Economy & trade
Weights and guilds, sea trade, silver, revenue systems and cash crops.
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Harappan civilization🏺 Ancient
Weights of chert
Exchanges were regulated by a precise system of weights, usually cubes of a stone called chert, with no markings.
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Harappan civilization🏺 Ancient
Canals at Shortughai
Many Harappan sites lie in semi-arid lands where irrigation was probably needed; traces of canals survive at Shortughai in Afghanistan, but not in Punjab or Sind.
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c. 600–500 BCE🏺 Ancient
Punch-marked coins
The earliest coins were named for the way symbols were punched or stamped onto the metal surface.
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Early historic period🏺 Ancient
Guilds (shrenis)
Guilds of craft producers and merchants probably procured raw materials, regulated production and marketed finished goods.
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Early centuries CE🏺 Ancient
Roman coins in south India
Hoards of Roman coins found in south India show that trade networks reached far beyond political boundaries.
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c. first century CE🏺 Ancient
The Periplus and the Malabar coast
An anonymous Greek sailor's account describes large foreign ships trading at the market towns of the Malabar coast.
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Sangam age🏺 Ancient
Landowners, ploughmen and slaves
Sangam texts name different groups in the villages — large landowners (vellalar), ploughmen (uzhavar) and slaves (adimai).
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Fourteenth century🏰 Medieval
The Sultanate's postal system
Ibn Battuta was amazed that spies' reports reached the Sultan far faster than the fifty-day journey from Sind to Delhi, and that merchants used the post to send news, credit and goods.
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Akbar's reign🏰 Medieval
Akbar's silver rupya
NCERT shows a silver rupya issued by Akbar; expanding trade brought huge amounts of silver bullion into Asia, and a large part of it went to India.
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Mughal period🏰 Medieval
Raiyat, kisan and zamindar
Mughal-era Indo-Persian sources most often called a peasant raiyat; the Ain-i Akbari records how the state organised cultivation and collected revenue.
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1793🏭 Modern
The Permanent Settlement
The Company fixed the revenue each Bengal zamindar had to pay; the estates of those who failed to pay were auctioned.
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From the late 18th century🏭 Modern
Cash crops for the Company
The British pushed cultivators to grow indigo and opium, and later jute in Bengal, tea in Assam, sugarcane in the United Provinces, wheat in Punjab and cotton in Maharashtra and Punjab.
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1822🏭 Modern
The mahalwari settlement
Devised by Holt Mackenzie, it fixed revenue village by village (mahal), revised periodically and collected by the village headman.
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Nineteenth century🏭 Modern
The ryotwari settlement
In the Bombay Deccan, unlike Bengal, revenue was settled directly with the ryot (cultivator).
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1859🏭 Modern
The Limitation Law
Loan bonds between moneylenders and ryots were made valid for only three years, to check the build-up of interest — though moneylenders found ways round it.
How we check: each entry is written from a passage in the NCERT chapter it links to, and our build fails unless key phrases from that passage are found in the chapter’s own text. Dates appear only where the chapter gives them.