History Optional PYQ Master Pack · Model answer
Evaluate the socio-economic conditions from the Gupta Period to 1200 C.E. as gleaned from the various types of grants or danashasana.
- UPSC 2011
- Early Medieval India, 750-1200
The danashasana — copper-plate charters recording gifts of land or revenue — form the single richest documentary window onto Indian society between the Gupta period and 1200 CE, precisely because they were not composed as historical narrative but as working legal instruments: they name donees, demarcate boundaries, list exemptions, and specify obligations, and each of…
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What the full answer covers
- The Chronological and Regional Spread of the Grant Economy
- Brahmadeya and Agrahara Grants: Agrarian Expansion and Shifting Land-Rights
- Devadana (Temple) Grants: New Institutional Hierarchies and Tenancy
- Secular Grants to Officials: A Demonetized Administrative Economy
- Forced Labour, Taxation, and the Declining Status of the Peasantry
- Rural Tension and Resistance as Evidence of Strain
- …and 3 more sections, with a conclusion
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