Question

Marathi documents and village surveys made in the early years of British rule have revealed the existence of artisans, sometimes as high as 25 per cent of total village households.

• A. Persian
• B. Bengali
• C. Marathi
• D. Marwari

Hint:

Remember that Marathi documents and village surveys provide important evidence about rural society in the Deccan.
The presence of artisans in significant numbers shows that villages had diverse occupational groups.
When a question mentions a specific regional documentary tradition, match it carefully with its linguistic and geographical context.

Answer 1

The Correct Option is C

Concept:
The question concerns the evidence used by historians to reconstruct the structure of village society in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century India.
Regional administrative documents, surveys, and local records provide valuable information about the occupational composition of rural communities.

Step 1: Identifying the Type of Evidence:
The statement refers to documents and village surveys prepared during the early years of British rule.
Such records were important because colonial administrators attempted to collect information about land, revenue, occupations, and village communities.
Historians have used these records to understand the diversity of rural society.

Step 2: Identifying the Language and Region:
The specific evidence mentioned in the question comes from Marathi documents and village surveys.
These records are particularly useful for studying the social and economic structure of villages in the Deccan and western India.
They reveal that villages contained not only cultivators but also substantial numbers of artisans.

Step 3: Understanding the Significance of Artisans:
The reference to artisans constituting as much as 25 per cent of village households demonstrates that rural society was occupationally diverse.
Blacksmiths, carpenters, potters, leather workers, weavers, and other specialists could form an important part of village life.
Therefore, the evidence challenges the simplistic idea that Indian villages consisted exclusively of agricultural cultivators.

Step 4: Evaluating the Options:
Persian was widely used in Mughal and early colonial administrative contexts, but it is not the regional documentary tradition referred to here.
Bengali and Marwari likewise do not correspond to the evidence described in the question.
The correct documentary language is Marathi.
Final Answer:
Therefore, the correct answer is (C) Marathi.