NCERT Solutions Class 7 Social Science Chapter 8 How the Land Becomes Sacred

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 7 · SOCIAL SCIENCE

NCERT Solutions

Chapter 8: How the Land
Becomes Sacred

NCERT Textbook — Exploring Society: India And Beyond (Part I)

BOOK PAGES SECTIONS QUESTIONS MEDIUM

167 – 184 13 27 English

Solutions, notes, sample papers & more at 39 pages

Class 7 Social Science Chapter 8 How the Land Becomes Sacred AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

CLASS 7 · SOCIAL SCIENCE · EXPLORING SOCIETY: INDIA AND BEYOND (PART I)

NCERT Solutions — Chapter 8: How the Land Becomes
Sacred
Complete NCERT Solutions for Class 7 Social Science Chapter 8 How the Land Becomes Sacred, the chapter
of Theme C Our Cultural Heritage and Knowledge Traditions in the textbook Exploring Society: India and Beyond
(Grade 7, Part 1). Every question of the chapter is answered — The Big Questions, all five LET'S EXPLORE
boxes, the DON'T MISS OUT question on the Kumbh Mela, both THINK ABOUT IT boxes, the in-text
questions on pages 179 and 180, Before we move on … and all eight Questions and activities — with the
map of traditional tīrthas (Fig. 8.6), the Mohenjo-daro seal (Fig. 8.12), the sacred-grove table on page 180 and
the trade-route map of Fig. 5.5 read carefully off the printed page.

TEXTBOOK BOOK PAGES

Exploring Society: India and Beyond (Part I) (Class 167 – 184
7)

SECTIONS QUESTIONS

13 27

MEDIUM

English

The Big Questions — Page 167
Chapter opening — Theme C, Our Cultural Heritage and Knowledge Traditions

THE BIG QUESTIONS

Q1 What is ‘sacredness’?

The chapter gives a careful, limited definition: sacredness is finding something of deep
religious or spiritual significance, worthy of respect and reverence, holy or divine.
The interesting question is what that ‘something' can be. In this chapter it is four different kinds
of things:

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Class 7 Social Science Chapter 8 How the Land Becomes Sacred AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

WHAT BECOMES SACRED EXAMPLE FROM THE CHAPTER

A place or shrine that evokes deep feelings, high The Mahabodhi Stūpa at Bodh Gaya; the Akal Takht at
thoughts or emotions Amritsar; the Dargah Sharif of Ajmer

A journey of a special kind — a pilgrimage The Pandharpur wārī, walked for 21 days every year

The route the journey takes The forest-and-hill trek up to Sabarimala, whose natural
landmarks are themselves held sacred

The very land covered The whole of Bhārat, and ultimately the whole planet — Mother
Earth or Bhūdevī

Why it matters: because that last row exists, sacredness in India is not only a matter
of religion and spirituality. It is also tied to geography and to all sorts of traditions.
That is exactly what makes the chapter's title possible — a land, and not only a
temple, can become sacred.

Note: the chapter is careful to say ‘in the limited context of this chapter'. People use
the word ‘sacred' in other senses too — a sacred promise, a sacred duty. Here it is
used only in its religious and spiritual sense.

Q2 How does the land become sacred?

Not by one decision, but by a slow process with four strands running through the chapter.

1. Nature is perceived as divine. In Hindu and many folk and tribal belief systems, mountains,
rivers, trees, plants, animals and even stones are regarded as sacred. Many rivers are devīs;
the Niyam Dongar hill is the abode of Niyam Raja for the Dongria Khond; the Todas of the
Nilgiris hold peaks, Shola forests and individual trees sacred. If divinity is present in all of
Nature, then no part of the land is ordinary.
2. Sacred sites are scattered everywhere and then linked. Sites do not stand alone — they
form networks: the chār dhām at the four corners, the 12 jyotirlingas, the 51 Shakti pīṭhas,
and many regional circuits. “These networks crisscross India's length and breadth, creating a
sacred geography. As a result, the land itself becomes sacred.”
3. People walk the land. For at least 3,000 years, without modern transport, Indians travelled
from Badrinath and Amarnath in the snowy Himalayas to Kanyakumari in the south. Every
route walked, every river crossed, every hill climbed adds another thread to the same fabric.

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Class 7 Social Science Chapter 8 How the Land Becomes Sacred AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

4. Stories bind the map together. The Shakti pīṭha story says Viṣhṇu cut Satī's body and the
pieces fell across the Subcontinent; the symbol is plain — the whole land becomes the
body of the divine mother. Similarly, villages everywhere claim that the heroes of the
Rāmāyaṇa and Mahābhārata passed through, and mark the spot with a shrine (Fig. 8.11,
Bastar).

Why it happens: a place becomes sacred when a community keeps returning to it —
in worship, in walking, and in story. Repeat that for thousands of years across a
subcontinent and the network closes; there is no gap left that is merely ‘land'.

Q3 How do sacred sites and pilgrimage networks connect with the life and culture of
the people?

They touch almost every part of ordinary life. The chapter shows at least five connections.

CONNECTION HOW IT WORKS

Spiritual life A tīrthayātrā is “not just a physical journey but also an inner journey that requires a
specified code of conduct”. The hard climb to a hilltop shrine symbolises the
difficulty of the inner path.

Economic life Pilgrims need food, lodging, flowers, transport and offerings, so markets, boats,
dharamshalas and priests' work grow around a tīrtha (Figs. 8.8 and 8.17). Traders
travel the same roads; some are pilgrims and traders at once.

Social life Villagers travel in large groups for weeks — Dharampal met twelve people from two
villages north of Lucknow returning from Rameswaram. A wārī or a Kumbh brings
together millions of strangers as one gathering.

Cultural life On the way, people meet different languages, customs, clothing and foods — and
notice what is common. Ideas, songs, stories and goods are exchanged; new ideas
emerge and old ones are adapted.

Ecological life Because tīrthas sit by rivers, lakes, forests and hills, protecting the shrine means
protecting the landscape. Sacred groves shelter biodiversity; the fruit bats of a
Thanjavur grove are protected as sacred and in return pollinate flowers and disperse
seeds.

Did you know? Bodh Gaya receives more than four million visitors a year and
Sabarimala over ten million — numbers that shape the roads, shops, jobs and
calendars of whole districts.

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Class 7 Social Science Chapter 8 How the Land Becomes Sacredl AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

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What role did sacred geography play in the cultural integration of the Indian
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It was, in the chapter's words, a major factor in that integration. Here is the chain.

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Three things made this work:
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Deliberate spread. The four dhāms “appear to have been deliberately located in the
southern, northern, eastern and western corners of India”. A pilgrim who wants all four has
no choice but to cross the country.
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Shared symbols. A person in Tamil Nadu and a person in Assam could
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common vocabulary stretched over thousands of kilometres.
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Varanasi, Ayodhya and Puri; people of many faiths visit Ajmer and Velankanni. Integration
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was not one tradition absorbing another but many traditions using the same roads.
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Why it happens: political unity comes and goes with dynasties. But a pilgrim
network is maintained by ordinary people, generation after generation, and so it

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survives the rise and fall of kingdoms. Jawaharlal Nehru pointed at exactly this when

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LET'S EXPLORE — Page 168

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Class 7 Social Science Chapter 8 How the Land Becomes Sacred AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Fig. 8.2 and the chapter-opening pictures of Fig. 8.1

LET'S EXPLORE

Q1 Do any of the pictures look familiar to you? Can you name similar places found in
your neighbourhood?

What the pictures show — Fig. 8.1 (chapter opening, page 167) and Fig. 8.2
(page 168):
Fig. 8.1, six photographs: (1) a group of stone temples with slate roofs
standing in a deodar forest; (2) rows of lit diyas floating on a river at
night, with the lights of the bank reflected in the water; (3) a white
Buddhist stūpa with a golden spire on a bare, rocky mountain; (4) a
small pillared shrine standing in the middle of a temple tank; (5) tall
upright standing stones in an open grassy field; (6) a close-up of tree
roots covered with threads, bead strings, lemons, flowers and other
offerings.
Fig. 8.2, five photographs: (1) a crowded dargah, with men and women
seated on the floor under a red canopy; (2) the interior of a synagogue,
with polished brass railings, a menorah and an orange cloth spread on
the floor; (3) the gateway of a Parsi fire temple, with an inscription over
the door and a carved winged guardian figure beside it; (4) a large red
sandstone mosque with two minarets and white marble domes; (5)
another synagogue interior with chandeliers, brass pillars and a red
curtain over the ark.

Fig. 8.1 (page 167) and Fig. 8.2 (page 168) — photographs, described here; see the
textbook for the pictures themselves.

Start by naming what the pictures actually show, then match each type to your own
surroundings.

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Class 7 Social Science Chapter 8 How the Land Becomes Sacred AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

IN THE PICTURES WHAT KIND OF LOOK FOR THIS NEAR YOU
SACRED PLACE IT IS

Fig. 8.1 — stone temples among tall A temple complex in a Your village or town temple, especially
deodar trees forest one in a grove or on a hill

Fig. 8.1 — rows of lit diyas floating A river ghat used for The ghat, tank or riverbank where your
on a river at dusk worship town holds aarti or immersion

Fig. 8.1 — a white stūpa on a bare A Buddhist stūpa A stūpa, vihāra or monastery, if there is
mountain one in your district

Fig. 8.1 — a shrine standing in the A sacred water body The temple tank, kunḍ, stepwell or pond
middle of a temple tank people keep clean for rituals

Fig. 8.1 — upright stones in an open Sacred stones / a tribal or Village boundary stones, a devgudi, a
field folk shrine gramadevatā platform

Fig. 8.1 — tree roots covered with A sacred tree The peepul, banyan or neem near your
threads, lemons and kumkum school that people circle and tie threads
on

Fig. 8.2 — a crowded dargah, a Shrines of Islam, Judaism A dargah, mosque, church, gurdwara,
mosque, a synagogue interior, a fire and Zoroastrianism agiary or synagogue in your city
temple

Sample answer: “Yes — the picture of the tree hung with threads and lemons is very
familiar. There is an old peepul tree at the corner of our street; people tie red threads
around it, put kumkum on the trunk and no one cuts its branches. The picture of the
river with lamps is like the Ganga ghat we visit at Kartik Purnima. Near my home
there is also a small hill temple that we climb on foot during the festival, a dargah
where people of every community tie threads at the window, and a church at the end
of the market road.”

Why the book asks this first: to show that ‘sacred geography' is not something
distant and ancient. It is the ordinary map of your own neighbourhood — a tree, a
tank, a hill, a shrine — read with different eyes.

LET'S EXPLORE — Page 171

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Class 7 Social Science Chapter 8 How the Land Becomes Sacred AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Dharampal's account of pilgrims travelling from Rameswaram to Haridwar

LET'S EXPLORE

Q1 Read the excerpt. What are your observations? Locate the route the group must
have taken from Rameswaram to Haridwar. Why do you think the group was going
straight to Haridwar instead of stopping at Delhi?

Observations from the excerpt — five things stand out:

Ordinary villagers, not rich pilgrims. About twelve people, three or four women and seven
or eight men, from two villages north of Lucknow.
A very long journey. Three months, and Rameswaram — the southern tip of the country —
was only one of the places they had visited.
They carried their household with them. Bundles, earthen pots, and “all the necessities for
their food — atta, ghee, sugar”. They cooked their own meals instead of buying them, which
kept the journey affordable and kept their food rules intact.
The group is the unit. Nobody travels alone; men and women of two villages move as one
party, sharing cost, cooking and safety.
A firm sense of purpose. “We don't have time … We have to go to Haridwar. And then we
have to get back home.” The pilgrimage, not sightseeing, is the point.

The route. They were travelling by train, so the natural line runs up the eastern side and then
along the Ganga plain:

Rameswaram (Tamil Nadu, on Pamban island)

→ Madurai → Tiruchirappalli → Chennai

→ north along the Coromandel coast: Vijayawada → Visakhapatnam → Bhubaneswar/Puri

(Odisha)

→ Kharagpur → Prayagraj / Varanasi along the Ganga

→ Kanpur → Lucknow (their own district) → Moradabad

→ change trains at Delhi → Haridwar (Uttarakhand)

A pilgrim group would keep touching tīrthas along that line — Rameswaram, Kanchipuram,
Puri, Gaya, Varanasi, Prayagraj — which is why the pilgrimage lasted three months.
Why they did not stop at Delhi. Because Delhi is a great capital city, but it is not part of their
tīrtha list. Three reasons together:

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Class 7 Social Science Chapter 8 How the Land Becomes Sacred AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

1. Purpose. Their journey was a religious vow with a fixed sequence of sacred places. Haridwar
— a tīrtha at the point where the Ganga enters the plains — belonged to that list; Delhi did
not. For them Delhi was only a railway junction where the train had to be changed.
2. Time and money. They had been away three months, carrying their own flour and ghee.
Every extra day away meant more expense and more work left undone at home. They said it
themselves: “We don't have time.”
3. Completing the circle. A yātrā is finished properly — a dip at Haridwar and then straight
home. Sightseeing in between would break the discipline of the journey.

What Dharampal is showing: that pilgrimage in India was a mass, popular, self-
organised movement of common people, not a luxury of the rich — and that this is
how the entire geography of the Subcontinent came to be known and felt as one.

Q2 In ancient times, when people were travelling from Madurai in Tamil Nadu to
Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh, what languages would they come across? How would
they communicate with people in those places? Where would they stay? What food
would they eat?

Follow the road north from Madurai and the answer builds itself.
Languages they would cross

STRETCH OF THE JOURNEY LANGUAGE THEY WOULD HEAR

Madurai → Kanchipuram Tamil

Through the Kannada country (Karnataka) Kannada

Through Andhra / the Deccan Telugu, and Marathi further north-west

Central India Regional dialects of the Hindi belt — Bundeli, Bagheli, Awadhi

The Ganga plain up to Varanasi Bhojpuri and other eastern Hindi dialects

At temples and monasteries all along the way Sanskrit, and Prakrit or Pali at Buddhist and Jain centres

How they would communicate. Four ways, all still in use today:

Sanskrit as a link language among priests, scholars and monks — a Tamil scholar and a
Kashi paṇḍit could discuss in Sanskrit even with no other language in common.
Gestures, numbers and a few trade words for buying grain, hiring a cart or asking the way
— the way people still manage in a new city's market.

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Class 7 Social Science Chapter 8 How the Land Becomes Sacredl AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Guides and go-betweens — panḍās at tīrthas, caravan leaders, and traders who dealt with
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several regions and therefore spoke several tongues.
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Shared religious vocabulary — the names of deities, rivers and festivals were recognisable

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temple; or simply camped in a grove or by a riverbank, as pilgrims still do.

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What they would eat. Mainly food they cooked themselves — rice, flour, dal, ghee, salt and
jaggery carried in bundles and pots, exactly as Dharampal's group did. On the road they would
also eat what each region offered: rice and sambhar-like preparations in the Tamil country, ragi
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and jowar rotis in the Deccan, wheat rotis and dal in the Ganga plain, plus temple prasāda and

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annadāna — free meals served to pilgrims, a custom still alive in Puri, Varanasi and Amritsar.
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a s empoint of the question: such a journey was itself an education. A villager who
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walked from Madurai to Varanasi came home knowing four or five languages by ear,

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a dozen cuisines and a hundred customs — and knowing that behind all of them lay
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one shared world of stories and deities. That is cultural integration happening one agl
traveller at a time.
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LET'S EXPLORE — Page 173
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emEXPLORE
Becoming Aware of Sacred Geography — the locations of the chār dhām

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LET'S

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Note the locations of the chār dhām. What do you think it implied for the people
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ANSWER agl

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First, the locations. On the map of Fig. 8.6 the four dhāms (light-blue triangles) sit almost exactly

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at the four corners of the country:

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Badrinath Uttarakhand, high in the Himalayas North

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Puri Odisha, on the Bay of Bengal East

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Rameswaram
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Tamil Nadu, at the southern tip near the Palk Strait South

Dwarka
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Gujarat, on the Arabian Sea West

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Class 7 Social Science Chapter 8 How the Land Becomes Sacred AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

The chapter itself points out that they “appear to have been deliberately located in the
southern, northern, eastern and western corners of India”. Joining them draws a giant cross
over the whole Subcontinent.
What that implied for the people who travelled it:

You cannot finish the yātrā without crossing the whole country. Badrinath to
Rameswaram is about 2,800 km; Dwarka to Puri about 1,900 km. A pilgrim had to see the
Himalayas, the Deccan, both coasts and the Ganga plain.
India becomes one place in the mind. Someone who had walked from a snow peak to a
southern seashore no longer thought of his own district as the world. He had felt with his
feet that all of it was one land — the “feeling of one country and one culture” that Nehru
described.
Difference stops being strange. Along the way the traveller met other languages, foods,
clothes and customs — and also met the same deities, the same festivals, the same
reverence for rivers. Diversity and unity were experienced together.
The roads themselves grew. Constant north–south and east–west traffic kept routes,
ferries, rest houses and markets alive, so trade, news and ideas travelled on the same paths.
Every region gained importance. No corner could be dismissed as remote, because each
corner held one quarter of the whole. That is how a network of shrines quietly became a
map of the nation.

Try this: mark the four dhāms on an outline map of India and join them with
straight lines. Then mark the 12 jyotirlingas from a list and see how they fill in the
space between. The picture that appears is what the chapter calls sacred
geography.

LET'S EXPLORE — Page 174

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Class 7 Social Science Chapter 8 How the Land Becomes Sacred AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Fig. 8.6, a map showing a few networks of traditional tīrthas

LET'S EXPLORE

Q1 Can you identify the names of a few traditional tīrthas given in the map above? You
can refer to the political map at the end of the book for help.

LEGEND
N
International Boundary
Shakti Pīṭhas
30°N
Jyotirlingas
Chār Dhāms
Kumbh Mela Sites
Sikh Sites
Buddhist Sites
20°N
Jain Sites

BAY OF
BENGAL
ARABIAN
SEA

10°N

INDIAN OCEAN

70°E 80°E 90°E

Fig. 8.6, page 174 — redrawn: a map showing a few networks of traditional tīrthas. Every
symbol stands where the book places it and, as in the book, no place is named — that is
what the question asks you to work out. In the printed map thin lines of each colour
also join the sites of one tradition to one another, which is what makes them ‘networks’.

The map carries no place names — only symbols, joined by lines. So the task is to read each
symbol's position against a political map. The legend gives eight keys: International Boundary,
Shakti Pīṭhas (red triangles), Jyotirlingas (dark-blue triangles), Chār Dhāms (light-blue triangles),
Kumbh Mela Sites (orange triangles), Sikh Sites (yellow circles), Buddhist Sites (pink squares) and
Jain Sites (purple diamonds).
Working symbol by symbol, these tīrthas can be identified with confidence:

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Class 7 Social Science Chapter 8 How the Land Becomes Sacred AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

SYMBOL POSITION ON THE MAP THE TĪRTHA

Chār Dhām Uttarakhand Himalaya, about Badrinath
30½°N 79°E

Chār Dhām Odisha coast, about 20°N 86°E Puri

Chār Dhām Saurashtra coast, about 22°N Dwarka
69°E

Chār Dhām Southern tip, about 9°N 79°E Rameswaram (also a jyotirlinga — the two triangles sit
together)

Kumbh Mela Where the Ganga leaves the Haridwar
hills, about 30°N 78°E

Shakti pīṭha Ganga–Yamuna confluence, Prayagraj — a Kumbh Mela city (page 176), although the
(red) about 25½°N 82°E map puts a red triangle, not an orange one, on the spot

Shakti pīṭha Malwa, about 23°N 76°E Ujjain — also a Kumbh Mela city and the
(red) Mahakaleshwar jyotirlinga, though only the red triangle
is printed here

Kumbh Mela Northern Maharashtra, about Nashik (Trimbakeshwar jyotirlinga alongside)
20°N 74°E

Jyotirlinga Just west of Badrinath in the Kedarnath
Uttarakhand hills

Jyotirlinga Cluster on the Narmada and in Omkareshwar, Bhimashankar, Grishneshwar, Aundha
western Maharashtra Nagnath

Sikh site Punjab, about 31½°N 75°E Amritsar (Golden Temple / Akal Takht); Anandpur Sahib
is the mark to its east

Sikh site Middle Ganga plain, about Patna Sahib
25½°N 85°E

Sikh site Marathwada, about 19°N 77°E Nanded (Hazur Sahib)

Buddhist site Eastern Uttar Pradesh and the Sarnath, Kushinagar, Lumbini/Kapilvastu
Nepal border

Buddhist site Bihar, about 24½°N 85°E, and Bodh Gaya; Sanchi in Madhya Pradesh
central India

Jain site Southern Rajasthan and Mount Abu; Girnar and Śhatruñjaya (Palitana)
Saurashtra

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Class 7 Social Science Chapter 8 How the Land Becomes Sacred AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

SYMBOL POSITION ON THE MAP THE TĪRTHA

Jain site Jharkhand, about 24°N 86°E, Shikharji (Parasnath); Shravanabelagola
and southern Karnataka

Shakti Pīṭha Kolkata, Guwahati, Kalighat, Kamakhya, Kanyakumari, Jwalamukhi …
Kanyakumari, Kangra, and
dozens more

LEGEND
N
International Boundary
Jwalamukhi
Amritsar Kedarnath Shakti Pīṭhas
Badrinath
30°N Anandpur Sahib Jyotirlingas
Haridwar
Chār Dhāms
Kushinagar
Sarnath Kumbh Mela Sites
Hinglaj Prayagraj Patna Sahib
Kamakhya Sikh Sites
Mt Abu
Varanasi Bodh Gaya
Ujjain Sanchi Buddhist Sites
Dwarka Shikharji
Girnar Kalighat Jain Sites
Omkareshwar
Palitana
20°N Somnath Nashik Grishneshwar Puri
Bhimashankar Nanded

Srisailam BAY OF
BENGAL
ARABIAN
SEA Shravanabelagola Kanchipuram

10°N
Rameswaram

Kanyakumari
INDIAN OCEAN

70°E 80°E 90°E

The same map with the tīrthas named — use it to check your own reading of the symbols. (The book’s
map carries no names.)

Note on the map itself: the legend lists Kumbh Mela Sites, but only two orange
triangles can actually be made out — at Haridwar and at Nashik. At Prayagraj and
Ujjain, the other two Kumbh cities named on page 176, the map carries only the red
Shakti-pīṭha triangle.

Page 13 of 39

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Class 7 Social Science Chapter 8 How the Land Becomes Sacredl AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

co m
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Check it yourself: use the political map at the end of the book and read off latitude

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and longitude for each symbol before naming it — that is exactly the skill the
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identify,

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What the map is really showing: not a list of names but a pattern. The lines join
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sites of every tradition into networks that

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India's population in 2025 is about 1.45 billion, that is 145 crore. So:
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= about 45%, or roughly 9 out of every 20 Indians — a little less than half.

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Written as a simple fraction, 66/145 is close to 9/20, or nearly 1/2.
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o m l a
.cnot 660 million different people. Many pilgrims bathedagon several auspicious days,
Read the number carefully: 660 million counts visits over the whole 45-day mela,

se m
g l a
a
and each bath was counted. So the number of individuals who came was smaller —
but it is still, by a wide margin, the largest gathering of human beings anywhere
.c
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Why it is worth knowing: a gathering of that size needs a temporary city — roads,
pontoon bridges, tents, water pipes, hospitals, electricity and sanitation for tens of
millions — built and dismantled within weeks. That is why UNESCO listed the Kumbh
Mela as an ‘intangible heritage of the world', and why the mela is an economic event
as much as a spiritual one.

Try this: take the population of your own state and work out how many times over it
would fit into 66 crore. For a state of 7 crore people, the answer is about 9 times.

THINK ABOUT IT — Page 177
Figs. 8.7 and 8.8 — the Kumbh Mela and the ghats — and the economic life around a sacred place

THINK ABOUT IT

Q1 How do you think these sacred places are connected with the people’s economic
lives and activities? Draw a mind map to trace these connections. (Hint: The
pictures above can provide some clues.)

What the two pictures above show:
Fig. 8.7 (page 176) — the Kumbh Mela at dusk: a broad river with an
immense crowd packed along the bank, hundreds of people standing in
the shallow water, and behind them an unbroken line of lit stalls, tents
and lamps running far into the distance under a pink evening sky.
Fig. 8.8 (page 177) — the ghats of a river town: tall multi-storeyed
riverfront buildings in ochre, white, yellow and red rising above a long
flight of stone steps; boats moored at the water’s edge, and people,
umbrellas and washing spread over the steps.

Fig. 8.7 (page 176) and Fig. 8.8 (page 177) — photographs, described here; see the
textbook for the pictures themselves.

Look at the two pictures first. Fig. 8.7 shows the Kumbh Mela at Prayagraj — a river bank packed
with people, and behind them row upon row of tents, stalls and lights. Fig. 8.8 shows the ghats
of a river town — tall buildings that are lodges and dharamshalas, boats tied at the steps, and
priests and visitors on the steps. Both pictures are full of work being done and money changing
hands.

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Class 7 Social Science Chapter 8 How the Land Becomes Sacred AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Here is the mind map that comes out of it:

Transport Places to stay
buses, trains, boats, porters dharamshalas, lodges, tents

Food and offerings Sacred place Crafts and shops
stalls, flowers, prasāda tīrtha, mela, ghat brass, cloth, images, books

Services Fairs and trade
priests, guides, barbers, cleaners melas, markets, traders' routes

A mind map of the economic life that grows around a sacred place. Each branch is a livelihood
created by the steady arrival of pilgrims.

Reading the mind map

Transport. Pilgrims must be carried — trains, buses, boats at the ghat, ponies and
palanquins on hill routes, porters and cart-pullers. Whole roads and railway lines exist
because of the traffic.
Places to stay. The tall river-front buildings in Fig. 8.8 are lodges and dharamshalas. At the
Kumbh, an entire tented city is built and taken down again.
Food and offerings. Flower sellers, garland makers, sweet shops, coconut and camphor
sellers, cooks feeding thousands — the market in Fig. 8.17 is exactly this.
Crafts and shops. Brassware, cloth, images, prayer beads, books and local specialities are
made and sold; some crafts survive only because a shrine keeps demand alive.
Services. Priests, panḍās and guides, barbers, boatmen, sweepers, security staff,
photographers, and today hotel and tourism workers.
Fairs and trade. A mela is also a market. Traders bring goods from far away, cattle and grain
change hands, and — as the chapter says — pilgrimage routes and trade routes often
overlap.

Why it happens: a sacred place brings a large number of people to one spot, again
and again, on dates everyone knows in advance. That is precisely the condition a
market needs. So worship creates demand, demand creates work, and work
supports a town — which is why so many old Indian cities are also tīrthas.

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Class 7 Social Science Chapter 8 How the Land Becomes Sacred AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Tip for your notebook: draw the same map for a shrine near your home and add
real names — the bus that goes there, the shops outside the gate, the fair held once
a year, the people who earn from it.

In-text Questions — Page 179
Fig. 8.12, a seal from Mohenjo-daro — and the THINK ABOUT IT box on the peepul tree

Q1 Observe this seal from Mohenjo-daro. Can you recognise the leaves at the top?

Yes — they are peepul leaves.
Look closely at Fig. 8.12. Across the upper half of the little square seal spreads a fan of leaves,
each one heart-shaped with a long, drawn-out tip. That drip-tip is the peepul's signature; no
other common Indian tree has it. Below the leaves the seal shows two horned animal figures
facing each other, and along the bottom edge runs a row of Indus script signs.

WHAT TO LOOK FOR ON THE SEAL

Leaf shape Broad heart-shaped blade narrowing into a long, thin point

Arrangement A spray of leaves fanning out from a central stem, filling the top of the seal

Below the leaves Two horned creatures placed symmetrically on either side

Bottom band Undeciphered Indus script signs, including a spoked-wheel sign

Why this matters: the seal is roughly 4,500 years old. If the peepul was important
enough to be carved on a seal in Mohenjo-daro, then reverence for this one tree has
continued in the Subcontinent for at least four and a half millennia — “the peepul
tree has been an important part of India's cultural geography for millennia.” The
same tree is sacred today to Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and Jainism, and its
botanical name says so too: Ficus religiosa, literally the ‘religious' fig.

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Class 7 Social Science Chapter 8 How the Land Becomes Sacred AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Think About It (page 179): the book adds that many parts of the peepul have
medical uses — the leaves treat some skin ailments and the bark is useful for
stomach ailments — and that because it stays green almost through the year it gives
food and shelter to many kinds of birds and other animals. So the tree is not only a
symbol: it is a medicine chest and a wildlife shelter. Calling it sacred is one way a
community makes sure such a tree is never cut.

In-text Questions — Page 180
The table of names for sacred groves in regional languages of India

Q1 Given below are the names of a few sacred groves in a few regional languages of
India. Can you add to this?

Yes. First, the nine names the book prints, so you have them in one place:

LANGUAGE / STATE NAME FOR A SACRED GROVE

Malayalam kāvu

Tamil kovilkādu

Kannada devare kādu

Marathi devarāī

Khasi (Meghalaya) khlaw kyntang

Hindi (Himachal Pradesh) dev van

Jharkhand sarnā

Chhattisgarh devgudi

Rajasthan oraṇ

Now the three empty rows. Names used elsewhere in India include:

Page 18 of 39

as e
a
Class 7 Social Science Chapter 8 How the Land Becomes Sacred
g l AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

co m
m.
LANGUAGE / REGION NAME NOTE

as e
communities) .c
om
Rajasthan (Bishnoi and other kenkri, jogmāyā
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Groves attached to a local deity, protected along

a s em with their blackbuck and khejri trees

gl
aUttarakhand / Kumaon devbhūmi van, Forests and high meadows attached to a village
bugyāl shrines deity

m deity' groves in and around villages
co‘Forest
Manipur (Meitei) umanglai or umang
e m . ag
lai
g l as
Kerala (Kodagu border, sarpakāvu
a A serpent grove, usually in a corner of the family
Kurumba) land
co m
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com l as
Karnataka (Kodagu) devarakādu, Hundreds still survive in Kodagu district alone

. a g
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nāgabana

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Maharashtra (Konkan) devrāī, rāī Often on a stream's source, protecting the water
supply

m a s
.co Santal and other communities' grove shrines agl
Odisha jāhera, thākurammā

se m
a
jungle

ag l
Meghalaya (Khasi) law kyntang, law Mawphlang (Fig. 8.14) is the best known

m
lyngdoh

. co
se m
o m
c of old trees near your village is called in your own l a
glanguage, (2) which deity
How to complete this yourself: the surest way is to ask. Find out (1) what the forest
m .clump a
aseit belongs to, and (3) what people are not allowed to do there — usually cutting
or

agl
m
wood, hunting, or even carrying away a dry twig. Write the local name in the empty

a se
com l
row and note the rule beside it.
. a g
m
ase
agl
Why so many different words: because sacred groves were never created by a
government order. Each community protected its own patch of forest in its own

c o m
language and in the name of its own deity. The names differ; the idea — this forest
.
mthe same from
s
belongs to the deity, so no one may harm it — is remarkably
a e
om
.cMeghalaya to Kerala.
agl
se m
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a c
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LET'S EXPLORE — Page 181
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Class 7 Social Science Chapter 8 How the Land Becomes Sacred AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

From pilgrimage to trade — tracing the trade-route map (Fig. 5.5) over the map of tīrthas

LET'S EXPLORE

Q1 Take a sheet of transparent paper that can be used for tracing. Trace a map of the
trade routes from the chapter ‘The Rise of Empires’. Place it on top of the map of the
important tīrthas. What do you observe?

LEGEND
N
International Boundary
Shakti Pīṭhas
30°N
Jyotirlingas
Chār Dhāms
Kumbh Mela Sites
Sikh Sites
Buddhist Sites
20°N
Jain Sites

BAY OF
BENGAL
ARABIAN
SEA

10°N

INDIAN OCEAN

70°E 80°E 90°E

The map of the important tīrthas — Fig. 8.6, page 174, redrawn. This is the map on which
you place your tracing of the trade routes from Fig. 5.5 (page 92).

How to do it: lay the tracing sheet on Fig. 5.5 (page 92). Trace the coastline, then the
Uttarapatha in one colour, the Dakṣhiṇapatha in a second and the other routes in a third, and
mark the cities as dots. Now lift the sheet and place it over Fig. 8.6 (page 174), matching the
coastline and the 70°E, 80°E and 90°E lines so the two maps sit exactly on top of each other.
What you observe: the two maps very largely coincide.

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Class 7 Social Science Chapter 8 How the Land Becomes Sacred AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

TRADE-ROUTE CITY (FIG. WHAT SITS AT OR NEAR THE SAME SPOT IN FIG. 8.6
5.5)

Kāśhī Varanasi — a great tīrtha, with Sarnath (Buddhist) just beside it

Kauśhāmbī Prayagraj, a Kumbh Mela site, at the confluence of the Ganga and Yamuna

Mathurā Mathura, one of the places Guru Nanak's pilgrimages are recorded to have
touched

Ujjayinī Ujjain — a Kumbh Mela site and the Mahakaleshwar jyotirlinga

Dvāraka Dwarka, the western chār dhām

Kalinganagara Close to Puri, the eastern chār dhām

Kānchīpura Kanchipuram, a temple city and Shakti pīṭha

Madurai Madurai, and the road onward to Rameswaram, the southern chār dhām

Pāṭaliputra / Rājagṛiha / Champā Patna Sahib (Sikh), and the Buddhist and Jain sites of Bihar and Jharkhand

Takṣhaśhilā, in the far northwest The northwestern end of both the trade network and the Shakti pīṭha
network

Three clear conclusions follow:

1. Pilgrimage routes and trade routes are largely the same roads. The Uttarapatha ran
east–west across the north, past Mathurā, Kāśhī and Pāṭaliputra; the Dakṣhiṇapatha ran
from Kauśhāmbī through Ujjayinī to Pratiṣhṭhāna. Both strings are also strings of tīrthas.
2. The two networks fed each other. Pilgrims needed food, cloth, vessels and lodging, which
traders supplied; traders needed safe, well-used roads with rest houses, which pilgrim traffic
kept alive. Some traders “double as pilgrims”, carrying wares to distant towns while visiting
shrines.
3. Both networks explain the same result. Goods, coins, ideas and stories moved along the
same lines — which is why the chapter calls this exchange “a major factor in the cultural
integration of the Indian Subcontinent”.

Look for the difference too: the trade map has strong coastal and port lines
(Bharukachchha, Sopārā, Tāmralipti, Muchiri, Kāverīpattinam) that carried sea trade,
while the tīrtha map reaches deep into the Himalayas (Badrinath, Kedarnath,
Amarnath) where no trade route goes. Where money leads, roads go to harbours;
where faith leads, paths go up mountains.

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Class 7 Social Science Chapter 8 How the Land Becomes Sacred AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

THINK ABOUT IT — Page 182
Restoring and conserving the sacred — Fig. 8.18, polluted rivers and sacred animals

THINK ABOUT IT

Q1 Look carefully at these pictures of places and animals that are considered sacred.
The Yamuna in the north, the Mahanadi in the east or the Kaveri in the south are all
sacred rivers. How come they have become so polluted? Are there sacred places in
your locality or region that have been similarly polluted or degraded by human
activity? Whose responsibility is it to preserve the sanctity of our sacred places?
Discuss in class.

What the three pictures show — Fig. 8.18 (page 182):
A wide river whose surface is covered with thick white toxic foam; on
the far bank stand a row of high-rise city buildings and an electricity
pylon.
A brown cow standing on a bank heaped with plastic bags, wrappers and
household rubbish, nosing through the waste for food.
A fast-flowing river below a forested hill, its grassy bank strewn with
plastic bottles, bags, packaging and driftwood washed up at the water’s
edge.

Fig. 8.18, page 182 — photographs, described here; see the textbook for the pictures
themselves.

First, what the pictures show. Fig. 8.18 has four photographs: a river covered in thick white
chemical foam with factories on the far bank; a hill stream with plastic waste piled along its
edge; a heap of plastic rubbish with plastic bottles and bags; and a cow — an animal regarded
as sacred — feeding on that rubbish. Every one of them shows something held sacred being
treated as a dumping ground.
How did the rivers become so polluted? Not by one cause but by several together:

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CAUSE WHAT IT DOES TO THE RIVER

Untreated sewage from fast-growing cities The single largest source; drains empty straight into the river

Industrial effluent — dyes, tanneries, Poisons the water and creates the foam seen in the
chemicals photograph

Farm run-off — fertiliser and pesticide Feeds algae, uses up oxygen, kills fish

Plastic and solid waste, including ritual Chokes the banks; animals eat it, as the cow in the picture is
waste doing

Over-extraction — dams, canals, borewells Less water means less power to dilute and carry away waste

But behind all five lies one deeper reason, and the chapter names it: the old harmonious
relationship between people and their sacred geography “is under great strain”. We still call the
river Ganga ji and worship it — and then treat it as a drain. Reverence has become ritual without
responsibility. A person who genuinely felt the river to be a mother would not empty a factory
pipe into her.
Sacred places near you that have been degraded. Look for these and name the real examples
in class:

The village pond or temple tank, now full of silt, plastic and weeds.
The sacred grove that has shrunk as fields, houses or a quarry crept into it — the chapter
says thousands of groves have been lost to such encroachment.
The stretch of river below your town, where the water changes colour after the drains join it.
A hill shrine whose slopes are now bare, or littered with wrappers and bottles left by visitors.
Old trees on the roadside cut for widening, or a spring that has dried up since borewells
were dug.

Whose responsibility is it? Everyone's, at four different levels — and the honest answer is that
it fails when any one level is missing.

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co m
m.
WHO WHAT THEY MUST DO

m as e
Each of us
.co a g l
Not throw waste into water; use cloth bags; offer flowers without

a s em plastic; carry litter back from a shrine

aThe l
g community — temple Clean and guard the tank, grove or ghat; revive old rules that protected
trusts, panchayats, resident them; run shramdān drives

co m
. ag
groups

s em
gla
Industry and business Treat effluent before releasing it; the polluter, not the river, should bear
the a
cost

Government
co
Build and actually run sewage treatment plants, enforce the law, and
m
em.
protect groves and rivers legally — as New Zealand did for the Maoris'

m l as
.co
Taranaki Maunga

a g
a s em
a gl Why the Constitution comes into it: the chapter ends by reminding us that “it is
our duty to protect our national heritage, as our Constitution also reminds us.”

om a s
agl
Article 51A lists among the Fundamental Duties of every citizen the duty to protect
and improve the natural environment.c— forests, lakes, rivers and wildlife — and to
a s em and to value and preserve our composite
agl
have compassion for living creatures,
culture. So caring for a sacred river is not only a religious feeling; it is a constitutional

m
duty.
. co
e m
m l as
.co a g
Do this in class: pick one sacred place in your locality. In two columns, write what it
m like as elders describe it, and what it is like today. Then write a third column —
a s ewas
a gl one action each of you can start this month.
se m
com g l a
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as 183
Before we move on … — lPage
a g
The chapter's four closing statements, explained

co m
.
BEFORE WE MOVE ON …

se m
o m l a
m .c All religions in India have their sacred places dottedagover the landscape. In
se
Q1

a
agl
Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism, such places are usually associated with some of the

.c
great figures in these belief systems.

s e m
m a
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l a se
The whole first half of the chapter is contained in this sentence. Every tradition in India — those
agcame from outside — has left its sacred places across the map.
born here and those that

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Class 7 Social Science Chapter 8 How the Land Becomes Sacred AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

TRADITION SACRED PLACES NAMED WHAT MAKES THEM SACRED
IN THE CHAPTER

Islam, Christianity, Dargah Sharif, Ajmer; Places of prayer and congregation, visited on
Judaism, Velankanni Church, Tamil Nadu special occasions — and by followers of other
Zoroastrianism faiths too

Buddhism Great Stūpa at Sanchi (a relic Places the Buddha visited, or where his relics
stūpa); Mahabodhi Stūpa, Bodh are kept; Bodh Gaya is where he attained
Gaya enlightenment

Jainism Mount Abu, Girnar, Where the Tīrthankaras attained liberation,
Śhatruñjaya hill (Saurashtra) or where events of their lives occurred — and
the trees, ponds and hills they visited

Sikhism Takht Sri Patna Sahib; Akal Seats of spiritual authority associated with the
Takht, Amritsar; Takht Sri Sikh Gurus; Sikhs aspire to visit them at least
Keshgarh Sahib, Anandpur once in a lifetime

Notice the pattern: in these three traditions a place is sacred because a great
person was there. That is why the sites are specific and can be listed. In the next
point you will see a different logic altogether.

Q2 Hinduism has dense networks of pilgrimage sites, covering the entire geography of
India. The practice of pilgrimage is interwoven with the lives of people, as it serves
the individual development and spiritual growth, but also the socio-economic
purposes of trade expansion and pan-Indian cultural integration.

Read this sentence in two halves.
Half one — dense networks covering the entire geography. Not scattered sites but systems:
the chār dhām at the four corners; the 12 jyotirlingas; the 51 Shakti pīṭhas, reaching even
into present-day Bangladesh and Pakistan; and “many more regional networks”. Fig. 8.6 shows
them crossing and re-crossing until no part of the Subcontinent is left out.
Half two — what pilgrimage does for people. The chapter names three purposes at once:

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Class 7 Social Science Chapter 8 How the Land Becomes Sacred AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

PURPOSE HOW THE CHAPTER SHOWS IT

Individual and The tīrthayātrā is “not just a physical journey but also an inner journey that requires a
spiritual specified code of conduct”; the hard climb to a hilltop shrine mirrors the inner path

Economic — trade Pilgrims need goods, traders supply them, routes overlap, some traders double as
expansion pilgrims; melas become markets

Cultural — pan- Travellers meet many languages, customs, clothes and foods, and notice the
Indian integration commonalities; ideas are exchanged and adapted

Keep this sentence handy: it is the direct answer to Question 8 of the exercise, on
the two-fold significance of a pilgrimage — inner growth for the person, and social,
economic and cultural growth for the country.

Q3 In many Hindu, tribal and folk traditions, the very land is perceived as sacred.

This is the point that gives the chapter its title. Here it is not a building or a person that is
sacred, but Nature itself.

The idea. A divine presence is perceived in all of Nature. Specific mountains, rivers and
forests are worshipped as deities; many rivers are devīs; some species of trees, animals and
plants are especially holy; and ultimately the whole planet is Mother Earth, Bhūdevī —
shown in Fig. 8.5, lifted to safety by Viṣhṇu in his boar avatar.
Tribal examples from the chapter. The Dongria Khond of Odisha hold Niyam Dongar in
the Niyamgiri Range sacred as the abode of Niyam Raja, who provides all they need; cutting
a tree there is disrespect to the deity. The Todas of the Nilgiris hold many peaks sacred,
along with plants used in rituals, Shola forests, wetlands, and even particular stones and
single trees. In the early 2000s the Government of Sikkim identified sacred mountains,
caves, lakes, rocks and hot springs to be protected from all damage.
Folk and epic examples. Sacred groves protected by villages as the homes of deities such as
Ryngkew or Basa in Meghalaya; shrines that mark where Rāma is believed to have passed
(Fig. 8.11, Bastar).

Why this belief protected Nature: the chapter puts it plainly — this perception “has
helped us to protect and preserve Nature, since we are not distinct from her.” A
forest that belongs to a deity cannot be felled; a hill that is a god cannot be mined.
Conservation did not need an inspector, because the rule lived inside the belief.

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Class 7 Social Science Chapter 8 How the Land Becomes Sacred AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Q4 Our sacred places are being polluted owing to widespread neglect and a lack of
concern. It is our duty to protect our national heritage, as our Constitution also
reminds us.

The chapter ends on a warning and a duty.
The warning. The Yamuna, the Mahanadi and the Kaveri are all sacred rivers, and all are heavily
polluted (Fig. 8.18). Sacred groves once numbered many thousands and are shrinking as people
encroach on them for agriculture and industry. Rivers are “overexploited to the point of
disappearance”, and sacred mountains face “competing ideas of development”. The old
harmonious relationship, the chapter says, “is under great strain”.
The duty. Protecting this heritage is not optional. Our Constitution lists among the
Fundamental Duties of every citizen (Article 51A) the duty to protect and improve the natural
environment — forests, lakes, rivers and wildlife — to have compassion for living creatures, and
to value and preserve the rich heritage of our composite culture.
The hope. The chapter is not only gloomy. It notes that people have spoken up to protect their
environment, their deities and their values; that sacred groves are still protected in many
regions; and that when sustainability has become a global issue, a worldview that embeds
sacred geography has a significant contribution to make. The Maori example — a law granting
Taranaki Maunga the rights and responsibilities of a human being — shows a modern legal
system learning from exactly such a worldview.

Tip: when you write about conservation in an exam, connect the three levels the
chapter uses — the belief (Nature is sacred), the practice (groves, rivers and hills
protected by communities), and the law (Fundamental Duties, and laws like the one
for Taranaki Maunga).

Questions and activities — Pages 183–184

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Class 7 Social Science Chapter 8 How the Land Becomes Sacred AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

End-of-chapter exercise

Q1 Read the following statement by a well-known environmental thinker, David Suzuki:
“The way we see the world shapes the way we treat it. If a mountain is a deity, not a
pile of ore; if a river is one of the veins of the land, not potential irrigation water; if
a forest is a sacred grove, not timber; if other species are biological kin, not
resources; or if the planet is our mother, not an opportunity—then we will treat
each other with greater respect. Thus is the challenge, to look at the world from a
different perspective.” Discuss in small groups. What do you think this statement
means? What implication does it have for our actions with respect to the air, water,
land, trees and mountains around us?

What the statement means. Suzuki's first sentence carries the whole argument: “The way we
see the world shapes the way we treat it.” How we name something decides what we feel free to
do to it. He then gives five pairs, and in each pair the same object is named twice:

SEEN AS … … OR SEEN AS WHAT FOLLOWS FROM EACH VIEW

A mountain that is a deity a pile of ore You bow to it and protect it — or you blast and mine
it

A river that is a vein of the potential irrigation You keep it flowing and clean — or you take until it
land water runs dry

A forest that is a sacred timber You guard even a fallen branch — or you count the
grove trees in cubic metres

Other species that are resources You share space with them — or you clear them out
biological kin of the way

A planet that is our mother an opportunity You take only what she can give — or you take
everything that can be sold

Notice his last step: if we see the world this way, “then we will treat each other with greater
respect.” Respect for Nature and respect for people are not two separate habits; they grow from
the same way of looking. The challenge, he says, is not to invent new technology but to change
the perspective.
Why this belongs in this chapter. Suzuki is describing, from a Canadian scientist's point of
view, exactly the worldview the chapter has been tracing in India — the Niyamgiri hill that is
Niyam Raja's abode, the river addressed as ‘Ganga ji', the grove that belongs to the deity, the
peepul that no one cuts, the Earth that is Bhūdevī, the Maori mountain Taranaki Maunga now
granted the rights of a human being.
Implications for our own actions

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co m
m.
ELEMENT WHAT CHANGES IF WE ADOPT THIS VIEW

o m l a se plant and keep
.c trees rather than replace them with concrete ag
Air Burn less — walk, cycle, share transport; refuse to burn leaves and plastic;

se m
g l a
aWater Never treat a river, tank or well as a dustbin; keep idols, plastic and oil out of it; repair
leaks; harvest rainwater; support sewage treatment before the drain reaches the river

com
Land
e m .
Segregate and reduce waste; refuse single-use plastic; do not encroach on a grove, tank ag
bed or common land
g l as
Trees
a
Protect old trees, especially the peepul, banyan and neem; plant native species; keep the
sacred grove near you intact rather than ‘developing' it
co m
m.
se on fragile
o m l a
Mountains Carry your litter back down; support limits on construction and quarrying

m .c slopes; treat a pilgrimage to a hill shrine as a duty of care,
ag
not a picnic

l a se
ag Why perspective matters more than rules: rules need an inspector; a perspective

m a s
agl
travels with you. A community that believes a grove is a deity's home guards it every

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day of the year without being paid to. That is why the chapter says a worldview that

l a se
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embeds sacred geography “has a significant contribution to make” at a time when
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sustainability has become a global issue.

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List the sacred sites in your region. Enquire into why they are considered sacred.
m Are there stories connected with these sacred places? Write a short essay of 150
Q2

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agla words. (Hint: You could speak to elders in your family and community, discuss with

m
your teacher, read books and articles, etc., to gather relevant information.)

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Method — how to gather the material

1. List first. Walk or think through your area and note every kind of sacred place, not only

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temples: shrines, mosques, churches, gurdwaras, dargahs, a sacred tree, a grove, a tank or

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spring, a hill, a boundary stone, a samādhi.
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2. Ask elders. Grandparents, the priest or caretaker, the oldest shopkeeper. Ask three
m questions: How old is it? Why is this place special? What story do people tell about it? Write their
l a se
ag words down as they say them.
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3. Check a second source. Your teacher, a district gazetteer, the local library, or the temple's
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own board and inscriptions.

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4. Look for the rules. What may not be done there — no shoes, no cutting, no hunting, no

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fishing in the tank? Rules preserve the sanctity, and often the ecology.
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What a good essay of 150 words must contain

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Class 7 Social Science Chapter 8 How the Land Becomes Sacred AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

The names and exact locations of at least three or four sites.
Why each is considered sacred — a deity, a saint, an event, a natural feature.
At least one story told in your own community, and who told it to you.
One line on the site's present condition — cared for, or neglected.
Your own closing sentence on why it should be preserved.

Sample answer (adapt it with your own real names and stories): “Three places in my
area are held sacred. The first is the Śhiva temple by the river, which villagers say is
more than three hundred years old; the linga, they say, was not installed by anyone
but was found by a cowherd whose cow poured her milk over that spot every day.
The second is the old peepul tree at the crossroads. No one cuts even a branch of it;
women tie red threads around it and the panchayat meets in its shade. The third is
the tank behind the temple, where fish are never caught because they are said to
belong to the deity — which is why the tank has stayed clean and full when other
ponds have dried. Each of these places is protected not by a law but by a story
people still believe. That is why they have survived, and why we should keep them.”

Q3 Why do you think natural elements like rivers, mountains and forests are
considered sacred for the people? How do they contribute to our lives?

Why they are considered sacred. Four reasons run through the chapter, and they reinforce one
another.

1. A divine presence is perceived in all of Nature. In Hindu and many folk and tribal belief
systems, mountains, rivers, trees, plants, animals and even stones are held sacred; many
rivers are worshipped as devīs, and ultimately the whole Earth is Bhūdevī, Mother Earth.
2. They give life. “Those rivers have been lifelines for the Indian civilisation.” Water, soil, food,
medicine, timber, rain — everything a community needs comes from the river, the forest and
the hills. What sustains you is naturally treated with reverence.
3. They inspire awe. A snow peak, a river in flood, a great old tree are far bigger and older
than any human life. Height in particular made mountains “a symbolic gateway from earth to
heaven”, so the climb became a symbolic journey to the divine.
4. Stories and memory attach to them. The epics describe sacred rivers, forests and
mountains; villages claim that Rāma or the Pānḍavas passed by; Tīrthankaras meditated at
particular hills and ponds; Niyam Raja lives on Niyam Dongar. A place with a story becomes a
place with a name and a guardian.

How they contribute to our lives

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Class 7 Social Science Chapter 8 How the Land Becomes Sacred AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

ELEMENT WHAT IT GIVES US

Rivers Drinking water, irrigation, fish, transport and trade routes; fertile plains; the sites of the
greatest gatherings, like the Kumbh at a sangam

Mountains The source of rivers, snow and rain; forests, herbs and minerals; cool climate; a barrier
and a shelter; sites of tīrthas that draw millions

Forests and groves Clean air, timber and fuel, fruit, medicine, fodder; habitat for wildlife; they hold water
and soil, and sacred groves shelter “great biodiversity of flora and fauna” and often small
water bodies

Individual trees like Shade, oxygen, medicine (leaves for skin ailments, bark for stomach ailments), and food
the peepul and shelter for birds and animals almost all year round

Animals The fruit bats protected by a Thanjavur grove's deity pollinate flowers and disperse seeds
— the deity, the ecosystem and humans in one harmonious relationship

The deeper point: reverence and usefulness are not opposites here. Calling
something sacred is how a community makes sure that what keeps it alive is never
destroyed. As the chapter says, this perception “has helped us to protect and
preserve Nature, since we are not distinct from her.”

Q4 Why do people visit a tīrtha or other sacred sites?

The chapter gives several reasons; they often act together in the same traveller.

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Class 7 Social Science Chapter 8 How the Land Becomes Sacred AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

REASON FROM THE CHAPTER

To cross to a higher A tīrtha is literally a crossing place; symbolically it is “a place where one can cross from
life the ordinary worldly life to a higher, spiritual life”

For the inner The yātrā “is not just a physical journey but also an inner journey that requires a
journey specified code of conduct”; the hard trek to Sabarimala “symbolises the difficulties of the
inner path”

Because a great Places visited by the Buddha or holding his relics; where Tīrthankaras attained
figure was there liberation; the takhts linked to the Sikh Gurus, which Sikhs aspire to visit at least once in
a lifetime

Because the moment A dip at Haridwar, Prayagraj, Nashik or Ujjain “during a prescribed period is considered
is auspicious most auspicious”

To fulfil a vow or an Some Hindus aspire to complete the chār dhām yātrā; Dharampal's group would not even
aspiration stop at Delhi until Haridwar was done

To learn, discuss and People travelled “to discuss, debate and popularise their beliefs or to learn and study
debate from eminent teachers in different parts of the country”

To trade Merchants travelled to exchange goods, and “some traders might also double as pilgrims”

For company and Whole village groups travel together for months, meeting new languages, foods and
for the world customs on the way

In one sentence: people go to a tīrtha to change something inside themselves —
but on the way they also see their country, meet its people, buy and sell, learn and
argue, and come home carrying all of it.

Q5 How did the ancient pilgrimage routes help in fostering trade during those times?
Do you think the sacred sites help in developing the economy of the region?

Part 1 — how pilgrimage routes fostered trade

1. Pilgrims were customers. “Pilgrims need various items, which traders can provide” — food,
cloth, vessels, flowers, oil, offerings, blankets for the hills. A steady stream of travellers
meant a steady market.
2. The same roads served both. The routes overlapped. The Uttarapatha joined the
northwest to the east through Mathurā, Kāśhī and Pāṭaliputra; the Dakṣhinapātha ran from
Kauśhāmbī through Ujjayinī to Pratiṣhthāna. Trace the trade map over the tīrtha map, as the
LET'S EXPLORE box asks, and the lines fall on top of each other.

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Class 7 Social Science Chapter 8 How the Land Becomes Sacred AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

3. Traders and pilgrims were often the same people. “Some traders might also double as
pilgrims, taking their wares to distant towns and cities while visiting sacred sites and
shrines.”
4. Constant traffic kept the roads usable. Ferries, rest houses, caves like Naneghat, wells and
guards existed because so many people passed; that infrastructure served merchants as
much as pilgrims.
5. Melas were wholesale markets. A gathering that brings lakhs of people from many regions
to one place on a known date is exactly the condition for a large fair — goods, cattle, crafts
and news all changed hands there.
6. Goods spread far. Along these routes travelled shells and pearls, coins, gold and diamonds,
cotton, spices and sandalwood — reaching regions that produced none of them.

Part 2 — do sacred sites help develop the economy of a region? Yes, and it is easy to see
how.

EFFECT WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE TODAY

Employment Priests and guides, shopkeepers, cooks, boatmen, drivers, porters, hotel and sanitation
staff, photographers

Local crafts and Garlands, brass and clay ware, prayer beads, sweets, cloth and souvenirs made and sold
produce locally

Infrastructure Roads, railway stations, bridges, water supply, electricity and hospitals built for pilgrim
traffic and used by everyone

Scale Bodh Gaya over 4 million visitors a year; Sabarimala over 10 million; the 2025 Kumbh
about 660 million participants

Year-round rhythm Festivals and auspicious seasons give the town a predictable calendar of earning

But add the caution: the growth must be managed. Crowds bring plastic waste,
sewage, traffic and construction on fragile hills and riverbanks — which is what Fig.
8.18 shows. Development that destroys the sanctity of a place eventually destroys
the reason people came. The honest answer is: yes, sacred sites develop the
regional economy — provided the place itself is protected while it earns.

Q6 How do sacred places influence the culture and traditions of the people living near
them?

A sacred place is not only visited; it slowly shapes the way a whole locality lives.

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Class 7 Social Science Chapter 8 How the Land Becomes Sacred l AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

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ASPECT OF HOW THE SACRED PLACE SHAPES IT

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LIFE
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c Festivals, fairs and auspicious bathing days fix the year — the wārīagto Pandharpur every
The calendar.
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year, the Kumbh at Prayagraj every six years, the annual mela of the local grove deity

Rituals and daily Water rituals invoke the seven rivers; trees are adorned with turmeric and kumkum; a dip, a

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habits circumambulation or a lamp becomes part of ordinary life

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Arts
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Songs, hymns, dances, drama and temple architecture grow around the shrine; the epics'
episodes are retolda
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Livelihoods and
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Whole families become garland makers, brass workers, cooks, boatmen, guides — skills

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skills passed down for generations

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Food
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Special prasāda and festival dishes; rules about what is eaten and when; the practice of

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annadāna, feeding pilgrims

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decisions; pilgrims from far away bring news and new ideas

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s e mand everyday phrases come from the deity; the sacred grove has
a language — kāvu, devarāī, sarnā, oraṇ
Language and Place names, family names

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names its own word in every

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Rules about No felling, no hunting, no fishing in the tank, no quarrying on the hill — customs that protect

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Nature the ecosystem as much as the shrine

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Openness to Places like Ajmer and Velankanni draw people of many faiths, so the neighbourhood learns

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Why the influence runs so deep: a sacred place gives a community three things at
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once — a shared story, a shared calendar and a shared space. Once people tell
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the same story, gather on the same days and meet in the same place, culture and

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tradition follow almost by themselves.

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m a s em and create a project
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From the various sacred sites of India, select two of your choice
co explaining their significance.
Q7

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How to build the project

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1. Choose two sites that contrast, so the project has something to say — for example one

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Himalayan and one coastal, or one Buddhist and one Hindu, or one great pilgrim city and
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one small sacred grove.

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2. Use the same eight headings for both, so a reader can compare: Where it is · Which
tradition · Why it is sacred · The story behind it · What a visitor sees · When people go · How it
affects the local economy and ecology · One problem it faces today.
3. Add a map of India with both sites marked, and a photograph or a drawing for each.
4. Name your sources — the textbook, an elder you interviewed, a book, a website.
5. End with one page of your own: what these two sites, so far apart, have in common.

Sample answer — a worked comparison you can adapt

BODH GAYA, BIHAR MAWPHLANG SACRED GROVE,
MEGHALAYA

Where On the Falgu river in central Bihar On the Khasi hills, about 25 km from
Shillong (Fig. 8.14)

Tradition Buddhism; visited by people of many countries Khasi community belief; the grove is
khlaw kyntang

Why Buddhist tradition holds that the Buddha attained The forest is the abode of the deity —
sacred enlightenment here; the Mahabodhi Stūpa marks Ryngkew or Basa — and belongs to the
the place deity, not to people

The story The bodhi tree in the Mahabodhi temple is often Nothing may be taken out of the grove,
cited as a direct descendant of the original tree not even a dry leaf; the deity is believed
under which he sat — hence ‘bodhi tree' and ‘Bodh to punish anyone who does
Gaya'

Scale More than four million visitors a year A small area, but one of thousands of
groves once spread across India

What it A monument and a living tree lineage; a World Rare orchids, medicinal plants, ancient
protects Heritage site trees, springs — “great biodiversity of
flora and fauna”

Economy Hotels, guides, monasteries of many countries, Community-guided walks, protection of
transport, crafts, international tourism water sources for the villages below

A problem Crowding, waste and pressure on a fragile Encroachment for farming and
today monument construction, as the chapter notes for
groves generally

Your closing paragraph could say: one of these places is world-famous and one is
known mainly to its own villages; one is protected by law and international attention,
the other by a story and a rule. Yet both survive for the same reason — a community
decided that this piece of land must never be harmed.

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Class 7 Social Science Chapter 8 How the Land Becomes Sacred AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Q8 What is the two-fold significance of a tīrthayātrā or a pilgrimage?

A pilgrimage works at two levels at the same time — inward, for the person who travels, and
outward, for the society through which the traveller passes.

1. THE INNER JOURNEY — FOR THE 2. THE OUTER JOURNEY — FOR
INDIVIDUAL SOCIETY

What it is A journey “not just physical but also an inner A movement of people, goods and ideas
journey that requires a specified code of across the whole Subcontinent
conduct”

What it Individual development and spiritual growth — Socio-economic purposes: trade expansion
achieves crossing from ordinary worldly life to a higher, and pan-Indian cultural integration
spiritual life, which is what the word tīrtha
means

Evidence in The hard trek to Sabarimala symbolising the Pilgrimage and trade routes overlapping;
the chapter difficulties of the inner path; the 21-day wārī to traders doubling as pilgrims; travellers
Pandharpur; the discipline of Dharampal's meeting many languages, customs, clothes
group who would not stop even at Delhi and foods and noticing the commonalities

Result A changed person A connected country — and, in Nehru's
words, “the feeling of one country and one
culture”

Why the two are inseparable: the pilgrim sets out only for the first reason. The
second happens anyway, simply because so many people walk so far for so long.
That is how a private act of devotion, repeated by millions over three thousand
years, ended up weaving a subcontinent together.

Chapter at a glance
Sacredness, in this chapter, means something of deep religious or spiritual
significance — holy, divine, worthy of respect and reverence. That ‘something' need not
be a building. It can be a special location or shrine, a journey of a special kind (a
pilgrimage), the route the journey takes, or even the very land covered. So sacredness is
tied not only to religion and spirituality but also to geography and to living traditions.
Every school of thought and religion in India has its own sacred places. Religions that
came from outside — Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Zoroastrianism — have shrines like the

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Class 7 Social Science Chapter 8 How the Land Becomes Sacred AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Dargah Sharif of Ajmer and the Velankanni Church, visited by followers of other faiths too.
Buddhism has sites the Buddha visited or where his relics are kept (the Great Stūpa at
Sanchi, the Mahabodhi Stūpa at Bodh Gaya, which receives over four million visitors a
year). Sikhism has the takhts — Takht Sri Patna Sahib, the Akal Takht at Amritsar, Takht Sri
Keshgarh Sahib at Anandpur. Jain tīrthas mark where the Tīrthankaras attained liberation
— Mount Abu, Girnar, Śhatruñjaya.
For at least 3,000 years, with no modern transport, Indians crisscrossed the
Subcontinent on tīrthayātrā. A tīrtha is literally a crossing place on a river; symbolically it
is where one crosses from ordinary worldly life to a higher, spiritual life. The journey is not
only physical but inner, and follows a code of conduct — the Pandharpur wārī, an 800-year-
old tradition, still walks 21 days to the Vithoba temple, and Sabarimala draws over ten
million devotees a year.
The networks of tīrthas turn the map itself into sacred geography. The chār dhām
stand at the southern, northern, eastern and western corners of India; the 12 jyotirlingas
and the 51 Shakti pīṭhas cover the whole Subcontinent. The story of Satī's body falling in
pieces across the land carries a clear symbol — the whole land becomes the body of the
divine mother. Travelling those networks, pilgrims met diverse languages, customs, clothes
and foods, and noticed the commonalities too. This was a major factor in the cultural
integration of the Indian Subcontinent.
Sacred ecology: rivers, mountains, trees and groves. Tīrthas sit on riverbanks, lakes,
forests and hills, so the natural landscape itself is seen as sacred space, or puṇyakṣhetra. The
nadīstuti sūkta of the Ṛigveda praises 19 rivers; the daily invocation still names Ganga,
Yamuna, Godavari, Sarasvati, Narmada, Sindhu and Kaveri. The peepul (Ficus religiosa) is
sacred to Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and Jainism, and its leaves appear on a Mohenjo-
daro seal. Communities protected whole forests as sacred groves — kāvu, devarāī, khlaw
kyntang, sarnā, oraṇ — which now shelter great biodiversity.
Pilgrimage routes and trade routes overlapped, and the idea is not India's alone.
Pilgrims needed goods; traders supplied them and sometimes doubled as pilgrims, so the
Uttarapatha and Dakṣhinapātha ran past the same towns as the tīrthas. Ancient Greece,
the Native Americans and the Maoris of New Zealand — whose Taranaki Maunga was
recently granted the rights of a human being — hold similar views. Today our sacred rivers
and places are badly polluted; protecting this heritage, as the Constitution reminds us, is
our duty.

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Quick revision

TERM WHAT IT MEANS WHERE IT WORTH REMEMBERING
APPEARS IN
THE CHAPTER

Sacredness Finding something of deep religious or Page 168 It may be a place, a journey, a
spiritual significance, worthy of route, or the land itself
respect and reverence, holy or divine

Pilgrimage A journey to a sacred place that is Margin note, In India, an unbroken tradition
significant within a religion or belief page 169 for at least 3,000 years
system

Shrine A place regarded as holy because of its Margin note, Ajmer Dargah Sharif and
associations with the divine, a sacred page 169 Velankanni Church draw people
relic, or a spiritual figure of many faiths

Relic A part of a saint's or other spiritual Margin note, The Great Stūpa at Sanchi is a
figure's body, or sometimes one of page 169 relic stūpa
their belongings, kept as an object of
reverence

Takht A seat or centre of spiritual authority Page 169 Takht Sri Patna Sahib · Akal
in Sikhism Takht, Amritsar · Takht Sri
Keshgarh Sahib, Anandpur

Tīrtha Literally a place where one can cross a Margin note, The word explains why sacred
river; symbolically, a place where one page 170 sites sit on riverbanks and
crosses from ordinary life to a higher, confluences
spiritual life

Tīrthankara Literally, one who makes a tīrtha — Margin note, Jain tīrthas: Mount Abu,
who guides the crossing from ordinary page 171 Girnar, Śhatruñjaya
to higher life; in Jainism, the supreme
preachers of dharma

Wārī A pilgrimage held regularly — in Fig. 8.4, page 171 An 800-year-old Maharashtra
Pandharpur's case, annually tradition; pilgrims walk 21 days
to the Vithoba temple

Chār dhām Four sacred sites that some Hindus Page 173, Badrinath (N) · Puri (E) ·
aspire to visit, placed at the four mapped in Fig. Rameswaram (S) · Dwarka (W)
corners of India 8.6

Jyotirlinga / 12 shrines of Śhiva, each with its own Page 173 and The Shakti pīṭhas reach even
Shakti pīṭha name and mythology; and the 51 margin note present-day Bangladesh and
places where parts of Satī's body are Pakistan
said to have fallen

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TERM WHAT IT MEANS WHERE IT WORTH REMEMBERING

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APPEARS IN

.
THE CHAPTER
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Puṇyakṣhetra Sacred space — the natural landscape Sacred Ecology, Geography, culture and
itself perceived as holy page 175 spirituality fuse in these
kṣhetras

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Nadīstuti sūkta A hymn (sūkta) of the Ṛigveda in It invokes 19 major rivers of

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praise (stuti) of rivers (nadī)
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Kumbh Mela A vast gathering at Haridwar, Page 176, Fig. 8.7 UNESCO ‘intangible heritage of

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the world'; 660 million people

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Prayagraj, Nashik and Ujjain, where

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drops of amṛita are said to have fallen at the 2025 Kumbh

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Sacred grove Pages 179–180

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community as the abode of a deity, devarāī · khlaw kyntang · dev van
safe from hunting, felling and mining · sarnā · devgudi · oraṇ

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