NCERT Solutions Class 12 History Chapter 5 Through the Eyes of Travellers

1. Write a note  on the  Kitab-ui-Hind.

Answer:

•  AI-Biruni's Kitab-u/-Hind was written in Arabic; it is simple  and clear.

• It is divided  into  80 chapters on subjects such as religion and philosophy, festivals, astronomy, alchemy, manners  and customs, social life, weights and measures, iconography, laws and metrology.

• In each chapter, AI-Biruni  follows  a structure; he begins  with  a question, makes  a description based on Sanskritic traditions, and ends with  a conclusion by making  comparison with  other  cultures.

• According  to scholars, this  distinctive method in the text  reflects  geometric structure with  its precision and predictability, owed much  to his mathematical orientation.

• He was familiar with  Sanskrit, Pali and Prakrit  texts and their  translations into Arabic.

2. Compare and contrast the  perspectives from which Ibn Battuta and  Bernier wrote their accounts of their travels in India.

 Answer:

 • Travel  accounts  of Ibn  Battuta and Bernier  were written from  different perspectives.

 • Ibn  Battuta mentioned everything that  impressed and excited  him  because of its novelty.

 • He travelled extensively, visited  many  sacred shrines and recorded  languages, shared  ideas and information.

 • His account  includes  stories  about  ordinary men and women, and kings.

 • He highlighted many  unfamiliar things  in order  to ensure  that  reader  was impressed by his account.

 •  Unlike Ibn  Battuta's approach, Franc;ois Bernier belonged  to a different intellectual tradition.

 •  He highlighted situations which  he considered socially  depressing.

 •  He expected  policy-makers and intelligentsia to adopt his ideas, and to consider  his views  for making "right" decisions.

3. Discuss  the  picture of urban centres that emerges from Bernier's account.

 Answer:

 • During  the seventeenth century, about  15 per cent of the  population lived  in towns.

 • Bernier  described  Mughal  cities as "camp  towns", because, according to him, they  depended  for their survival on the  imperial camp.

 • He believed  that  cities emerged when the imperial court  moved  in and rapidly declined  when it moved out.

 • He attributed the prosperity of these towns  not to social and economic  activities in them, but to their reliance  on imperial patronage.

 • He also failed  to record  other  kinds  of towns  such as manufacturing towns, trading towns, port-towns, sacred centres, pilgrimage towns, etc.

 •  Merchant  communities and professional classes prospered in these towns.

 • There were other  urban  groups  - professional classes such as physicians (hakim or vaid), teachers  (pundit or mulla), lawyers  (wakil), painters, architects, musicians and calligraphers.

4. Analyse the  evidence for slavery provided by Ibn Battuta.

Answer:

• Ibn  Battuta's account  mentions that  slaves were openly  sold in markets, like any other  commodity, and were regularly exchanged as gifts.

• When he reached  Sind, he purchased  horses, camels and slaves as gifts  for Sultan  Muhammad bin Tughlaq.

• In Multan, he presented  its governor with  a slave and horse together with  dry fruits.

• Some female  slaves  who were in the service  of the Sultan  were also experts  in music  and dance; Ibn Battuta enjoyed their  performance at the wedding  of the Sultan's  sister.

• Sultan  appointed female  slaves to spy on his nobles.

• Slaves were generally used for domestic  labour.

•  However, they  were also used to carry  women  and men on palanquins or do/a.

•  Price of slaves  for domestic  labour  was very  low.

Most families owned at least one or two of them.

5. What were the  elements of the  practice of sati that drew the  attention of Bernier?

 Answer:

 • Bernier  records  that  at Lahore, he witnessed  the practice  of child sati in which a twelve-year-old widow  was forced  to enter  her husband's funeral pyre.

 • He states  that  she was unwilling to die and wept bitterly, while  being pushed  by four Brahmanas and an old woman  towards the funeral  spot.

 • Bernier  also notes that  while  some women  seemed to embrace  death  cheerfully, others  were forced  to die.

Write a short  essay  (about 250-300 words) on the following:

6. Discuss  AI-Biruni's understanding of the  caste system.

 Answer:

 In his analysis  of the caste system, AI-Biruni looked for parallels in other  societies.

 • He noted  a similar  four social categories in ancient Persia - (i)  knights and princes, (ii)  monks, fire­ priests and lawyers, (iii)  physicians, astronomers and other  scientists  and, (iv)  peasants  and artisans.

 • Though  he argued  that  social divisions were not unique  to India, he rejected  the notion  of pollution sanctioned  by Brahmanas.

 • He described  the  notion  of social pollution in the caste system  to be against  the laws of nature.

7. Do you think Ibn Battuta's account is useful in arriving at an understanding of life  in contemporary urban centres? Give reasons for your answer.

 Answer:

 • Ibn  Battuta's account  is useful in arriving at an understanding of life in contemporary urban  centres.

 • He mentions in his account  that  cities  offered  many opportunities for those  who had resources  and skills.

 • Most of cities  were densely  populated and prosperous.

 • They had crowded  streets and bright and colourful markets and a wide variety of goods were sold.

 • Ibn  Battuta described  Delhi  and Daulatabad (in Maharashtra) as big cities with  a great  population.

 • Bazaars were  places of economic  transactions as well as a hub of social and cultural activities.

 • Historians have used Ibn  Battuta's account  to suggest  that  towns  derived  a significant portion of their  wealth  through the appropriation of surplus from  villages.

8. Discuss  the  extent to which Bernier's account enables historians to reconstruct contemporary rural society.

Answer:

• Bernier  thought that  in the  Mughal  Empire, the emperor owned all the  land and distributed it among his nobles.

• Subjects  in the empire had to depend  on the ruling elites  for survival, and it had disastrous consequences  for the economy  and society.

•  According  to him, nobody  owned  private property, and the 'crown  ownership of land' had created  a class of landless poor and a small minority of a very rich ruling  class, without any middle  section.

•  However, historians do not take this  description as right  perspective to reconstruct contemporary rural society.

• Even Abu'l Fazl, a chronicler during  Akbar's  reign, describes  the  land revenue  collected  by the emperor as "remunerations of sovereignty" for the  protection of subjects, and not as land revenue  for the 'crown ownership of land'.

• Historians aIso cia im that  the contempara ry ruraI society  was characterised by considerable social and economic  differentiation.

• There were big zamindars with  superior rights in land, the "untouchable" landless, and in between, there  were big peasant  and small peasant  groups.

9. Read  this  excerpt from Bernier:

Numerous are the instances  of handsome  pieces of workmanship made by persons  destitute of tools, and who can searcely be said to have received instruction from  a master. Sometimes they  imitate so perfectly articles  of European  manufacture that  the difference between  the original and copy can hardly  be discerned.Among  other  things, the Indians make excellent muskets, and fowling  pieces, and such beautiful gold ornaments that  it may be doubted  if the exquisite workmanship of those  articles  can be exceeded  by any European goldsmith. Ihave often  admired the beauty, softness, and delicacy  of their  paintings.