Crafts, guilds and trade (200 BCE to 300 CE)
Whole chapter · 16–24 focused hours
Post-Mauryan India and the Sangam age
A first-attempt learner with school-level reading and little retained ancient/medieval history or art history. Later chapters assume the earlier chronological context; History optional and practical arts training are outside scope.
Includes
- Selected explanatory readings, images/maps and source extracts
- Brief chronology or comparison notes
- Available mapped practice, mistake review and one initial recall review
Separate time needed
- Subsequent spaced revision and full mock examinations
- Reading every reference book and optional exercise in full
- Exclude literary authorship catalogues and sculpture-school identification; assign those once in Culture.
Editorial planning estimate; not measured learner time
- Guilds (shreni): fixed wages, rules, standards and prices; judicial powers over members; banking role; not state-registered
- Indo-Roman trade: Periplus, monsoon route, Arikamedu, Roman coin hoards, spices, textiles, Bharuch and Sopara
- Silk Route linkages, Taxila, Mathura, Ujjain; peak of ancient urbanisation
- Dynastic coinage: Indo-Greek portraits, Kushana gold, Satavahana lead; monetisation
Where to study this topic
- R.S. Sharma, India's Ancient Past (publisher page with table of contents) ↗
ch. 23
- Themes in Indian History Part I, Class XII, Theme 2 Kings, Farmers and Towns: Early States and Economies ↗
Theme 2 Kings, Farmers and Towns, pp. 1-25 (printed 28-52)
- Tamil Nadu State Board Class XI History Volume I (lessons 1 to 11), full text ↗
Lesson 6 Polity and Society in Post-Mauryan Period, pp. 95-109 (printed 91-105)
Whole chapter reading
- Tamil Nadu State Board Class XI History Volume I (lessons 1 to 11), full text ↗
Lessons 5–6, early Tamil society and post-Mauryan polities
- Themes in Indian History Part I, Class XII, Theme 3 Kinship, Caste and Class: Early Societies ↗
Kinship, caste and social differentiation; interpret texts as evidence rather than literal descriptions of all society.
- R.S. Sharma, India's Ancient Past (publisher page with table of contents) ↗
Chapters 20–23, regional states, southern society and commerce; use only sections filling gaps in the assigned school-text readings.
Book required