IAS Prelims(GS) Preparation 2018
Day # 6 (March 29, 2017)
Topics of the Day - History 7th class NCERT chapter 7 to 9 key points
Chapter 7
- In Punjab, the khokhar tribe was very influential during the 13th and 14th centuries.
- In the western Himalaya lived the shepherd tribe of Gaddis.
- Chero chiefdoms emerged in Bihar and Jharkhand by the 12th century.
- Raja Man Singh, Akbar's famous general, attacked and defeated cheros in 1591.
- A clan is a group of families or households claiming descent from a common ancestor.
- The Maharashtra highlands and Karnataka were home to Kolis.
- The large tribe of Bhils spread across western and central India.
- The Banjaras were the most important trader nomads. Their caravan was called Tanda.
- Sultan Alauddin Khalji used the Banjaras to transport grain to the city markets.
- Emperor Jahangir wrote in his memoirs that the banjaras carried grain on their Bullocks.
- The GONDS:
They practice shifting cultivation.Each clan of gonds had its own Raja. In 1565, the mughal forces under Asaf Khan attacked Garha Katanga.Rani Durgawati was defeated.
- The AHOMS:
They migrated from to the Brahmaputra Valley from myanmar in 13th century.In 1662, the mughal forces under MirJumla attacked the Ahom kingdom.The ahoms were defeated.
Historical writings known as Buranjis were also written - first in the Ahom language and then in Assamese.
Chapter 8
Nayanars
Saints devoted to Shiva
There were 63 Nayanars.
The best known among them were Appar, Sambandar, Sundarar and Manikkavasagar.
There are two sets of compilations of their songs – Tevaram and Tiruvacakam.
Alvars
saints devoted to Vishnu
There were 12 Alvars.
The best known being Periyalvar, his daughter Andal, Tondaradippodi Alvar and Nammalvar.
Their songs were compiled in the Divya Prabandham.
The Nayanars and Alvars went from place to place composing exquisite poems in praise of the deities enshrined in the villages they visited, and set them to music.
Hagiography: Writing of saints’ lives.
SHANKARA:
Shankara, one of the most influential philosophers of India, was born in Kerala in the eighth century.
He was an advocate of Advaita or the doctrine of the oneness of the individual soul and the Supreme God which is the Ultimate Reality.
RAMANUJA
Ramanuja, born in Tamil Nadu in the eleventh century, was deeply influenced by the Alvars.
According to him the best means of attaining salvation was through intense devotion to Vishnu.
He propounded the doctrine of Vishishtadvaita or qualified oneness in that the soul even when united with the Supreme God remained distinct.
VIRASHAIVA MOVEMENT:
Virashaiva movement initiated by Basavanna and his companions like Allama Prabhu and Akkamahadevi.
This movement began in Karnataka in the mid-twelfth century.
The Virashaivas argued strongly for the equality of all human beings and against Brahmanical ideas about caste and the treatment of women.
They were also against all forms of ritual and idol worship.
Maharashtra saw a great number of saint-poets, whose songs in simple Marathi continue to inspire people. The most important among them were Janeshwar,
Namdev, Eknath and Tukaram as well as women like Sakkubai and the family of Chokhamela, who belonged to the “untouchable” Mahar caste.
This regional tradition of bhakti focused on the Vitthala (a form of Vishnu) temple in Pandharpur, as well as on the notion of a personal god residing in the hearts of all people.
Nathpanthis, Siddhacharas and Yogis:
They advocated renunciation of the world. To them the path to salvation lay in meditation on the formless Ultimate Reality and the realisation of oneness with it. To achieve this they advocated
intense training of the mind and body through practices like yogasanas, breathing exercises and meditation.
SUFIS:
Sufis were Muslim mystics.
They rejected outward religiosity and emphasised love and devotion to God and compassion
towards all fellow human beings.
Among the great Sufis of Central Asia were Ghazzali, Rumi and Sadi.
They developed elaborate methods of training using zikr (chanting of a name or sacred formula), contemplation, sama (singing), raqs (dancing), discussion of parables, breath control, etc. under
the guidance of a master or pir. Thus emerged the silsilas, a genealogy of Sufi teachers, each following a slightly different method (tariqa) of instruction and ritual practice.
The Chishti silsila was among the most influential orders. It had a long line of teachers like Khwaja Muinuddin Chishti of Ajmer, Qutbuddin Bakhtiar Kaki of Delhi,
Baba Farid of Punjab, Khwaja Nizamuddin Auliya of Delhi and Bandanawaz Gisudaraz of Gulbarga.
The Sufi masters held their assemblies in their khanqahs or hospices.
Hospice House of rest for travellers, especially one kept by a religious order.
TULSIDAS:
Tulsidas conceived of God in the form of Rama.
Tulsidas’s composition, the Ramcharitmanas, written in Awadhi (a language used in eastern Uttar Pradesh), is important both as an expression of his devotion devotion and as a literary work.
SURDAS:
Surdas was an ardent devotee of Krishna.
His compositions, compiled in the Sursagara, Surasaravali and Sahitya Lahari, express his devotion.
SHANKARADEVA
Shankaradeva of Assam (late fifteenth century) who emphasised devotion to Vishnu,
and composed poems and plays in Assamese.
He began the practice of setting up namghars or houses of recitation and prayer, a practice that continues to date.
MIRABAI:
Mirabai was a Rajput princess married into the royal family of Mewar in the sixteenth century.
Mirabai became a disciple of Ravidas, a saint from a caste considered “untouchable”. She was devoted to Krishna and composed innumerable bhajans expressing her intense devotion.
Her songs also openly challenged the norms of the “upper” castes and became popular with the masses in Rajasthan and Gujarat.
CHAITANYADEVA:
Chaitanyadeva, a sixteenth-century bhakti saint from Bengal, preached selfless devotion to Krishna- Radha.
KABIR:
Kabir, who probably lived in the fifteenth-sixteenth centuries, was one of the most influential saints.
He was brought up in a family of Muslim julahas or weavers settled in or near the city of Benares (Varanasi).
Some of his poems and bhajan songs were later collected and preserved in the Guru
Granth Sahib, Panch Vani and Bijak.
GURU NANAK
Guru Nanak (1469-1539) Born at Talwandi (Nankana Sahib in Pakistan), he travelled widely before establishing a centre at Kartarpur (Dera Baba Nanak on the river Ravi). A regular worship that consisted of the singing of his own hymns was established there for his followers.
Irrespective of their former creed, caste or gender, his followers ate together in the common kitchen (langar).
The sacred space thus created by Guru Nanak was known as dharmsal. It is now known as Gurdwara.
Before his death in 1539, Guru Nanak appointed one of his followers as his successor. His name was Lehna but he came to be known as Guru Angad, signifying that he was a part of Guru Nanak himself.
Guru Angad compiled the compositions of Guru Nanak, to which he added his own in a new script known as Gurmukhi. The three successors of Guru Angad also wrote under the name
of “Nanak” and all of their compositions were compiled by Guru Arjan in 1604. To this compilation were added the writings of other figures like Shaikh Farid, Sant Kabir, Bhagat Namdev and Guru Tegh Bahadur. In 1706 this compilation was authenticated by his son and
successor, Guru Gobind Singh. It is now known as Guru Granth Sahib, the holy scripture of the Sikhs.
The Mughal emperor Jahangir looked upon them as a potential threat and he ordered the execution of Guru Arjan in 1606.
The Sikh movement began to get politicized in the seventeenth century, a development which culminated in the institution of the Khalsa by Guru Gobind Singh in 1699.
The community of the Sikhs, called the Khalsa Panth, became a political entity.
MARTIN LUTHER:
The sixteenth century was a time of religious ferment in Europe as well. One of the most important leaders of the changes that took place within Christianity was Martin Luther (1483- 1546).
Luther felt that several practices in the Roman Catholic Church went against the teachings of the Bible.
He encouraged the use of the language of ordinary people rather than Latin, and translated the Bible into German.
Luther was strongly opposed to the practice of “indulgences” or making donations to the Church so as to gain forgiveness from sins.
His writings were widely disseminated with the growing use of the printing press.
Many Protestant Christian sects trace their origins to the teachings of Luther.
Chapter 9
The Chera Kingdom and the development of Malayalam:
The Chera kingdom of Mahodayapuram was established in the ninth century in the southwestern part of the peninsula, part of present-day Kerala. It is likely that Malayalam was spoken in this area.
The rulers introduced the Malayalam language and script in their inscriptions.
The first literary works in Malayalam, dated to about the twelfth century, are directly indebted to Sanskrit.
Interestingly enough, a fourteenth-century text, the Lilatilakam, dealing with grammar and poetics, was composed in Manipravalam – literally, “diamonds and corals” referring to the two languages, Sanskrit and the regional language.
The Jagannatha Cult:
The cult of Jagannatha (literally, lord of the world, a name for Vishnu) at Puri, Orissa.
To date, the local tribal people make the wooden image of the deity, which suggests that the deity was originally a local god, who was later identified with Vishnu.
In the twelfth century, one of the most important rulers of the Ganga dynasty, Anantavarman, decided to erect a temple for Purushottama Jagannatha at Puri. Subsequently, in 1230, king Anangabhima III dedicated his kingdom to the deity and proclaimed himself as the “deputy” of the god.
All those who conquered Orissa, such as the Mughals, the Marathas and the English East India Company, attempted to gain control over the temple. They felt that this would make their rule acceptable to the local people.
The Story of Kathak:
The term kathak is derived from katha, a word used in Sanskrit and other languages for story.
The kathaks were originally a caste of story-tellers in temples of north India, who embellished their performances with gestures and songs.
Kathak began evolving into a distinct mode of dance in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries with the spread of the bhakti movement.
The legends of Radha-Krishna were enacted in folk plays called rasa lila, which combined folk dance with the basic gestures of the kathak story-tellers.
Under the mughal emperors and their nobles, Kathak was performed in the court, where it acquired its present features and developed into a form of dance with a distinctive style.
Subsequently, it developed in two traditions or gharanas: one in the courts of Rajasthan (Jaipur) and the other in Lucknow.
Under the patronage of Wajid Ali Shah, the last Nawab of Awadh, it grew into a major art form.
The Tradition of Miniatures:
Miniatures (as their very name suggests) are small-sized paintings, generally done in water colour on cloth or paper.
The earliest miniatures were on palm leaves or wood.
Some of the most beautiful of these, found in western India, were used to illustrate Jaina texts.
The Mughal emperors Akbar, Jahangir and Shah Jahan patronised highly skilled painters who primarily illustrated manuscripts containing historical accounts and poetry. These were generally
painted in brilliant colours and portrayed court scenes, scenes of battle or hunting, and other aspects of social life. They were often exchanged as gifts and were viewed only by an exclusive few – the emperor and his close associates.
Another region that attracted miniature paintings was the Himalayan foothills around the modern-day state of Himachal Pradesh.
By the late seventeenth century this region had developed a bold and intense style of miniature painting called Basohli.
The most popular text to be painted here was Bhanudatta’s Rasamanjari.
Nadir Shah’s invasion and the conquest of Delhi in 1739 resulted in the migration of Mughal
artists to the hills to escape the uncertainties of the plains.
By the mideighteenth century the Kangra artists developed a style which breathed a new spirit into miniature painting. The source of inspiration was the
Vaishnavite traditions. Soft colours including cool blues and greens, and a lyrical treatment of themes distinguished Kangra painting.
Pirs:
This term included saints or Sufis and other religious personalities, daring colonisers and deified soldiers, various Hindu and Buddhist deities and even animistic spirits. The cult of pirs became very
popular and their shrines can be found everywhere in Bengal.