Society
Kinship and caste, village life, women's voices and the reform movements.
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c. 1000 BCE onwards🏺 Ancient
Gotra rules
Each gotra was named after a Vedic seer; women were expected to take their husband's gotra, and members of the same gotra could not marry.
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c. 500 BCE onwards🏺 Ancient
The Mahabharata
A colossal epic of over 100,000 verses, composed over about 1,000 years.
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c. 500 BCE – 200 CE🏺 Ancient
Dharmasutras and the Manusmriti
From c. 500 BCE social norms were compiled in the Dharmasutras and Dharmashastras; the most important, the Manusmriti, was compiled between c. 200 BCE and 200 CE. Real social relations were probably more complicated.
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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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Asoka's reign🏺 Ancient
Officers of dhamma
Asoka appointed special officers, the dhamma mahamatta, to spread the message of dhamma.
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c. first century CE🏺 Ancient
Tamil Sangam poems
Anthologies such as the Puranaruru describe chiefs and their bards, and illuminate social and economic life.
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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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Alvar tradition🏰 Medieval
The ‘Tamil Veda’ and Andal
The Alvars' anthology, the Nalayira Divyaprabandham, was described as the Tamil Veda; the songs of Andal, a woman Alvar, are still sung.
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Twelfth century🏰 Medieval
Basavanna and the Lingayats
Basavanna's followers, the Virashaivas or Lingayats, remain an important community in the region; his vachanas question empty ritual.
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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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1829🏭 Modern
Sati banned
After Rammohun Roy's campaign, which cited ancient texts against the practice, sati was banned in 1829.
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By 1832🏭 Modern
Damin-i-Koh: the hoe and the plough
The British demarcated Damin-i-Koh as the land of the Santhals, who cleared forests for plough agriculture; the Paharias, who used the hoe for shifting cultivation, retreated deeper into the Rajmahal hills.
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1835 and 1854🏭 Modern
English Education Act and Wood's Despatch
The 1835 Act made English the medium of higher education; Wood's Despatch of 1854 set out an educational policy stressing European learning.
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Nineteenth century🏭 Modern
Jhum cultivation
Many tribal communities practised jhum (shifting) cultivation on small forest patches, cutting treetops and burning vegetation to clear the land.
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1856🏭 Modern
Widow remarriage made legal
Vidyasagar's proposal was adopted, and a law of 1856 permitted widow remarriage.
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Late 19th century🏭 Modern
Schools for girls
In the later nineteenth century the Arya Samaj in Punjab and Jyotirao Phule in Maharashtra set up schools for girls.
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1930s🏭 Modern
Hindustani for the nation?
By the 1930s the Congress had accepted Hindustani — a blend of Hindi and Urdu — as the national language, and Gandhi wanted a language common people could understand.
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.