answer that yes there was a link but there was no direct connection Now we move on to the second topic, the earliest dates As I said earlier, 6th century BC is a very important date It is called the turning point of Indian history After this, the early states and cities developed The usage of iron increased, the coinage system developed And the start of Buddhism and Jainism In the Buddhist and Jain texts, we get to see 16 Maha Janpadas What are these? First of all, Janpada Janpada means, wherever people settled, we called it Janpada. And the big settlements, the big states, they were called Mahajanpadas. Mahajanpadas generally ruled kings, but there were also some where there were oligarchies. That is, multiple kings used to rule together.
We called them Sangh or Gan. Buddha and Mahabir also belonged to Ganash like this. We know that the king ruled over the resources here. They had power over them. But we don't know about the rest.
Did the kings and kings of other places control these resources? We don't get much information about them. In Mahajanpadas, there was a capital of each Mahajanpada.
It was fortified. That means, the defense was set up here. Walls were made.
Defenses and resources were installed. So that it can be protected Here you have to do fortification, you have to set up an army, you have to set up a bureaucracy to do administration For this you will need resources About who will control the resources, how will the king give tax etc. We get to see information in Dharm Sutras Again, after the 6th century BC, the Brahmins started composing Dharm Sutras This is Sanskrit text where we get to see the rules for these rulers, who to take tax from.
Ideally, the rulers were told to be warriors and they were advised to collect tax and tribute from cultivators, traders and artisans. We saw in the previous chapter and in this chapter too that there are many things that we don't get answers to. For example, you didn't say anything about the foreign dwelling population.
There were pastoralists too. Do they also take tax? We don't know, so we don't get any evidence.
Yes, we know that the attack on the surrounding territories, the raids, the looting of wealth was considered legitimate and it was said that you can attack to collect money and loot wealth After some time, the states started to build standing armies They invested in their armies, in their bureaucracy, set up administrative setups And then we see that these states were very powerful However, in some states, militia was still in place. That is, the army was collected from ordinary citizens. Generally, peasants were taken to fight in the army. Here, the professional army was still not set up. Now we will talk about Magad.
Between 6th and 4th century BCE, Magad became the most powerful city. There are many reasons for this. The first reason is that the agriculture was very good here.
Second reason, Iron mines could be easily accessed from here Tools and weapons could be made from here Third reason, Elephants were found in the forest which were useful in the army Fourth reason, Ganga and its tributaries could be accessed from here Which was a very easy and cheap communication method of transportation Apart from this, we get to see different reasons in Buddhist and Jain texts Here it is said that the rulers of this place Whether it was Mahapadmananda, Ajat Satya or Bimbisara, they were very ambitious and wanted to acquire more power from Radha And their ministers used to help them to implement policies, due to which Magadha's power had increased a lot Now the capital here was initially Rajgaon, which means the king's house, house of the king It was also fortified, it was a fortified settlement in the hilly area, but this capital was shifted Pataliputra was the place where Ganga's goods could be easily accessed from Pataliputra in 4th century BC Rajgaon was in Bihar and Pataliputra was in Patna Magad reached its peak in Mauryan Empire Chandigarh-upta Mauryan established Mauryan Empire in 321 BC And they controlled North West, Afghanistan and Balochistan region After this, their grandson Our most popular ruler Ashoka captured Kalinga in Orisha How do we know about this empire? There are many sources First of all, our archaeological finds They made many sculptures We know about them through them Then we get to see many accounts Our literary works First comes our accounts of Megasthenes He was a Greek ambassador in the court of Chandragupt Maurya. The accounts he wrote, some of which survived, which we studied to find out about Maurya. Then Charnakya's account, which we also call Kottel, he composed the earth shastra.
We get to see a lot of valuable information about Mauryas He is told that he was a minister of a court in Chandragupt Apart from this, we get to see Buddhist texts, Jain texts We get to see mentionings about him in the Quran We get to see more Sanskrit works Through which we get to know about Mauryas But all this is fine We get to see the most valuable information from the inscriptions of Ashoka Because they were inscriptions of a ruler In rocks and pillars, they not only gave speeches but also gave messages for their subjects We get to see their messages in rocks and pillars They were one of the first rulers And what did they write in it? Whatever they understood from Dhamma, they wrote it in their inscriptions What used to happen in it? That you have to respect your elders All the Brahmans or people who renounced the worldly life, gave up, you have to be generous towards them, respect them, you have to treat your slaves and servants kindly, you have to respect all religions, traditions, and cultures, basically, these moral values were inscribed in their lessons. Now let's see what we learn about the administration of this empire from these sources.
There were 5 major political centers here, remember the name, Pataliputra, Takhsani, Ujjali, Tosali and Sobernagri We get to see all these in Ashokar Inscriptions Here comes an interesting question This is such a big empire The inscriptions we get to see here They have a lot of similarities So is such a big empire It must be uniformly administered from one place The answer to this has come out to us No Our main capitals and provincial centers The administration here was very powerful But in other places weak administration was done Not controlled that much powerfully Now these centers have been carefully selected For example, Takshilaya and Jaini are on long distance trade routes Apart from this, Suvarnagri is made to tap the gold mines of Karnataka So they were carefully set up at each place In this entire empire, communication, travel and long distance connection was very important That's all for now from the river route Here we get to see that if you want to travel from the center to the capital to the provinces then you have to travel for many weeks or months For that you will have to arrange provisions for food and transportation Plus you will need armies to protect We get to know about this army from the account of Megasthenes He told about a committee which had six subcommittees and the question was Listen carefully, these six subcommittees had different tasks. One task was to look after the Navy, the other task was to look after transportation and provisions. There were many tasks in this, we will look at that later.
The third task was to manage foot soldiers, the fourth task was to manage horses, the fifth task was to manage chariots, i.e. the chariots. And the sixth task was to look after elephants. The second subcommittee, whose task was to look after transport and provisions, what were its tasks?
You have to arrange a bullock cart, food for soldiers and fodder for animals, servants and artisans. So all these subcommittees were made to do all these work. Apart from this, Ashoka used to spread the messages of Dhamma to hold his entire empire. For this, he had special officers of Dhamma Mahamata.
They hired them to spread the message for Ashoka. But now we have a question, was it actually an important empire? Let's talk about that. When our historians found this empire in the 19th century, it was a landmark in Indian history. We were in colonial rule, but our historians understood that we are going to learn a lot of interesting things about these people and this empire.
The archaeological finds we get here, for example the sculptures, were very spectacular art forms that distinctively belonged to this empire. The inscriptions of Ashoka were also very unique because they were not just about praising themselves like other kings, but they wanted to spread the lessons of moral values. Ashoka was a very humble and down to earth king.
That is why many of our nationalist leaders have called him a inspiring figure ki tarah bhi dekha. Lekin opposing view hume dekhne pe milta hai sif 150 years ye last kia ye empire. Ha, geographically kaafi ra...
They took all the parts of our subcontinent under their control But the power we saw was more in the provincial and central areas They couldn't keep the rest of the areas under their control And after 2nd century BC we see that new kingdoms and chiefdoms were developing So now we will talk about these new chiefdoms and new kingdoms Overall our modern empire is very important for our Indian history But 150 years is considered a short span in India's history Now we will talk about the new kingdoms and chiefdoms emerging in our subcontinent First we will see what are chiefs and chiefdoms Chiefdoms are those areas which were ruled by chiefs Now what are chiefs? They are a little different from kings They are also powerful men, the head of this chiefdom Their position can be hereditary or non-hereditary The important thing to know about their position is that you can call yourself a kinfolk Supporters and subordinates should get their support Their functions are like a head You have to perform space rituals You have to lead all the wars You have to settle all the disputes But like a king, they didn't pay taxes They used to give gifts to their subordinates And they used to distribute these gifts among their supporters And these chiefdoms They didn't have any bureaucracy, they didn't hire any officials standing armies were not hired. Now we come back to our topic New kingdoms and new chiefdoms were developing whether it was in our Deccan and Southern regions including our chiefdoms of Cholas, Cheras, Pandyas in Tamil region Tamil region means our Tamil Nadu became Andhra Pradesh became parts of Kerala They were combined into a whole Tamil region Now these new ones were developing They were also getting much more prosperous and stable How do we know about them? The Tamil Sangam text In this we get to see the poems about the chiefs, how they used to acquire wealth and distribute it among their supporters After this, the main source of revenue of the chiefs and kings was long distance trade Whether it was the Satvanas who ruled from 2nd century BC to 2nd century CE in western and central India or the Shakas who came from Central Asia and then ruled in the north western and western regions of India Their trade used to happen from many places from where their main revenue used to come We don't know where their actual social origin came from but when this power came in the Indian subcontinent they used different strategies to claim high social status One of the best strategies that many kings used was to connect themselves with deities, gods, goddesses and we get to see the best example of this Kushanaz Do remember this date from 1st century BC to 1st century CE They ruled from Central Asia to North Western India a very large area and they tried a lot to connect themselves with God We get to know about them from the texts and inscriptions and their coins and sculptures give us a lot of details about their ideas For example, in the cave near Mathura in a shrine there where we see statues of great Kushana rulers Similar statues are seen in Afghanistan's shrine They clearly considered themselves godlike and the title they held was also godlike Devputra, which means son of god Maybe they were inspired by Chinese rulers because they also called themselves sons of heaven After 4th century, we see many big states one of which is very important empire, Gupta Gupta Empire In Gupta Empire, King was at the top But King's egg had Samantas And these Samantas were of local rulers They had their own resources They also held a lot of power in their local area Now they have this much power So they used to fight with the King These Samantas used to generally provide homage to the King They used to believe in themselves under the King They used to give tributes to the King And if the King needed it He would give it to them and supported the king in wars etc.
But if someone was very powerful, he would overtake the king. And just the opposite, if a king was weak, he would go down and Samantabh would come up. We learn about Gupta rulers from their literature, coins, inscriptions.
And in inscriptional evidence, Prashasti is a very important inscription. What was Prashasti? Generally, They hired poets and they used to praise them. So, mainly kings used to do this for themselves.
So, they hired and they are doing it themselves. So, obviously we will not see facts, we will see praise. So, the composers and the readers used to see it as poetry artwork, not as factual information. Even our historians used to study them, they did not take them factually, but they used to... It was thought that praise has been given to it, the king himself has written it.
There is a very good example of this, Prayag Prashasti. Samudragupta had written Prayag Prashasti, who was one of the most important and powerful rulers of Gupta Ruler. Harishen, who was a poet of Samudragupta, had written it in Sanskrit language.
What was written in it? We have an excerpt in this box. You can pause it and read it. You will see how much the king is appreciated, he is said to be the most powerful, he is said to destroy all evil and then he is compared to God to provide high status. So far we have talked about the empires, kings and their kingdoms.
Now let's talk about the ordinary citizens. The biggest problem is that the ordinary people did not write accounts, so we can only know about them through very few sources. One of the sources is Anthologies Anthologies is a collection of stories For example, Jatakas, Panchatantra In which we get to see stories And in these stories, ordinary citizens are mentioned So we get to know a little about their lives Our Jatakas were written in Pali In the beginning, these stories were told in an oral manner But later they were written So one story is given here About Gandhatin and Jataka where there is a wicked king, an evil ruler and we get to know about his subjects this king hides his identity and goes in between his subjects and he meets a lot of people in this story, we get to know about all the ordinary citizens of the rural area village men, boys, even animals that wherever the king is going, people are abusing him some are saying that robbers come and rob us Tax collectors come in the daytime and they are looted So we get to know from this story that the people were often troubled by the king At the end people talk about leaving their village and going to the forest Because here we are being oppressed So from here we get to know about the relations of the people of the rural area and the rulers One way was that people used to leave the village and go to the forest The second strategy we get to see is to improve agriculture so that the oppressive demands can be met and tax can be paid.
Now we will talk about how strategies were adopted to promote agriculture and pay tax. This is an important topic and we got to see this question in previous years. The first strategy was to shift to plough agriculture.
Which was our fertile area where our alluvial soil and rains were very good. Like Ganga and Kaveri regions after 6th century BC Here plough was used The plough share of this region was iron tipped This increased the production of agriculture in alluvial soil Apart from this in Ganga valley For paddy agriculture Our transplantation method was used What is paddy? This rice crop And for that our The seeds are first broadcasted and when the saplings dry up, they are removed and placed in water-logged fields. This increases the survival rate of the saplings.
Iron plowshares were not done everywhere. The technologies were uneven. For example, in Punjab and Haryana, This was a semi-arid land where rainfall was not that good So, in these places, no such technology came till the 20th century In the hilly treks of Northeastern and Central parts of our subcontinent Here, hoe agriculture was practiced This is a tool of agriculture It is called Fawra in our region It was used to increase agricultural production Here, hoe agriculture suited more Apart from this, there was a different strategy Irrigation facility was very important in semi-arid regions. For this, wells and tanks were mainly used.
Apart from this, we also see canals in some places. Now, to make an irrigation facility, it takes a lot of money. So, the communities together made it. Many times, the powerful individuals used to get the irrigation facility made by the king. If the king was making an irrigation facility for someone, he would make sure that he notes it down in his inscription.
Now we will talk about the differences in our society. Differences on the basis of who is more rich, who is more powerful, who is weak and who is poor. Here we get to know the differences through different sources. First is our sources, which are the stories of Buddhist traditions. Through these terms, we get to know about three categories One is landless agricultural labourers Then small peasants and large landholders Here, a term is used, Gahapati Gahapati means, whoever was the head of the household In the household, there are women, children, animals, slaves All our resources Who used to control them?
Whoever was the male head For them, this term is Gahapati Also, this term was used The powerful people urban elites, the wealthy merchants, to designate them. Because the weak section, for example, the laborers, they used to come under the village head. This term is used in the Pali language text and it was used for our second category small peasants and large landholders.
Apart from this, the large landholders, the village headmen, they became very powerful in the society. The other cultivators, the poor sections, they used to control them. They used to come under their eggs.
The position of the village headman was hereditary One headman, then another, then his son, then his son, it was like this Apart from this, the early Tamil text that we got to see, our Sangam text We also got to see mentionings about these categories Remember these terms For large landowners, it is Vilalar, for ploughmen it is Ozawar, and for slaves it is Adimai So here too, there are mentionings of three categories According to their status Now the question arises, on what basis is this status defined? The question is, what is the status of the village headman? So who had the most land access, who had more resources, who had more slaves, who had the new technologies So the rich section had a lot of resources under them Now the powerful people had resources, so they used to donate and also grant people land From the beginning of the common era, we get to see such land grant inscriptions These inscriptions are seen in some stones but mostly in copper plates Now if I am donating a land, I have to give a receipt So, these types of transactions were given with inscriptions that this land is yours Mostly, we got land grants either from Brahmins or religious institutes These were often in Sanskrit But after the 7th century, we got such inscriptions That half of the part was in Sanskrit and the other half was in Tamil or Telugu or any local language Now whenever this land grant question comes up, Prabhavati Gupta is asked about it. She was the daughter of Chandrupt II and she was marrying Vakatakas, another ruling family, with their king.
This is very important because they had done a lot of land grants. Now in our Sanskrit legal text, it is said that women should not have access to resources, they should not have so much power. But she was doing land grants, so obviously she had power, she had a lot of land under her. So we assume that this is an exceptional case Chandraguptu was the daughter of Tuki, so she had power Other women may not have such access The second reason is that the rules made by Brahmins may not be followed everywhere This is another reason We get to know a lot of things from the inscriptions we get to see We get to know the relationship between cultivators, Brahmins and Kings We get to see that the The peasants used to give tribute to the king and some portion to the producers But if the king granted land, then the land was clearly mentioned in the land grant Now all the tribute you gave to us, you will have to give to this Brahmin because this land has been granted to him These are the rules that what will happen after the land grant We get to see this variety in every place In some places, a lot of powers were given to those who were granted land Some places were given less, some places were not mentioned Apart from this, we have seen variations in the size of the land being donated A lot of land is being donated somewhere, small plots are being donated somewhere We also see some questions that come to our mind Why were these land grants being done?
One reason for this is that historians say that it was a strategy to promote agriculture Kings used to grant land to those who were not doing agriculture so that cultivation could take place there Some historians believe that no, actually the king's power is decreasing and this is an indication of the weakening of that power. Because now the power of Samantabh is increasing and the king wants to make allies, that's why he is granting land so that his allies can be made. Apart from this, there is a saying that the king's power is decreasing, now he wants to at least become Superman, at least show fake power, so he is granting his land to people and trying to show fake power.
In this box, you are getting an inscription of a donation of Prabhavati Gupta. Here he is clearly mentioning that this land has been donated to these Brahmins and now all the power has come into the hands of these Brahmins. You can pause this and read it once. So, we get such inscriptions.
We get to know the relationship between cultivators and the state We get to know how when land was donated, the power would shift A new leader would come in front of the cultivators But now there is another question There were many populations which were not in the reach of the state officials So what was the population like? Did they also do land grants or did they get anything? We don't know about them For example, there were fishermen, nomadic sections, artisans We don't know anything about them transactions.
They didn't record their lives and transactions. Now let's go back to 6th century BCE and talk about some cities. Most of the cities and capitals were built in important locations.
Important locations of communication for example, our Pataliputra was built on river routes, Ujjaini on land routes, Pohar near coast on sea routes, Mathura was built on a place where There were many commercial, cultural and political activities Now let's talk about the urban population The kings and ruling elites used to live in fortified cities How do we know about the urban population? By doing excavations But what is the problem here? Like in Harappa, we could have done a good research on the places where we wanted to dig But when we talk about Rajgir and Patna, people are living here today So we can't freely do excavations here But we have seen a lot of artifacts For example, Northern Black Polished Ware These were pottery bowls and dishes They were given glossy finish, they were made for urban population Other than this, there are normal things like tools, weapons, vessels, figures, statues We have seen all these things of different materials Gold, silver, copper, bronze, ivory, shell, glass etc. terracotta, all of these were used here Now, we have seen votive inscriptions since the 2nd century BC. What were they? The donations, the gifts given to religious institutes, were mentioned in votive inscriptions.
In these, the name of the donor was written and the occupation was written many times. So, obviously, through this, we get to know about the occupations. We get to know about washing fee, fork, weaver, scribe, carpenters, potters, goldsmith, blacksmith, official language. Religious teachers, merchants, kings, why did I say language?
All these are known about occupations And not only occupations, they are also mentioned in organizations Organizations, where people used to work in groups For example, Merchants organization, Artisans organization They used to work in a group, in an organization which we used to call guild or Shreni They used to bring raw material together production and then it was marketed and sold. In the production of this place, many tools were used metal and iron tools were used here. Now let's talk about the trade of the production and the trade of the entire trade. The trade network up to 6th century BC had increased a lot.
This also raises the question that you will get to see many terms and names here you will have to remember them. So if we talk about the land trade, Central Asia and beyond were traded If we talk about sea routes To trade sea routes, ports were made in coastal areas And through them, trade was done If we talk about Arabian Sea, then East, North Africa and West Asia were traded And through Bay of Bengal, trade was done to Southeast Asia and China Now there is so much trade network So there can be an attack in between For that, different rulers were in their own territories They used to provide protection and charge a price for it as tax Apart from this, who used to go for trade? Peddlers, i.e. by foot travellers used to trade by foot And merchants used to take their goods in caravans and bullock carts and trade Apart from this, seafarers used to go for trade by sea routes It is difficult to give protection in sea routes, so they used to be attacked several times But their journey was risky but they earned a lot of profit Here we get to see the terms for rich and wealthy merchants In Tamil language, Masattu and in Prakrit languages, Sethis and Satvahars They also earned a lot of money trading Now, since trading was going on so much, what was being traded?
So, there were a lot of products that were very valuable and were being traded a lot From salt to grain, cloth, metallos, finished products, stone, timber, medicinal plants were being traded In our Roman Empire, spices were very famous especially our pepper was being traded Textile, medicinal plants were very popular in our Mediterranean region The best thing about these chapters is that The whole chapter is linked in a way. Now we talked about trade. To trade, we saw the Bata system in Harappan civilization.
Here we talked about coins. After 6th century BC, the introduction of coins was done. Punch-marked coins were used.
In silver or copper, the king or whoever was issuing it, he would punch it. And these copper and silver coins were used. Even we got to see gold coins. These coins used to help in long-distance trade.
We get to see such coins in the whole subcontinent The numismatists, who study these coins and their visual representations They find out about our communication and trade network through these coins So after studying these coins, the first thing we understood was That they were issued by kings We got to see different kings'coins But not just kings, the bankers and townspeople also used to issue them Indo-Greeks were the first rulers who started punching their images with their names in their coins Their coins helped us a lot to find out about them These rulers came to the northwestern part after the 2nd century BC Their coins are very important Apart from this, the Kushanars They started making gold coins in a lot of amounts after the 1st century BC So we also get to know that they were trading a lot Interestingly, their gold coins Roman emperors gold coins and Parthian rulers coins have similar weight So we can understand that there was some connection between them Apart from this, the coins we got are in large amounts Gold coins, silver coins This makes it clear that the trade is increasing and there are many beneficiaries Because of which so many coins are being made We got to see the coins of the Roman Empire in South India So what we understand from this is that it is not necessary that you will trade in the empire you are living in We saw this in Harappan Civilization too That trade was done in a far distance So here also we have seen coins of Roman Empire in our area So not only in political boundaries but also outside was traded The coins were not made by our urban elites The republic population of Yaudiya, Punjab and Haryana This is our tribal population They also used to make coins. They issued a lot of copper coins for themselves. So they were also interested in taking part in economic exchanges to trade. We have seen the important coins of the Gupta rulers.
Their coins are known for their purity and quality of gold. Their long-distance trade coins also helped a lot. But after the 6th century CE, the finding of so many coins we stopped getting them so after 6th century CE, what happened that we are not getting coins anymore historians give different reasons approximately 5th century CE, our western roman empire collapsed so maybe the trade was stopped the benefit of trade stopped so that's why we stopped getting coins second reason is that trade is still going on but new networks have been created Coins are being traded in new places and you are not getting coins because they are not being stored in circulation But still, when we stop getting coins after 6th century CE, we still get to see the mentioning of these coins in the inscriptions That is why it is said that trade is still going on here These types of punchmarked coins were there.
Below you can see the coins of Yodras, then you can see the gold coins of Gupta rulers So if you have any question related to trade, coins or the taper off of coins, you can write it down In the beginning of the chapter, I told you that we will see in detail how Brahmi and Kharosti were deciphered So let's talk about that Our Brahmi script is very important because our modern scripts are made from this script Whether it is Devnagari or Bengali script, it evolved from this So Brahmi script is very old and very important And we get to see many of Ashoka's inscriptions in this script After 18th century, European and Indian scholars started to study backwards Our modern script, Devanagari and Bengali script We used them and compared them with old scripts, with Brahmi scripts After this comparison and a lot of efforts, we tried to find their meaning Earlier we thought that the scripts we were getting were written in Sanskrit using Brahmi But later we found out that they were used in Prakrit languages Many epigraphists studied and after a lot of studies, finally in 1838 James Pinsip wrote this Ashokan deciphered Brahmi Here on the left you can see the comparison On one side is Devanagari and on the other side is Brahmi script Now let's talk about how Kharosti was deciphered In Kharosti script, we have seen a lot of use of North Western inscriptions The Indo-Greek rulers'coins helped in deciphering them What used to happen is that the names of these rulers were written in the coin Now the names of the same ruler It is written in Greek and Kharosti script Our European scholars could read Greek script and compare them For A letter this letter is used, for this letter this letter is used When you started comparing like this You will understand which letter is used for which pronunciation When we came to know that these are natural languages used in Kharosti inscriptions Then in It became easy to read the text and we started reading the bigger texts as well and we deciphered this script Now since we deciphered the script all the textual evidences and inscriptions have become very valuable and we get most of the information through these inscriptions Now we will talk about two of Ashoka's inscriptions First of all you can see in the right Here in the entire inscription anywhere King Ashoka's words Here their title is written Dev Naam Pia, Pia Dasi And it is said that Dev Naam Pia, Pia Dasi They are telling that how they didn't have a good system of administration They didn't have a system to see reports They came and fixed it But how did we know that he was Ashoka What we did is compared it with another inscription We saw his writing style, content and his paleography And after that comparison we came to know that These different inscriptions belong to the same time period and we are talking about the same ruler so in this inscription there is mention of Ashoka in this, his title is Devnaampiya Piyadasi so we understood that Ashoka's title was Devnaampiya Piyadasi Devnaampiya means beloved of the god and Piyadasi we have seen earlier, pleasant to behold so in this way we have to make different connections while studying we have to make many assessments we have to make different line of references to our historians our historians always have to assess that There are inscriptions, in which facts are being discussed or only their praise is being done In many of the inscriptions we get, we get to see exaggerations For example, here it is written that Ashoka said that the first arrangements were not good So we can't accept it directly, we have to refer to many different sources And we have to judge where there is exaggeration, where there is fact Where there is something that we should believe, where there is something that we should doubt Apart from this, we have another inscription, Anguish of the King You must have heard this story, Ashoka conquered Kalinga and then his mind changed. He saw a huge war, so much death and suffering, then he went towards peace, Buddhism and Dhamma. So we get to see such a big change in his mind. The same thing has been said in this inscription.
But the place where he attacked, in Orissa, Kalinga, we don't get to see any such inscription. This raises a lot of questions. Why are there no inscriptions on the site?
Was it a huge attack? Did their mind change? Were they in so much sorrow and anguish that they couldn't talk about it?
That's why we don't get to see such an inscription in Orissa. Or maybe we didn't get an inscription. They must have written it there but they couldn't survive.
There are a lot of questions that come to us. There are many more things that we have to assume in front of our historians. For example, we have seen inscriptions in rocks and in many other places. How many people would have been able to read them? Literacy was not widespread, so not everyone would have been able to read it.
Would the person who was reading it, have read it to others? Would everyone have followed the things written in it? These are all questions that we cannot easily answer. We just have to assume them and we can see them as questions.
We never get a clear answer to them. Now let's talk about some limitations. All the inscriptions we get have a lot of limitations Our epigraphy never reveals 100% of the history The first problem is that the letters were engraved very faintly That's why we are not able to see them Sometimes letters are missing Sometimes the inscriptions we get are broken, missing They are not engraved properly This is a very big problem Apart from this, sometimes we don't understand its meaning Maybe the thing written in it is the inspiration If you have a specific time period that we have never seen, we don't know its exact meaning.
We have seen in Harappan Civilization that we never knew the exact meaning of religious and special public purposes. This problem always remains in epigraphy. Although it is not in our syllabus, but if you read epigraphical journal, you will see how historians are always discussing topics.
History is divided into many parts because we never know the exact history of the world Even though we have so many inscriptions, they are not complete Actually, it is a very small percentage that we can get Most of the inscriptions and evidences must have been finished at that time They could not survive at that time There are many inscriptions that are still hidden somewhere that we have not found Or we will never find Many such problems come in front of our historians And a very fundamental problem, it is not important for us to know how their lifestyle was How ordinary citizens lived, what they did, how their relation with king was This is important for us, it was not important for the people of that time So things like tribal population was not recorded, ordinary citizens were not recording their activities What is recorded? The grand activities of the king Big events were recorded The joys and sorrows of daily life The ordinary things of daily life They were not recorded So we never get to see all this in text We get to see the stories and things of our kings and powerful groups But our historians still work hard to find different things First we were interested in knowing about the kings and powerful people Then we changed our focus We should now know about the social structure, economic structure, economic and political relations. After this, we tried to study the marginalized sections, the weaker sections. So, this way, historians go deep in their studies.
And this way, we get information about this entire chapter. We may get more information about these societies and these people in the future. With this, this chapter ends.
If you liked the video, then do like it. Bye-bye, signing off Devtan Goriya. It's done, it's done, my chapter is done.