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History Optional PYQ Master Pack · Model answer

“The Sixth century B.C. was a period of religious and economic unrest in India.” Comment.

  • UPSC 2003
  • Period of Mahajanapadas

The characterisation is accurate in substance but needs careful qualification in scope. Around 600 BC, the middle Gangetic plains witnessed a rare convergence of two transformations usually studied apart — a religious ferment that threw up as many as sixty-two rival schools of thought, and an economic transformation, the so-called Second Urbanisation, that produced the…

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What the full answer covers

  • The Economic Unrest: Iron, Surplus, and the Second Urbanisation
  • The Religious Unrest: The Sramana Challenge to Brahmanical Orthodoxy
  • Why the Two "Unrests" Were One Transition
  • The Limits of the "Unrest" Framing

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