GRADE 7

Social Science
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Module 2- New Sources and

Challenges for Historians
Constructing History with Changing
Times
Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students will be able to

• Discuss and analyse the changes in interpreting sources.

• Examine and interpret the information from sources like copies of
manuscripts and coins.
 Warm Up
Do you know, How did they write on paper?
The writings were handwritten and as they are written manually, they are known
as manuscripts.
Let’s Learn

Manuscripts were collected by monasteries, temples, rulers

and wealthy people and were kept in libraries and archives.
• Archive is a collection of historical documents, providing
information about a place, institution or group of people;
a place in which public records/ historical
documents(source materials)are preserved.
Let’s Learn
• A Scribe is a person who copies out documents, especially one employed to do this before
printing was invented.
• As the scribes copied manuscripts, they brought small changes wherever they were unable to
understand a word/phrase or sentence.
• Manuscripts (copies) of the same text became significantly different from one another.
• This has created a serious problem as the original is rarely available.
• There were different styles of writing Sanskrit in the Nagari script; Nandhinagari was used mostly
in South India. Jain manuscripts are known for their beautiful calligraphic style
• Jain
Let’s Learn
What do Historians do?
• They analyse the different manuscript versions and revised their chronicles.
• A chronicle is a historical account of events arranged in order.
• The manuscripts contained a lot of information but their use posed many
challenges to historians.
• As papers can turn yellow and the writing dull with use, manuscripts needed to be
written on new papers.
• The printing press had not arrived on the scene. They needed to copy each and
every manuscript manually. It is not only time-consuming but there was also
possibility of transcribing words wrongly.
Let’s Learn