CUET PG History Rajputs, Cholas, Indian Feudalism and Early Medieval Trade Handwritten Notes

CUET PG History Rajputs, Cholas and Indian Feudalism Handwritten Notes, free to download as a 20-page PDF. HUQP09 asks 75 questions at four marks each, and Unit 2 as a whole takes roughly two days to learn, so split it between polity and historiography.

The notes are scans of a real notebook: short lines, boxed rules, and a margin note wherever something is easy to get wrong.

Where This Sits in HUQP09

Unit 2 runs from 750 to 1206 AD and overlaps the tail of Unit 1. It is listed separately because the questions it carries are different: less dynastic sequence, more debate about what the sources mean.

What the Notes Cover

• The Rajput clans by region, and the three theories of their origin
• Rajput polity: clan landholding, the samanta, the fort and the war code
• Khajuraho, Dilwara and the sources, from Kalhana to Chand Bardai
• The Cholas from Vijayalaya to Rajendra I, including the Srivijaya expedition
• The administrative ladder from mandalam down to the ur and the sabha
• Uttaramerur, the kudavolai draw, and what the qualifications actually allowed
• The feudalism debate: Sharma, Mukhia, Stein and Chattopadhyaya
• Trade, ports, temple towns, and the merchant guilds

How to Approach the Topic

The Chola village assembly is the most examined thing in the unit and the most commonly misdescribed. Members were chosen by drawing palm-leaf tickets from a pot, not elected, and a candidate had to own taxed land, own a house and know the Vedas.

That makes it an autonomous local body with a narrow franchise, which is not the same thing as an early democracy.

The feudalism debate is named in the syllabus, so it is worth holding as four positions with four names attached. R S Sharma argued that land grants, decaying towns and vanishing coinage amount to Indian feudalism, and Harbans Mukhia replied that Indian agriculture rested on free peasants rather than serfs.

Burton Stein proposed the segmentary state instead, and B D Chattopadhyaya read the period as state formation rather than decay.

Trade is the evidence that keeps the debate open. Sharma's model expects commerce to have collapsed, and in the south it plainly did not: the Ayyavole 500 operated overseas, Chola embassies reached the Song court, and the port towns grew. Knowing that tension is more useful than knowing any one guild's name.

Common Mistakes

• Calling the Chola sabha democratic, when land, a house and Vedic learning were required
• Saying its members were elected. Kudavolai was selection by lot
• Treating the ur and the sabha as the same body
• Crediting Khajuraho to the Cholas. The Chandellas built it
• Confusing Mahmud of Ghazni, who raided, with Muhammad Ghori, who conquered
• Reversing Tarain: 1191 was the Rajput victory, 1192 the defeat
• Attributing the segmentary state to Sharma rather than to Burton Stein

Video Revision

Source: Sleepy Classes IAS

How to Use These Notes

Pages 11 and 12 hold the feudalism debate and the two alternatives to it, with each model against the historian who argued it. Page 8 is Uttaramerur in detail.

Page 20 is the recall grid, and page 17 lists the errors above with the correction beside each.

The previous set closes Unit 1 with the Guptas, the Vakatakas and Harsha.