Meera, a research student in Delhi, is studying the lives of cultivators in the Mughal empire. In the archives she looks for diaries or letters written by the cultivators themselves and finds none. Her supervisor gives her a famous chronicle by a historian at the emperor's court. It describes in great detail how the state arranged for cultivation, collected revenue and dealt with the rural magnates. He tells her to read it with care. He also asks her to look for other records kept in regions far from the capital, some of them by a foreign trading company.
Chronicles and documents of the kind Meera is given are the major source for the agrarian history of which period?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 2
The correct answer is Option (2) → The sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries
Peasants did not write about themselves, so for the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries our major source is the chronicles and documents of the Mughal court.
NCERT (2026-27): “1.1 Looking for sources |