New Beginnings: Cities and States

About this chapter

New Beginnings: Cities and States is the fourth chapter of Class 7 Exploring Society: India and Beyond Part 1, sitting in the History theme. It tells the story of India's Second Urbanisation in the 1st millennium BCE — the long phase after the Harappan cities disintegrated when, for nearly a thousand years, urban life almost vanished from India. Then, as clans settled on territories called janapadas (Sanskrit: where the jana have set foot), and as trade networks expanded, sixteen large states known as mahajanapadas emerged by the 8th–7th centuries BCE, stretching from Gandhara in the northwest to Anga in the east and Ashmaka in central India. The chapter introduces the four most powerful mahajanapadas — Magadha, Kosala, Vatsa and Avanti — their fortified capitals with moats, the sabha and samiti assemblies, the gana–sangha 'early republics' of Vajji and Malla, the rise of iron metallurgy and punch-marked silver coins, the varna–jati system, and the Uttarapatha and Dakshinapatha trade routes. CTET Paper 2 Social Studies tests this chapter on dates, capital–state matches, governance terms and cause-effect links. The four tests — Practice 15, Quiz 15, Hard 15, Mastery 30 — cover all of these at CTET depth.