History Test - 8

Several tribal assemblies, such as sabha, samiti vidatha, and gana mentioned in the Rig Veda exercised deliberative, military and religious functions. But from the political point of view important were the sabha and Samiti. We have also some traces of the election of tribal chiefs by the tribal assembly called the samiti.

Digambara "sky-clad "is one of the two main sects of Jainism, the other being Svetambara. Generally Digambara monks wear no clothes whereas Svetam Bara "white-clad "monks usually wear white clothes.

Varahamihira (400 AD) was Indian astronomer mathematician and philosopher. He was one of the nine gems in the court of Gupta ruler Chandragupta Vikramaditya.

The seals of the Indus Valley Civilization have beern of the major sources for information about the period. Apart from giving plethora of information about the social and religious life of the period, they give insight into the economic activities. The economy of the Indus civilization was based on a highly organized agriculture, supplemented by an active commerce, probably connected to that of the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia. Trade amongst the civilizations is suggested by the finding of hundreds of small seals, supposedly produced by the Indus peoples, at the excavation sites of ancient Mesopotamian cities that were existent around the same time. Some of the seals mention the rulers of different countries.

Located on the banks of river Vegavathy, Kanchipuram served as the capital city of the Pallava Kingdom during the 4th to 9th century A.D.

The Kushan king Kanishka, who reigned from at least 127 AD, moved the capital from Pushkalavati (now called Charsadda in the Peshawar valley) to Purushapura (Peshawar) in the 2nd century AD. Following this move by the Kushans, Peshawar became agreat center of Buddhist learning even though Zoro astrianism, Hindusim and animism seem to have survived in the majority population.

Gandhara art is the style of Buddhist visual art that developed in what is now northwestern Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan between the 1^st century B.C and the 7^th century A.D. The style, of Greco Roman origin, seems to have flourished largely during the Kushan dynasty and was contemporaneous with an important but dissimilar school of Kushan art at Mathu ra.

The people of the Indus Civilization achieved great accuracy in measuring length, mass, and time. They were among the first to develop a system of uniform weights and measures. Their smallest division, which is marked on an ivory scale found in Lothal, was approximately 1.704 mm, the smallest division ever recorded on a scale of the Bronze Age.

Tripitaka is a traditional term used by various Buddhist sects to describe their various canons of scriptures. As the name suggests, a Tripitaka traditionally contains three "baskets "of teachings: a Sutra Pitaka, a Vinaya Pitaka and an Abhidharma Pitaka. Tripitaka is the three main categories of texts that make up the Buddhist canon.

Nalanda was an ancient center of higher learning in Bihar, India. It was a Buddhist center of learning from the fifth or sixth century CE to 1 197 CE. Nalanda flourished between the reign of the Chakraditya (whose identity is uncertain and who might have been either Kumara Gupta I or Kumara Gupta II) and 1197 CE, supported by patronage from the Hindu Gupta rulers as well as Buddhist emperors like Harsha and later emperors from the Pala Empire.