NCERT Solutions Class 9 Social Science Chapter 1 Understanding Social Science

F R E E S T U D Y M AT E R I A L F O R E V E R Y S T U D E N T

CLASS 9 · SOCIAL SCIENCE

NCERT Solutions

Chapter 1: Understanding Social
Science

NCERT Textbook — Understanding Society: India And Beyond

BOOK PAGES SECTIONS QUESTIONS MEDIUM

1 – 12 6 18 English

Solutions, notes, sample papers & more at 19 pages

Class 9 Social Science Chapter 1 Understanding Social Science AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

CLASS 9 · SOCIAL SCIENCE · UNDERSTANDING SOCIETY: INDIA AND BEYOND

NCERT Solutions — Chapter 1: Understanding Social
Science
Complete NCERT Solutions for Class 9 Social Science Chapter 1 Understanding Social Science from
Understanding Society: India and Beyond, Grade 9 Part 1. This is the introductory chapter, so it prints no Big
Questions box and no end-of-chapter exercise — every question it does ask is answered here: the seven
questions in the running text on page 2, the LET'S ANALYSE field task, the LET'S EXPLORE School Bhuvan
mapping activity, and the in-text questions on pages 5, 10 and 11.

TEXTBOOK BOOK PAGES

Understanding Society: India and Beyond (Class 1 – 12
9)

SECTIONS QUESTIONS

6 18

MEDIUM

English

In-text Questions — Page 2
Social Science in Everyday Life

Q1 Why do some people live in crowded cities while others live in scattered villages?

Because where people settle depends on what the land offers and where the work is — and
neither is spread evenly across the country.

The land itself (Geography). Level, fertile, well-watered plains can be farmed almost
anywhere on them. Farming families therefore spread out and live close to their own fields,
which produces a scatter of small villages. Hills, deserts and dense forests support far fewer
people, so settlements there are smaller and further apart still.
Where the work is (Economics). Factories, ports, wholesale markets, offices, hospitals and
colleges cannot be spread thinly — they work only when many people, suppliers and
customers sit close together. Jobs in industry, trade and services therefore concentrate in a
few places, and those places become crowded.
Decisions already made (History and Political Science). A city usually stands where
something once made that exact spot valuable — a river crossing, a fort, a temple town, a
railway junction, a harbour. Roads, water supply, schools and administration were then built
there, which pulled in still more people. Growth feeds on itself.

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Class 9 Social Science Chapter 1 Understanding Social Science AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Why it happens: A crowded city and a scattered village are not two accidents. They
are two outcomes of the same set of causes — soil, water, transport, jobs and
choices made long ago. This is exactly the chapter's point: society "does not function
by chance. It is shaped by history, geography, institutions, resources, and human
choices."

Q2 Why do different communities speak different languages and follow different
traditions?

Because communities have long and largely separate histories, and language and custom are
learnt from the generation before rather than invented afresh.

Separation over time. Groups settled in different regions long ago. Distance, hills, rivers
and forests limited daily contact, and speech that is not in constant contact drifts apart.
Given enough centuries, related speech becomes separate languages.
Contact and mixing. Migration, trade routes, pilgrimage and rule by different dynasties
brought new words, foods, crafts and practices to some regions and not to others.
Transmission. The chapter notes that our lives are shaped by "the traditions and ideas
passed down through generations". Festivals, dress, cuisine, songs and ways of worship are
learnt at home and in the neighbourhood, so they persist even when other things change.
The environment. The Pañchamahābhūtas idea on page 3 makes precisely this point — the
environment influences "settlement patterns, occupations, architecture, food habits, and
health practices". A fishing coast, a rice delta and a dry plateau will not develop the same
festivals or the same houses.

Did you know? The chapter gives the other half of the answer too. The idea of
vasudhaiva kuṭumbakam — "the world is one family" — and the observation on page
11 that "Indian culture binds this diversity together through an underlying unity"
remind us that difference and belonging exist side by side, not in opposition.

Q3 Why do some regions depend on farming, while others focus on industry or trade?

Because a region tends to do what it can do better and more cheaply than its neighbours, and
that depends on its physical endowment, its location and its history.

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Class 9 Social Science Chapter 1 Understanding Social Science AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Physical endowment. Deep soil, a dependable water supply, level ground and a long warm
growing season make farming rewarding. A region without these — rocky, dry, steeply
sloping — cannot live off crops alone and must earn its living some other way.
Raw materials and energy. Industry grows where the materials it eats are near at hand or
cheap to bring in — minerals, cotton, cane, timber — together with power, water and
transport.
Location and access. Trade concentrates where routes meet: a harbour, a river crossing, a
highway or rail junction, a border town. Goods must be able to arrive and leave cheaply.
Skills, capital and policy. Industry also needs trained workers, banks willing to lend, and
roads, ports and power built by public authorities. Once a region has these, more firms
come, and the advantage deepens.

Why it happens: No single discipline answers this on its own. Geography explains
the soil, water and site; Economics explains cost, market and specialisation; History
explains why a particular town got the first railway or the first mill. That is the
chapter's central claim — society has to be examined "from different perspectives".

Q4 How do governments make decisions that affect millions of people?

Through institutions and procedures laid down in the Constitution, not by any one person's
wish. Political Science is the study of exactly this — of "how and why power is distributed,
decisions are made, and policies are implemented".

1. A problem is recognised — from data, from reports, from public demand or from an
election promise.
2. Elected representatives and ministers take it up. They are accountable to the voters who
elected them, which is why public opinion matters between elections as well as at them.
3. Departments and officials examine it — costs, legal powers, who gains, who loses,
whether it can actually be delivered.
4. A law or policy is framed and approved, and money for it is allotted in the budget.
5. It is implemented and reviewed through the administrative machinery, and can be
challenged, amended or reversed.

Decisions are also taken at more than one level. The Union, the States and local bodies each
have their own sphere. The chapter's own example is the Panchayati Raj system, which
"embodies grassroots democracy by giving citizens a voice in local development planning".

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Class 9 Social Science Chapter 1 Understanding Social Science
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Class 9 Social Science Chapter 1 Understanding Social Science AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Q6 Why does agriculture flourish in some regions but not in others?

Because a crop needs the right physical conditions and a working chain from field to market.
Take away either and farming struggles.

Soil. Deep, fertile soil holds nutrients and moisture; thin or salty soil does not.
Water. Dependable water matters more than plentiful water. A region with moderate rain
but assured irrigation can out-produce a region with heavy but erratic rain.
Temperature and growing season. Each crop has a temperature range and a length of
season it needs; where the warm season is short, fewer crops can be raised in a year.
Slope. Level land can be ploughed, irrigated and harvested by machine; steep land loses its
topsoil to erosion.
Inputs and markets. Good seed, credit, storage, a road to the mandi and a price worth the
effort. A harvest that cannot be stored or sold is not a livelihood.

Tip: When you compare two districts, do not stop at rainfall. Ask about assured
irrigation, soil depth, road access and prices as well. The same crop can fail in one
district and pay well in the next for reasons that have nothing to do with the
weather.

Q7 How does climate change influence our lives?

By making the conditions that everyday life is built around less dependable. The chapter lists
climate change on page 11 among the complex issues Social Science will help societies address,
alongside sustainable development, social harmony and the equitable use of resources.

Farming and food. When rain arrives late, stops early or falls in fewer, heavier bursts,
sowing and harvesting dates that worked for generations stop working. Yields swing, and so
do farm incomes and food prices.
Water. Rivers, wells and reservoirs depend on rainfall and snowmelt. Less reliable supply
means shortages in the dry months and disputes over sharing.
Health and work. Longer, hotter spells are hardest on people who work outdoors, on the
elderly and on the very young, and they change the range of some diseases.
Coasts and settlements. Stronger storms and rising seas threaten low-lying coastal land,
homes and livelihoods such as fishing.
Money and movement. Relief and rebuilding cost public money that would otherwise have
gone to schools, roads or hospitals; and where a livelihood fails repeatedly, people migrate.

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Class 9 Social Science Chapter 1 Understanding Social Science AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Why it happens: Climate is measured by natural science, but its effects run through
social arrangements — what people grow, what they own, where they live, and what
help they can call on. That is why the chapter treats it as a Social Science question
and not only a Science one: two villages under the same rainfall can suffer very
differently.

LET'S ANALYSE — Page 2
Social Science in Everyday Life

LET'S ANALYSE

Q1 Observe your surroundings and identify a change that has taken place in your
locality over the past five years. It could be related to transport, housing,
education, technology, or the environment.

This is a field task, so the answer must be your own locality. Here is how to choose a change
worth studying, what a good choice looks like, and a model you can adapt.
Method — how to choose:

1. Walk the same route you take every day and note what is not the way you remember it — a
new road or bus route, a shop that closed, a pond filled in, a school building added, a mobile
tower, piped water, street lights.
2. Pick one change, not five. A narrow question can actually be answered; a broad one cannot.
3. Check that you can find evidence for it. If nobody remembers the earlier situation and no
photograph, record or newspaper cutting survives, choose a different change.
4. Fix the change in time. "Sometime recently" is not a finding; "the road was tarred in 2023" is.

What a good answer must contain: the change named exactly; the place named; the period
stated; and at least two independent sources of evidence — for example an elder's account and
a record or a photograph.

Sample answer: "Over the past five years the biggest change in our locality is that
the unpaved lane connecting our colony to the main road has been tarred and street
lights have been installed along it. The work was completed in 2023. I know this from
three sources: my grandmother, who has lived here for forty years; a photograph on
my father's phone dated June 2021 showing the lane still unpaved; and the notice
board at the panchayat office, which lists the road work under that year's plan."

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Class 9 Social Science Chapter 1 Understanding Social Science AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Q2 What was the situation earlier?

Describe the earlier state as precisely as you would describe the present one — and say where
each detail comes from. This is where a report becomes Social Science rather than opinion.
Method — where the evidence comes from:

People. Interview two or three long-time residents separately — an elder, a shopkeeper, a
teacher, an anganwadi or ASHA worker. Ask about the same details each time.
Pictures. Old family photographs, phone galleries with dates, school function albums.
Records. Panchayat or municipal notice boards and minutes, school registers, shop account
books, ration or electricity bills, old newspapers.
The place itself. Traces of the earlier state survive on the ground — an old well, a filled-in
tank, the stump of a felled tree, the older half of a building.

Why it matters: Memory is a source, not a fact. Two people who lived through the
same years will remember different things, and both may be honest. The chapter's
own description of the method is exactly this — social scientists "conduct interviews
and surveys, examine documents, and compare different times and places", and by
gathering information from multiple sources build explanations that are supported
by evidence. So write "three residents said…" rather than "it was…", and check each
claim against a second source.

Sample answer: "Before 2023 the lane was a dirt track about three metres wide. All
three residents I interviewed agreed that it turned to slush during the monsoon and
that autos refused to enter the colony in July and August. The 2021 photograph
confirms the unpaved surface. There were no street lights: my grandmother said
people carried torches after dark, and there are no old poles anywhere along the
lane."

Q3 What has changed?

State the difference between then and now in countable, checkable terms. A comparison table is
the clearest way to set it out.
What a good answer must contain: the same set of features described for both dates, so that
the two columns can genuinely be compared; and a date attached to the change.

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Class 9 Social Science Chapter 1 Understanding Social Science AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

FEATURE EARLIER (UP TO 2022) NOW (2025)

Road surface Unpaved dirt track, about 3 m wide Tarred road, about 4 m wide

Monsoon access Slushy; autos would not enter Usable through the year

Lighting None Street lights along the lane

Shops on the lane 2 5

Time to the bus stop About 15 minutes on foot About 8 minutes on foot

Tip: Count something. "The lane looks better" is an impression. "Two shops became
five, and the walk to the bus stop fell from about fifteen minutes to about eight" is a
finding another student could go out and check — and being checkable is what
makes it evidence.

Q4 What might have caused this change?

Notice the wording of the question — "might have". Here you move from what you observed to
what you conclude, and the two must never be mixed up.
Method: list every cause that could plausibly explain the change, then test each one against
evidence and keep the ones that survive.

A decision. A government scheme, a panchayat or municipal resolution, a budget allotment.
Look for a notice, a minute, a signboard naming the scheme.
A demand. A residents' petition, repeated complaints, an election promise. Ask who first
raised it.
A slower background cause. More families moving in, more two-wheelers, a new school or
factory nearby, rising incomes.
A trigger. An accident, a flood, an epidemic, a visit by an official.

From what you see to what you may claim

Observe, ask Compare Explain Revise
interviews, photos, then with now, the cause you can if better evidence
records — the sources source with source actually support turns up

The first two boxes give you sources. Only the third is an interpretation — and the fourth keeps it honest.

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Class 9 Social Science Chapter 1 Understanding Social Science
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The chapter's own method, in four steps: observe and ask, compare across time and place, explain
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Class 9 Social Science Chapter 1 Understanding Social Science AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

GROUP EFFECT GAIN OR
COST

Schoolchildren Reach the bus stop in about 8 minutes instead of 15; fewer Gain
days missed in the monsoon

Women and elderly Street lights make it possible to go out after dark; safer Gain
residents footing in the rain

Shopkeepers Two shops became five; deliveries by tempo now possible Gain

Households on the lane More vehicles, faster traffic, more noise and dust Cost

Vegetable sellers who used Lost the space they sat on when the road was widened Cost
the verge

Why it matters: The chapter says Social Science helps us understand how systems
"affect different groups of people". Reporting only the gains would not be a milder
answer — it would be an inaccurate one, because it leaves out the people whose
situation got worse.

Q6 Prepare a short report and present it in class.

Build the report on the four questions you have just answered, and keep evidence and
conclusion visibly apart.
Structure — about one to two pages:

1. Title and place. The change, the locality, the period studied. Example: "Tarring of the colony
lane, Ward 7, 2022–2025".
2. How I found out. Whom you interviewed and when, which records you saw, which
photographs you used. Number your sources so you can refer to them later.
3. The earlier situation. Described feature by feature, each with its source.
4. What has changed. The before-and-after table.
5. Likely causes. Each cause with the evidence for it, and a clear note where the evidence is
thin.
6. Effects on different groups. Gains and costs, group by group.
7. What I could not establish. One honest paragraph. This strengthens a report; it does not
weaken it.

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Class 9 Social Science Chapter 1 Understanding Social Science AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

For the presentation: open with the one-sentence finding, show the before-and-after table or
the two photographs, give the strongest piece of evidence for your explanation, and end with
the question you could not settle. Five minutes is enough. Thank the residents who spoke to
you, and do not use anyone's name if they asked you not to.

Sample opening line: "Between 2022 and 2023 the lane connecting our colony to
the main road was tarred and lit. Walking time to the bus stop fell from about fifteen
minutes to about eight, three new shops opened — and the two vegetable sellers
who used to sit on the verge no longer have a place."

In-text Questions — Page 5
Geography

Q1 Why has India historically been a hub of global interaction, and how did the Indian
peninsula's long coastline facilitate contact with Africa, Europe, and Southeast
Asia? (The chapter poses this on page 5 as an example of a question Geography
helps answer.)

Because of where India sits. The peninsula juts southward into the Indian Ocean with sea on
three sides, so it lies directly between the coasts of Africa and West Asia to the west and
Southeast Asia to the east. Ships moving between those two worlds passed along India rather
than around it.

A long coastline means many landing places. Sheltered bays and river mouths on both the
western and eastern coasts could take ships, so trade was never confined to one port or one
ruler's territory.
Sea travel was cheaper than land travel. Before railways, moving bulky goods overland
was slow and costly. A coastal position let Indian goods reach distant markets at a price that
made the journey worth making.
Seasonal winds made the crossing predictable. The winds over the Indian Ocean reverse
with the seasons, so sailors could plan an outward voyage and a return voyage — you will
study this wind system in the chapter on Atmosphere and Climate.
There was something to trade. Page 10 records that for centuries India "was one of the
world's leading economies and an important centre of trade, industry, and maritime
activity". A good position is only useful if goods, crafts and buyers exist at both ends.

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Class 9 Social Science Chapter 1 Understanding Social Science AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Why it happens — and why this is a Geography question: Geography asks "where
things are located, why they are found there, and how places—near or distant—
affect one another over time". This question needs all three. It also shows the
discipline's holistic method: the spatial perspective explains the peninsula's position,
the temporal perspective explains how that position mattered differently in
different centuries, and History and Economics supply the goods and the traders.

Did you know? Contact travelled in both directions. Goods, crafts and coins moved
out; ideas, languages, foods and religious practices moved in and out alike. That
two-way flow is what the chapter means when it calls the study of global interactions
the heart of vasudhaiva kuṭumbakam — "the world is one family".

LET'S EXPLORE — Page 5
Geography

LET'S EXPLORE

Q1 With the help of NCERT’s School Bhuvan portal, you can also map your own
village/city. You can access and explore the NCERT’s School Bhuvan portal by
visiting the website: app1.nrsc.gov.in/mhrd_ncert/

This is a hands-on mapping activity, so the map must be of your own village or city. Fig. 1.1
shows the portal open on India, which is where you begin.
Method — how to do it:

1. Open app1.nrsc.gov.in/mhrd_ncert/. Bhuvan is India's own Earth-observation portal, run by
the National Remote Sensing Centre; School Bhuvan is the version made for school students.
2. Use the search box to type your village or city name, or enter its latitude and longitude, and
zoom in until individual buildings, fields and roads become distinct.
3. Switch between the satellite image and the map view. The image shows what is actually on
the ground; the map view shows boundaries and names that someone has added to it.
4. Use the drawing tools to mark features. A useful set for a first map: your school, the main
road, the bus stop or railway station, the health centre, the panchayat or municipal office,
the market, the river, tank or canal, and the ward or village boundary.
5. Use the measurement tool to record one distance and one area — for example, how far your
home is from school, and roughly how much land the school occupies.
6. Save your map, and write a short caption.

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Class 9 Social Science Chapter 1 Understanding Social Science AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

What a good map must contain: a title naming the place; a north arrow; an indication of
scale or one measured distance; a legend explaining every symbol and colour you used; the
date of the satellite image; and a source line — Bhuvan / NRSC. A map without a legend and a
date is a picture, not a map.

Sample answer: "I mapped my village, Kanhaiyapur, on School Bhuvan using
imagery dated March 2024. I marked eight features: the government senior
secondary school, the primary health centre, the panchayat bhavan, the weekly
market ground, the bus stop on the state highway, the village pond, the canal along
the northern edge, and the village boundary. Measured on the portal, the school is
640 m from my house along the road, and the pond covers roughly 0.4 hectares.
Two things surprised me. First, almost all the houses are clustered on the higher
ground west of the pond, while the fields lie to the east and slope towards the canal
— the settlement has avoided the low, damp land. Second, the market ground sits
exactly where the village road meets the highway, which is presumably why the
weekly market grew up on that spot rather than nearer the centre of the village."

Why this activity is worth doing: Geography "views the world as a system of
interdependencies". On a map you can see the interdependence instead of being
told about it — where the houses stand relative to the water, why the market is
where the roads meet, which fields the canal can and cannot reach. That is what the
chapter means when it says tools such as maps, atlases and GIS "enhance your
understanding of the discipline".

In-text Questions — Page 10
Why Should We Study Social Science?

Q1 After exploring how Social Science helps us observe events, ask questions, and
examine evidence, an important question arises: how does this knowledge help us
in our lives?

It helps in four ways, each set out in the pages that follow the question.

1. It explains the systems you already depend on. The house you live in, the water you use,
the roads you travel on, the school you attend, the markets you visit and even the digital
spaces you use are "part of systems created and managed by society". Social Science shows
how those systems developed, how they work, and how they affect different groups of
people — so you are not simply a user of them.

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Class 9 Social Science Chapter 1 Understanding Social Science
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2. It makes diversity intelligible. You live among people who speak different languages,
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follow different customs and practise different occupations. Social Science explains such
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decisions are made, you are "better prepared to participate responsibly in civic life".

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4. It gives you a way of handling shared problems. Faced with environmental protection,
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causes, effects and possible solutions. The chapter calls this "habit of careful questioning

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and reasoning" essential for problems that affect society as a whole.

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In-text Questions — Page 11
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Class 9 Social Science Chapter 1 Understanding Social Science AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Why Should We Study Social Science?

Q1 Why do such differences exist within the same country?

Because the chapter's answer is that they are outcomes, not accidents. Page 11 states it directly:
Social Science explains these variations "as outcomes of geographical, historical, cultural, and
economic factors".

Geographical. India contains mountains, deserts, plateaus, river plains and a long coastline.
What people can grow, build with, eat and wear differs accordingly, and the terrain itself
once limited how much neighbouring communities mixed.
Historical. Different regions were settled at different times, ruled by different dynasties,
reached by different trade routes and touched by different waves of migration. Each of those
encounters left something behind in the language and the customs.
Cultural. Communities developed their own languages, literatures, festivals, crafts, music
and forms of worship — and these were valued and preserved, not treated as things to be
given up.
Economic. Occupation shapes a way of life. A fishing community, a pastoral community, a
weaving town and a rice-growing village will differ in their calendars, their skills and their
food, because their work differs.

Why it happens: Ask the question the other way round and the answer becomes
obvious. Uniformity across a landmass this varied would be the thing needing
explanation. Difference is what you would expect when many communities live in
very different environments, with long separate histories, and pass on what they
have learnt.

Q2 How do they continue over time?

Because they are passed on. The very first page of the chapter names "the traditions and ideas
passed down through generations" as one of the forces that shape our lives.

Learning at home and in the community. Mother tongue, food, dress, songs, festivals and
craft skills are learnt in childhood, before school ever begins, and are taught in turn to the
next generation.
Institutions that carry them. Families, places of worship, village and caste associations,
schools, local theatre and music traditions, and craft guilds all preserve a practice and give it
occasions to be performed.

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Class 9 Social Science Chapter 1 Understanding Social Science AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Written and remembered forms. Texts, manuscripts, oral traditions and folklore hold a
tradition steady across centuries. The chapter's itihāsa-purāṇa tradition is precisely this —
through stories it "reinforces enduring ideals and values, offering a sense of identity and
purpose".
The work people do. As long as a region continues to fish, herd or weave, the calendar,
vocabulary and festivals built around that work continue with it.
Identity. People value their language and customs as their own, so they choose to maintain
them — and often maintain them most carefully when living far from home.

Continuity is not the absence of change. The chapter's whole framing is
"continuity and change" together. Traditions survive by adapting: a festival keeps its
meaning while its songs, dress or scale alter; a language absorbs new words and
loses old ones. What continues is the thread of identity, not an unchanged set of
practices — and that is why India's diversity has persisted alongside, in the chapter's
words, "an underlying unity, fostering a sense of belonging, and shared identity".

Chapter at a glance
Social Science is the systematic study of human society. It does not stop at what
happened or where a place is; it asks why events occur, how people live together, how
environments shape life, how governments function and how economies operate. Physics,
Chemistry and Biology study the natural world; Social Science studies society, institutions,
cultures and human interactions.
Everyday life is the easiest proof of this. The house you live in, the food on your plate, the
road you travel, the school you attend and the electricity you use all rest on systems of
governance, economic production, social cooperation and the natural environment.
Society, the chapter insists, does not function by chance — it is shaped by history,
geography, institutions, resources and human choices.
India's own knowledge traditions valued discussion, questioning and logical reasoning. The
Pañchamahābhūtas — earth, water, fire, air and space — describe nature as one
interconnected system; vasudhaiva kuṭumbakam ('the world is one family') expresses the
interconnectedness of societies; and the Arthaśhāstra, attributed to Kauṭilya and
composed about 2,300 years ago, examined administration, economic management,
taxation and the duties of rulers.
In Grades 9–10 Social Science draws mainly on four disciplines — Geography (the Earth,
environments and people–place relationships), History (the human past and how societies
change), Political Science (governance, power, rights and responsibilities) and Economics
(how societies produce, distribute and use resources). Sociology, Philosophy, Anthropology
and Psychology belong to the wider Social Science family.

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Class 9 Social Science Chapter 1 Understanding Social Science AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

History rests on sources. The chapter shows four kinds: literary (Fig. 1.2 the Sāmaveda
manuscript; Fig. 1.3 a palm-leaf Tirukkuṟaḷ), archaeological (Fig. 1.4 a terracotta figurine of
the Sindhu-Sarasvatī Civilisation; Fig. 1.5 a 12th-century CE Viṣhṇu sculpture), epigraphic
(Fig. 1.6 a Gupta-period Brahmi inscription; Fig. 1.7 Krishnadeva Raya's Kannada inscription
at Hampi) and numismatic (Fig. 1.8 a coin of Samudragupta, 4th century CE; Fig. 1.9 a
Mughal coin of Jahangir's reign showing 'Sagittarius').
The method matters as much as the subject. Social scientists observe people's lives,
conduct interviews and surveys, examine documents, and compare different times and
places; by gathering information from multiple sources they build explanations that are
supported by evidence. A source is what survives; an interpretation is what a scholar
argues from it — and an interpretation can be revised when better evidence appears.

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Class 9 Social Science Chapter 1 Understanding Social Science AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Quick revision

TERM WHAT IT MEANS WHERE IT EXAMPLE FROM THE
APPEARS IN BOOK
THE
CHAPTER

Social Science The systematic study of human society Page 1 Contrasted with Physics,
— it explains not only what happened Chemistry and Biology, which
or where things are located, but why study the natural world
events occur and how different aspects
of life are interconnected.

Pañchamahābhūtas The 'five great elements' of Indian Page 3, side Used to explain settlement
philosophical traditions — earth note patterns, occupations,
(Pṛithvī), water (Āpaḥ), fire (Agni), air architecture, food habits and
(Vāyu) and space (Ākāśha). An early health practices
attempt to understand nature as one
interconnected system.

Vasudhaiva 'The world is one family' — the idea Page 3 The sense of
kuṭumbakam that human societies across regions and interdependence behind the
cultures are interconnected. study of global interactions

Arthaśhāstra A text attributed to Kauṭilya, composed Pages 3 and 9 Evidence that systematic
about 2,300 years ago, on thinking about governance
administration, economic management, and the economy existed
taxation and the duties of rulers toward long before modern
their people. disciplines

Geography Studies the location and distribution of Pages 4–6 Tools: maps, globes, atlases,
places, objects, materials and people, GIS, infographics — Fig. 1.1
and the relationships between societies shows NCERT's School
and their surroundings. Bhuvan portal

History The study of the human past, through Pages 6–8 The itihāsa-purāṇa tradition
which societies understand people's of Bharat; modern tools such
experiences, values and changes over as human genetics and
time. carbon-14 dating

Political Science The study of governance — how and Page 9 The Panchayati Raj system as
why power is distributed, decisions are grassroots democracy in
made and policies are implemented. India's villages

Page 18 of 19

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