Ancient India by the Numbers: A Film Researcher's Data File

Read stone weights, a king's war figures and a table of inscriptions as historical data.

The Indus weights

A researcher is gathering data for a documentary film about ancient India. Read her notes and Table 1. Then answer the questions.

Research Notes: Ancient India by the Numbers

1From about 2600 to 1900 BCE, the cities of the Indus Valley civilization stood along the Indus River and nearby rivers, in what is now Pakistan and northwestern India. No palace or royal tomb has been clearly identified in these cities, and their writing still cannot be read, so archaeologists do not know who ran them.

2In many Indus cities, some of them hundreds of kilometers apart, archaeologists have found small cube-shaped weights cut from a hard stone called chert. The weights come in the same set of sizes from city to city (Table 1). Indus farmers were among the first people anywhere to grow cotton and weave it into cloth, and Indus traders carried goods such as carnelian beads and timber as far as Mesopotamia.

3About 1,600 years after the large Indus cities emptied, Chandragupta Maurya founded the Maurya Empire in about 321 BCE. His grandson Ashoka ruled from about 268 to 232 BCE. In about 261 BCE, Ashoka's army conquered Kalinga, a kingdom on the east coast. In a message carved on rock, Ashoka himself gave figures for the people of Kalinga who were carried away or killed (Graph 1). He wrote that the killing and suffering filled him with deep sorrow and regret. After the war he followed Buddhist teachings and spread a code of conduct he called dhamma: respect for parents and teachers, kindness to servants and animals, and tolerance of all religious groups.

4Ashoka had his messages carved on rocks and polished stone pillars across an empire that stretched from what is now Afghanistan deep into southern India. Greek-speaking settlers had lived in the far northwest since the time of Alexander the Great, and many traders there used the Aramaic alphabet (Table 2).

5Indian scholars also gathered knowledge about the body and about numbers. A medical book linked to a surgeon named Sushruta, put together over several centuries, explains how to clean wounds, set broken bones and rebuild a damaged nose with skin from the cheek, and it lists more than 100 surgical tools. Later, during the Gupta period (about 320 to 550 CE), Indian mathematicians wrote numbers with a place-value system of nine digits, and a symbol for zero came into use after that.

Table 1: Indus Cube Weights (approximate)
Size (in units)	About how many grams
1	0.9
2	1.7
4	3.4
8	6.9
16	13.7
32	27.4
64	54.8
160	137

Use Table 1.

In the smaller sizes, from 1 unit up to 64 units, each weight is times as heavy as the size before it.

Use Table 1. A bead seller's bag balances exactly when the 16-unit weight and the 8-unit weight sit together on the other pan of a scale. About how much does the bag weigh?

A. About 13.7 grams
B. About 110 grams
C. About 24 grams
D. About 20.6 grams

Weights of the same sizes turn up in Indus cities hundreds of kilometers apart. What does this evidence most likely suggest?

A. A famous Indus king ordered the weights, as his tomb shows.
B. Traders in different cities used shared rules for weighing.
C. Indus traders sold their goods inside their own city.
D. Each city's rulers made up a different set of weights.

Indus traders reached Mesopotamia, but their writing still cannot be read. What evidence do archaeologists most likely rely on to learn about Indus trade?

A. Price lists kept by Maurya officials
B. Trade laws written down by Indus kings
C. Objects such as weights and beads found at many sites
D. Letters that Indus merchants wrote home

Ashoka in the data

Use Graph 1, Table 2 and paragraphs 3 and 4 of the notes.

Use Graph 1.

According to Ashoka, about thousand more people of Kalinga were carried away than were killed.

Historians use the figures in Graph 1 with care. Which reason best explains why?

A. A Greek visitor wrote the figures down long after the war.
B. They are round numbers given by the king whose army won.
C. The figures count soldiers from Ashoka's own army.
D. Kalinga's own rulers carved the figures after they won.

Underline the sentence from paragraph 3 that gives the reason Ashoka himself offered for changing the way he ruled.

His grandson Ashoka ruled from about 268 to 232 BCE.In about 261 BCE, Ashoka's army conquered Kalinga, a kingdom on the east coast.He wrote that the killing and suffering filled him with deep sorrow and regret.After the war he followed Buddhist teachings and spread a code of conduct he called dhamma: respect for parents and teachers, kindness to servants and animals, and tolerance of all religious groups.

Table 2: Where Some of Ashoka's Messages Were Carved
Site (country today)	Part of the empire	Script	Language
Kandahar (Afghanistan)	Far northwest edge	Greek and Aramaic	Greek and Aramaic
Shahbazgarhi (Pakistan)	Northwest	Kharosthi	Prakrit
Girnar (India)	West	Brahmi	Prakrit
Sarnath (India)	Ganges plain	Brahmi	Prakrit
Dhauli (India)	East coast, in Kalinga	Brahmi	Prakrit

Which conclusion does Table 2 best support?

A. Greek was the main language of the Maurya court.
B. Brahmi was used mainly at the far northwest edge.
C. Ashoka's messages used scripts local readers knew.
D. Kalinga was left out of Ashoka's messages.

Use Table 2 and paragraph 4. Which readers were the Kandahar messages most likely meant to reach?

A. Greek and Aramaic readers near the border
B. Farmers living in conquered Kalinga
C. Traders from the old Indus cities
D. Officials in the Maurya capital on the Ganges

Medicine, math and the record

Use the whole data file.

10.

Sort each achievement or practice from the notes by the field it belongs to.

Weights that double in sizeRebuilding a nose with skin from the cheekCarving a code of conduct on stone pillarsWriting numbers with place valueListing more than 100 surgical toolsChoosing a script for each region

Math and measurement	Medicine	Governing the empire

11.

Some people believe that people long ago were less skilled than people today. Which detail from the notes best challenges that idea?

A. Surgeons described rebuilding a nose with cheek skin.
B. Ashoka's grandfather founded the Maurya Empire.
C. The large Indus cities had emptied by about 1900 BCE.
D. Ashoka's figures for Kalinga were round numbers.

12.

Which source tells historians more about how its society was organized: the Indus weights (Table 1) or Ashoka's inscriptions (Graph 1 and Table 2)? State your claim, give two pieces of evidence from the data file, explain your reasoning, and name one thing your source cannot tell us.