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History Optional PYQ Master Pack · Model answer

Large number of land grants in hitherto non-arable tracts invariably meant expansion of agriculture in early medieval India. How did the management of hydraulic resources (different types of irrigation works) facilitate expansion of agriculture in this period?

  • UPSC 2021
  • Regional States during Gupta Era

A land grant charter recording a donation of forest or waste to a Brahmana or a temple did not, by itself, put a single acre under the plough — it only conferred a legal and fiscal claim over a tract that still had to be physically converted into arable land. The premise embedded in this…

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What the full answer covers

  • The Grant as Legal Instrument, Not a Technical One
  • Types of Irrigation Works Attested in the Period
  • Local Institutions That Managed These Works
  • Royal Patronage and the Direct Royal Role
  • The Historiographical Debate: Fragmentation or Integration

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