Match the following : Column I Column II a. Narmada Valley i. Early republic…
2019
Match the following :
Column I | Column II |
|---|---|
a. Narmada Valley | i. Early republic |
b. Vajji | ii. Hunting and gathering |
c. Garo Hills | iii. Cities about 2500 years ago |
d. Ganga Valley | iv. The first cities |
e. Indus and its tributaries | v. Early agriculture |
Answer: C. a-ii, b-i, c-v, d-iii, e-iv — A region's association with a period of early Indian history depends on the type of evidence found there: stone tools and fossils point to a pre-agricultural…
- A.
a-i, b-ii, c-iii, d-iv, e-v
- B.
a-v, b-i, c-ii, d-iv, e-iii
- C.
a-ii, b-i, c-v, d-iii, e-iv
- D.
a-v, b-iv, c-iii, d-ii, e-i
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: C
A region's association with a period of early Indian history depends on the type of evidence found there: stone tools and fossils point to a pre-agricultural hunting-gathering phase, polished stone tools point to an early farming phase, excavated planned settlements point to city-building, and textual references to assemblies or councils point to an organised political community such as a republic. Matching a region to its period means identifying which type of evidence is actually associated with it.
Applying this to the five regions named here:
Region | Associated with |
|---|---|
Narmada Valley | Early hunting-and-gathering communities — fossil and Palaeolithic stone-tool finds |
Vajji | An early political republic (a gana-sangha), attested in textual/political history |
Garo Hills | Early agriculture — Neolithic polished stone tools recovered here |
Ganga Valley | Cities that arose about 2,500 years ago, part of the "second urbanisation" of the early historic period |
Indus and its tributaries | The first cities of the subcontinent — the Bronze-Age Harappan settlements |
So the complete matching is a-ii, b-i, c-v, d-iii, e-iv.
Positional matching (pairing each item with the description at the same list position, such as a-i, b-ii, c-iii) is not evidence-based, and does not correspond to the actual historical record here.
Hunting-gathering and early agriculture are both pre-urban, subsistence-based phases identified from stone-tool typology; they must not be confused with each other, or with later political-institutional evidence (an early republic) or archaeological-urban evidence (planned cities).
The Indus system's first cities belong to the Bronze-Age Harappan urban phase, which began about 4,700 years ago, while the Ganga Valley's cities belong to a much later second urbanisation about 2,500 years ago — roughly two thousand years afterward; the two urban phases must not be interchanged.
A political community such as Vajji (attested through texts describing councils and assemblies) is a different kind of evidence from an excavated city or a stone tool, and should not be paired with either.