Meera, a research student in Delhi, is studying the lives of cultivators in sixteenth-century north India. In the archives she looks for diaries or letters written by the cultivators themselves and finds none. Her supervisor hands her the Ain-i Akbari and tells her to read it with care when she uses it for village life. He also asks her to look for revenue papers kept in Gujarat, Maharashtra and Rajasthan, and for the records of a foreign trading company in eastern India.
What insight do the revenue papers and the trading company's records mainly add to Meera's study of rural life?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 2
The correct answer is Option (2) → Peasants' perception of the state and their expectations of fairness from it
Option (1) Zamindars' claims to be the providers of social harmony in the countryside — Incorrect. The idea of social harmony given by a strong ruling class belongs to the Ain's vision of the empire. These regional records show conflicts instead.
Option (2) Peasants' perception of the state and their expectations of fairness from it — Correct. The records from Gujarat, Maharashtra and Rajasthan and the East India Company note conflicts between peasants, zamindars and the state. Through these they give an insight into peasants' perception of the state and their expectations of fairness from it.
Option (3) Merchants' accounts of the prices that grain fetched in distant markets — Incorrect. These sources are valued for agrarian relations in the villages. Grain prices in distant markets are not the insight they add.
Option (4) The emperor's orders on the crops each village was to sow in a season — Incorrect. No such orders on crops are what these records give. The state's arrangements for cultivation are described in the Ain, a court chronicle.
NCERT (2026-27): “1.1 Looking for sources … |