MHI 006 Solved Guess Paper 2026 for Evolution of Social Structures in India through the Ages, Master of Arts (History) (MAH)

Harappan urbanism and social structure

Question: Evaluate the urban and social structure of the Harappan civilisation.

Meaning: the Harappan city

The Harappan civilisation represents the earliest urbanism in the subcontinent. A city is distinguished not by more efficient food production but by a concentration of population engaged in non-subsistence activities, where common residence becomes more significant than kinship.

"A city is a node where population chooses to concentrate… not in order to make food production more efficient, but because of an engagement in non-subsistence activities such as crafts or trade, administration or ritual services."

Urban structure

1. Layout of Mohenjodaro: The city was divided into a higher, smaller western Citadel and a lower, larger Lower Town to its east, spatially separated and possibly individually walled.
2. Special structures: Large non-residential structures such as the storage facility and the Great Bath cluster on the Citadel, suggesting an attempt to segregate its functions and inhabitants.
3. Craft specialisation: Evidence of metallurgy, shell-working, bead-making and the production of seals and weights points to complex skills not practised in every household.

State and social structure

1. Control of labour: Elaborate drainage, the firing of millions of bricks and the maintenance of storage facilities imply supervised mobilisation of labour rather than only tax or rent.
2. The state debate: J. Jacobson and S. Ratnagar argue for a single state on the basis of common material culture, a uniform script and weights; S.P. Gupta, B.B. Lal and J.M. Kenoyer prefer several city-states, while W.F. Fairservis and J. Shaffer visualise a chiefdom.
3. Extra-kin relations: In a state society, solidarity rested on interdependence and common residence, worked out through gift-giving, marriage alliances and patron-client ties, though kin groupings did continue.
4. Heterogeneity: Variation in house forms and sizes and in the materials of artefacts indicates social heterogeneity, yet burials show little evidence of sharp social hierarchies.

Conclusion: Harappan urbanism was closely tied to state formation, resting on craft specialisation, the mobilisation of labour and extra-kin bonds. Its society was heterogeneous but retained vestiges of tribal and chiefdom forms, lacking a bureaucracy, coinage or standing army.

Role of varna in Vedic times

Question: Discuss the role of varna played during the Vedic times. Was it the sole identity available to the people of this period?

Meaning of varna

Varna literally means colour, but in the Vedic context it designates social categories. These labels could be assigned by priests and could also be accepted, rejected or modified by those to whom they were applied, so varna was a claim about status rather than an unchallenged fact.

"The brahmana emerged from the mouth of this man, the ksatriya from his arms, the vaisya from his thighs, and the sudra from his feet."

Development of varna

1. Arya and dasa: The Rgveda first distinguishes two varnas, the arya and the dasa; the difference was not racial but one of language, culture and religious practice.
2. Jana and vis: Groups were identified as jana (people) and vis (from which vaisya derives), equivalent to tribes or clans functioning as a militia and participating in assemblies.
3. The Purusasukta: This hymn in the tenth mandala, one of the latest sections, presents the fourfold order as of divine origin with a clear hierarchy, though varna was otherwise rarely mentioned in the Rgveda.
4. Later Vedic crystallisation: Varna identities hardened around three concerns: access to the ritual domain, to political power and to resources.

The four varnas

Brahmanas claimed exclusive control of ritual on the basis of birth and knowledge of sruti; ksatriyas were to hold political power and obtain resources through warfare, taxes and fines; vaisyas were the backbone, engaged in agriculture, pastoralism and trade; while sudras were assigned only the role of serving the three higher varnas, with the beginnings of notions of untouchability.

Was varna the sole identity?

Varna was not the sole identity. Not everyone accepted it as a category, the texts are brahmanical and one-sided, and whenever the fourfold order appears in Buddhist and Jaina traditions the ksatriyas are placed first. Ruling lineages like the Nandas and Mauryas were not even recognised as ksatriyas.

Conclusion: Varna was a powerful ordering principle of Vedic society, but it was contested, evolving and one identity among several. Kinship, clan (jana/vis) and regional ties coexisted with it, so it was never the sole identity of the people.

Character of Indian feudalism

Question: Critically examine the character of Indian feudalism and the various debates pertaining to early medieval society.

Meaning: feudalism and early medieval India

Feudalism remains the most controversial construct in the debate on the periodisation of Indian history. It seeks to explain the nature of society and the process of social formation in the early medieval phase that emerged on the ruins of the early historic order.

"Decentralization and hierarchy characterize the new society structure."

Origins of the debate

Daniel Thorner lamented in 1956 that there was no single article on the place of feudalism in India; that very year Kosambi published his articles and Introduction, and R.S. Sharma soon developed the model, culminating in Indian Feudalism (1965).

Key features of the feudal model

1. Semi-autonomous rulers: A wide range of intermediaries such as the samantas, mahasamantas and mahamandalesvara emerged, reflecting decentralisation of authority.
2. Land-grant economy: The rise of a landed intermediary gentry is the hallmark of the feudal formation, causally linked to the practice of land grants.
3. Urban decay: The collapse of the centralised Mauryan structure led to ruralisation, self-sufficient villages and a decline of the monetised urban economy.
4. Depressed peasantry: The peasantry was reduced to a condition close to serfdom, marked by immobility, forced labour and exorbitant revenue.

Criticisms and alternatives

1. Criticisms: The model is faulted as Euro-centric, for presupposing a strong unitary empire before the 4th century A.D., and for a pan-Indian generalisation based largely on epigraphy alone.
2. Segmentary state: Burton Stein offered the alternative of a segmentary state and society integrated through ritual sovereignty.
3. Integrative model: B.D. Chattopadhyaya explained the transition through the expansion of society, the peasantisation of tribes ('tribe to caste') and cult appropriation, rejecting a single pan-Indian explanation.

Conclusion: Indian feudalism remains the most cogently worked-out paradigm of early medieval social formation, yet its Euro-centric assumptions invited the segmentary-state and integrative alternatives, making early medieval India a subject of continuing, layered debate.

The village community in the medieval period

Question: What is a village community? Examine the roles and functions of the village community in the medieval period.

Meaning: the village community

The idea of the Indian village as a self-contained, unchanging unit dominated colonial writing on rural society. It was seen as the smallest unit of the state where government revenue was generated and collected, and as a community that survived the rise and fall of kingdoms.

"Real India was in the villages, and the village communities were little Republics, democratic with headman and his officers, unaffected by the changes in the outside world."

The colonial view

1. The 'little republic': Colonel Mark Wilks described every village, with its twelve ayangadees and the Potail at its head, as a little republic, and 'India is a mass of republics'.
2. Company administrators: Charles Metcalfe in the north, Thomas Munro in Madras and Mountstuart Elphinstone in Bombay shaped survey and settlement policy around this image of the self-sufficient village.
3. Core assumptions: The village was held to be an isolated, self-sufficient and unchanging unit, a traditional, organic and stable community of subsisting peasants indifferent to outside change.
4. Teutonic analogy: The British likened Indian villages to the Teutonic villages of medieval Europe, arguing that only colonial rule could place a village-trapped India on the path of progress.

Karl Marx and the Asiatic Mode

Influenced by the administrators and by James Mill, Marx in Das Kapital echoed the view of a self-sufficient, unchanging village. Within the framework of the Asiatic Mode of Production he saw unstratified, communally landowning societies with no division of labour except an unalterable, caste-based one, each caste an endogamous occupational unit, making the village self-contained and organic.

Functions of the village community

Functionally the village community collected and remitted revenue, managed its own internal affairs through the headman and his officers, organised production through caste-based occupational specialisation, and maintained continuity of custom and settlement across political change.

Conclusion: The village community was long portrayed as an isolated, self-sufficient little republic, and this image shaped both Marx's Asiatic Mode and colonial revenue policy. Later scholarship, however, shows the village was neither wholly isolated nor unchanging but embedded in a wider social and economic milieu.

Bhakti of the Nayanars and Alvars

Question: Discuss the socio-religious movements based on Bhakti in South India, with reference to the Nayanar and Alvar hymns.

Meaning: bhakti as personal devotion

Bhakti in South India can be traced to the religious trends of the fourth to sixth centuries recorded in the Sangam texts, developing into a powerful devotional movement expressed for the first time in Tamil.

"The notion of a personal devotion, i.e. bhakti to the transcendental god appeared in the poems dedicated to Murukan and Mayon in these texts."

Sangam roots and the tinai framework

The Sangam concept of the sacred was tied to the tinai, five eco-zones each with its own populace and deity: Mullai (Mayon), Kurinji (Murukan), Marutam (Ventan), Neytal (Varunan) and Palai (Korravai). Worship was largely unstructured, and the term koyil at first signified the house of a chief rather than a temple.

The emergence of bhakti

1. Puranic influence: The late Sangam texts, namely Cilappadikaram, Kalittokai, Paripatal and Tirumurukarruppatai, show the influence of the northern epics; Murukan was fused with Skanda and Mayon identified with Vishnu.
2. Tamil devotion: Devotion was expressed in Tamil, providing for the first time an alternative to Sanskrit as a religious language.
3. From impersonal to personal: In these texts bhakti was still objective and impersonal, not yet the personalised experience of the later movement.
4. The temple: The idea of bhakti became the basis for introducing the temple for the first time as a focus of worship.

The Nayanars and Alvars

The popular devotional movement matured in the hymns of the Nayanars, devoted to Shiva, and the Alvars, devoted to Vishnu. Their emotionally charged worship cut across social groups, and from about AD 1000 to 1300 the tradition was consolidated through the role of the acharyas, who welded diverse communities into broader religious identities.

Conclusion: The bhakti of the Nayanars and Alvars transformed South Indian religion from localised tinai worship into a temple-centred devotional movement in Tamil. By making devotion personal and accessible, it integrated varied social groups and shaped enduring community identities.