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History Optional PYQ Master Pack · Model answer

Assess the status of women in India from 4th century BC to AD 6th century.

  • UPSC 2005
  • Guptas, Vakatakas and Vardhanas

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Across the roughly thousand years spanned by this question — from the late Mahajanapada-Mauryan age to the close of the Gupta period — the position of women cannot be read as a single, smooth story of either decline or improvement. The evidence instead points to a widening gap between prescriptive texts, which grew steadily more…

You are reading the opening of the model answer. The full answer is part of the History Optional PYQ Master Pack.

What the full answer covers

  • The Mauryan-Mahajanapada baseline (4th century BC onward)
  • The Smriti turn: tightening orthodoxy (c. 2nd century BC – 2nd century AD)
  • The Gupta period (4th–6th century AD): codification hardens, elite exceptions persist
  • Elite counter-evidence within the same Gupta age
  • Resolving the tension
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