Assam HSLC Class 10 Elective History key terms

Chronicles written in Assamese that record the history of the Ahom kingdom, including dynastic events, wars, and administrative matters, often compiled by royal scribes and preserved across generations.

A Tai-speaking state established in the Brahmaputra valley in the thirteenth century that ruled much of Assam for about six hundred years, known for its Paik labour system and resistance to Mughal expansion.

A corvée labour arrangement of the Ahom state in which adult male subjects were organised into units called gots and rotated between military service, public works, and cultivation for the king.

The 1826 agreement ending the First Anglo-Burmese War, under which Burma renounced claims over Assam and the British gained control of the region, paving the way for formal annexation.

The process by which the British East India Company took over Assam, completed in 1826 after the Anglo-Burmese War, ending Ahom sovereignty and beginning colonial administration in the region.

A Bronze Age urban culture of the north-western Indian subcontinent, roughly 2600 to 1900 BCE, known for planned cities, standardised weights, drainage systems, and undeciphered seals.

A major Indus Valley city in present-day Punjab, Pakistan, excavated in the 1920s, whose granaries, wells, and street layout helped establish the existence of a distinct urban civilisation.

The era in which the Vedas were composed, roughly 1500 to 500 BCE, marked by pastoral society, the emergence of varna divisions, and later settled kingdoms in the Ganga plain.

A fourfold social classification of ancient India comprising Brahmana, Kshatriya, Vaishya, and Shudra, originally an ideal order that gradually hardened into hereditary social hierarchy.

One of the sixteen large territorial states that emerged in the Ganga valley by the sixth century BCE, including Magadha, Kosala, and Vatsa, competing for dominance through warfare and alliances.

The first large empire of the subcontinent, founded around 321 BCE by Chandragupta Maurya, whose administration is described in the Arthashastra and whose reach extended under Ashoka.

A Sanskrit treatise on statecraft attributed to Kautilya, discussing taxation, diplomacy, espionage, and royal duty, and serving as a key textual source for Mauryan administration.

Inscriptions of Emperor Ashoka carved on pillars and rocks, promoting dhamma, moral conduct, and tolerance, and providing some of the earliest deciphered evidence of Indian writing.

A dynasty ruling much of northern India from the fourth to sixth centuries CE, associated with flourishing Sanskrit literature, temple architecture, coinage, and mathematics, often labelled a classical age.

A succession of Turkic and Afghan dynasties ruling from Delhi between 1206 and 1526, including the Slave, Khalji, Tughlaq, Sayyid, and Lodi houses, which developed new administrative institutions.

A revenue assignment in the Delhi Sultanate by which officials held rights to collect taxes from a territory in return for maintaining troops and service to the state, without owning the land.

A powerful south Indian state founded in the fourteenth century with its capital at Hampi, known for temple architecture, overseas trade, and rivalry with the Deccan sultanates.

A dynasty founded by Babur in 1526 that ruled most of the subcontinent at its height, notable for centralised revenue administration, mansabdari ranks, and monumental architecture such as the Taj Mahal.

A Mughal ranking system assigning officers a numerical rank determining their salary, military obligation, and status, linking imperial service to the maintenance of cavalry contingents.

A court chronicle commissioned by Emperor Akbar and written by Abul Fazl, combining narrative history with the Ain-i-Akbari, which details Mughal administration, revenue, and statistics.

A devotional current emphasising personal love for a chosen deity and often criticising ritual and caste, expressed by poet-saints in regional languages and shaping popular religion across India.

Islamic mystical traditions organised around lodges and lineages, emphasising inner devotion, music, and the guidance of a pir, which spread widely in the subcontinent and interacted with local devotional culture.

The 1757 clash in Bengal in which East India Company forces under Robert Clive defeated Nawab Siraj-ud-Daulah, giving the Company control of Bengal's revenues and marking a step towards territorial rule.

The 1764 victory of the East India Company over the combined forces of the Mughal emperor, Awadh, and Bengal, confirmed by the Treaty of Allahabad, which consolidated British political power in northern India.

A policy applied by Lord Dalhousie under which states without a natural heir were annexed by the British rather than allowing adoption, used to absorb Satara, Jhansi, and other territories.

A widespread uprising against British rule beginning with mutiny among sepoys at Meerut and spreading across northern and central India, prompting the transfer of power from Company to Crown.

A political organisation founded in 1885 that became the principal vehicle of the nationalist movement, evolving from constitutional petitioning to mass agitation for self-rule and independence.

A mass campaign launched by Gandhi in 1920 urging Indians to withdraw cooperation from British institutions through boycotts of schools, courts, and imported cloth, suspended after the Chauri Chaura violence.

A campaign beginning with Gandhi's Salt March of 1930, in which Indians deliberately broke colonial laws to assert the right to self-rule, drawing mass participation and severe repression.

A 1942 demand for the immediate withdrawal of British rule, launched by the Congress during the Second World War, which was suppressed swiftly but signalled the end of colonial authority.

The 1947 division of British India into India and Pakistan amid communal violence and mass migration, accompanied by the integration of princely states into the two new dominions.

A European movement from roughly the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries reviving classical learning, emphasising humanism, observation, and individual achievement, and transforming art, science, and literature.

A sixteenth-century movement challenging papal authority and doctrine, initiated by figures such as Martin Luther, which produced Protestant churches and reshaped European politics and literacy.

A mechanical device for reproducing texts using movable type, developed in Europe in the fifteenth century, which lowered the cost of books and accelerated the spread of Renaissance and Reformation ideas.

A political and social upheaval beginning in 1789 that overthrew the monarchy and privileges of the old order in France, spreading ideals of liberty, equality, and popular sovereignty across Europe.

The transition from handicraft to machine-based production beginning in eighteenth-century Britain, which transformed work, cities, transport, and global trade, and intensified imperial competition.

A political idea holding that a people sharing language, history, or culture should form a sovereign state, which inspired nineteenth-century European unifications and anti-colonial movements worldwide.

The process by which colonies in Asia and Africa achieved independence after the Second World War, often through mass movements, negotiations, or armed struggle, reshaping the global order.

Sustained geopolitical rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union and their allies after 1945, expressed through alliances, arms races, proxy conflicts, and ideological competition rather than direct war.

Material produced at or near the time of the event studied, such as inscriptions, coins, letters, or contemporary chronicles, valued for direct evidence but requiring critical reading of bias.

The study of inscriptions on stone, metal, or other durable surfaces, used to reconstruct dates, dynasties, grants, and administrative practices, especially where other records are scarce.

The study of coins, including their weight, metal, inscriptions, and imagery, which helps historians date rulers, trace trade routes, and assess economic and political change.

Physical remains such as buildings, pottery, tools, burials, and settlement layers recovered through excavation, providing evidence about daily life and society where written records are absent.

Historical knowledge transmitted by word of mouth across generations through songs, genealogies, and legends, valuable for social history but needing comparison with written and material evidence.

The study of how history has been written, including changing methods, sources, and interpretations, and how political and social contexts shape the questions historians ask about the past.