📖 Glossary
Key terms of Indian history
42 terms that come up again and again in textbooks and exams — each explained from its NCERT chapter, with a link to read it there.
- Alvars and Nayanars
- Leaders of some of the earliest bhakti movements (c. sixth century) in Tamil Nadu — devotees of Vishnu and of Shiva — who sang hymns in Tamil.
- Amara-nayaka
- Vijayanagara's military commanders who governed territories and collected taxes; the system probably borrowed from the Delhi Sultanate's iqta system.
- Chaitya
- A hall for worship; rock-cut chaitya halls with an apsidal, vaulted roof are found at Ajanta, Pitalkhora and Bhaja.
- Damin-i-Koh
- Land in the Rajmahal hills demarcated by 1832 for the Santhals, who were to settle there as plough cultivators.
- Dargah
- The tomb-shrine of a Sufi shaikh (a Persian word meaning ‘court’), which became a centre of devotion and pilgrimage.
- Dhamma mahamatta
- Special officers appointed by Asoka to spread the message of dhamma.
- Dharmasutras and Dharmashastras
- Sanskrit texts, from c. 500 BCE, setting out social norms; the most important is the Manusmriti.
- Epigraphy
- The study of inscriptions.
- Gotra
- A Brahmanical way of classifying people (from c. 1000 BCE), each gotra named after a Vedic seer; members of the same gotra could not marry.
- Instrument of Accession
- The document by which a princely state's ruler agreed to become part of the Union of India.
- Jagir
- An assignment of revenue — the way most Mughal mansabdars were paid.
- Jangal
- Dense forest — in Mughal times huge swathes of it, or of scrubland (kharbandi), covered eastern, central and peninsular India.
- Jati
- Another term for social categories: while there were four varnas, the number of jatis was not fixed and kept growing.
- Jhum cultivation
- Shifting cultivation on small forest patches, cleared by cutting treetops and burning the vegetation.
- Khanqah
- A Sufi hospice, controlled by a teaching master (shaikh, pir or murshid), around which Sufi communities were organised.
- Linguistic states
- States drawn to reflect the boundaries of languages, following the States Reorganisation Commission — the basis of the States Reorganisation Act of 1956.
- Lost-wax casting (cire-perdu)
- A way of casting metal images, known since the Indus Valley — the ‘Dancing Girl’ of Mohenjodaro was made this way.
- Mahajanapadas
- The sixteen early states of the sixth century BCE, an age of early states, cities, iron and the first coins.
- Mahalwari
- A revenue system (from 1822) in which revenue was fixed village by village (mahal) and collected by the village headman.
- Mansabdari
- The Mughal military-cum-bureaucratic system of ranks (mansabs) that ran civil and military affairs.
- Nagara, Dravida and Vesara
- The two broad orders of Hindu temples — Nagara in the north, Dravida in the south — and Vesara, a style mixing the two.
- Numismatics
- The study of coins — their scripts and images, the metal they are made of, and where they are found.
- Objectives Resolution
- The resolution Nehru moved in the Constituent Assembly on 13 December 1946, setting out the vision of the Constitution.
- Periplus
- A Greek word meaning ‘sailing around’ — the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, by an anonymous Greek sailor, describes trade on India's coasts.
- Permanent Settlement
- From 1793, the East India Company fixed the revenue each Bengal zamindar had to pay; estates of those who failed to pay were auctioned.
- Peshkash
- A form of tribute collected by the Mughal state.
- Pietra dura
- Inlay of coloured stones used to decorate the walls of Indo-Islamic buildings, along with mosaic, calligraphy and jalis.
- Prashasti
- A composition in praise of a king or patron, written by a poet — like Harishena's Prayaga Prashasti for Samudragupta.
- Purna Swaraj
- Complete independence — the Congress's declared goal; ‘Independence Day’ was first observed on 26 January 1930.
- Raiyat
- The term Mughal-era Indo-Persian sources most often used for a peasant.
- Rihla
- Ibn Battuta's book of travels, written in Arabic, rich in detail on fourteenth-century life in the subcontinent.
- Ryotwari
- A revenue system, as in the Bombay Deccan, in which revenue was settled directly with the ryot (cultivator).
- Sangam literature
- Anthologies of early Tamil poems (c. first century CE) such as the Puranaruru, describing chiefs, bards and village life.
- Sangha
- The Buddhist monastic order; its rules are in the Vinaya Pitaka.
- Satyagraha
- The technique of non-violent protest that Mahatma Gandhi first forged in South Africa.
- Shreni
- A guild of craft producers and merchants, which probably procured raw materials, regulated production and sold the finished goods.
- Subsidiary Alliance
- An alliance under which a ruler disbanded his own army, let British troops be stationed in his state and acted on the British Resident's advice — imposed on Awadh in 1801.
- Tipitaka
- The ‘three baskets’ of Buddhist texts, first passed on orally and later written down.
- Union, State and Concurrent lists
- The three lists dividing subjects between the Centre and the states in the Constitution; more items were placed under the Union than in other federations.
- Vachana
- A devotional composition of the Virashaiva (Lingayat) tradition, like those of Basavanna questioning empty ritual.
- Varna
- The four categories of society named in the Dharmasutras and Dharmashastras, each with prescribed occupations.
- Zamindar
- A rural magnate: the Ain-i Akbari records how the Mughal state regulated its relationship with the zamindars.
No term matches.
How we check: each explanation is written from a passage in the linked NCERT chapter, and our build fails unless key phrases from that passage are found in the chapter’s own text.