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History Optional PYQ Master Pack · Model answer

“The ideological challenge posed by Jainism and Buddhism was deeply rooted in the socio-economic transformations brought about by the expansion of agrarian settlements in eastern India.” Explain.

  • UPSC 2025
  • Period of Mahajanapadas

The sixth century B.C. debate between the Brahmanical ritual order and the heterodox sramana movements was never a purely intellectual quarrel over the existence of the soul or the efficacy of sacrifice. It was, at its root, the ideological expression of a real material transformation — the colonisation of the forested middle Gangetic plains by…

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What the full answer covers

  • Iron, Forest Clearance and the Making of an Agrarian East
  • The Plough-Cattle Conflict: Ahimsa as Economic Doctrine
  • Surplus, Urbanisation and a Restive Vaishya-Gahapati Class
  • An Under-Vedicised East: Fertile Ground for Kshatriya-Led Heterodoxy

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