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Class 8 Social Science Chapter 3, The Rise of the Marathas: 8 practice questions with answers, and notes
In short: Chapter 3 of the NCERT Class 8 Social Science book, Exploring Society: India and Beyond (Part 1), tells how the Marathas of the Deccan grew from a group of local chiefs into the largest Indian power before the British. It covers the life of Chhatrapati Shivaji and his idea of Swarajya, the Maratha council of ministers, taxes, army, navy, forts and courts, the Peshwas and the spread across India in the 18th century, and the Marathas' cultural legacy, from Ahilyabai Holkar to the Thanjavur court.
Below are short notes and 8 practice questions, each with a worked answer and the textbook page behind it. Many students search for this chapter as "Class 8 history chapter 3". The first chapter of the same book is Class 8 Social Science Chapter 1, Natural Resources and Their Use.
These questions are our own, drafted with AI help. Every number was re-computed by a script and every answer was checked against the chapter, but no practising teacher has reviewed them yet. None of them is a textbook question reworded. If you find a mistake, please tell us.
Notes: what the chapter says
Facts from Chapter 3 of Exploring Society: India and Beyond, Part 1 for Class 8 (Reprint 2026-27, pages 61 to 82), in our words:
- The timeline (pages 62-63, Fig. 3.2): 1630, Shivaji born; 1646, his rule begins; 1657, the Maratha navy founded; 1666, held at Agra and escapes; 1674, crowned at Raigad; 1677, the campaign to the south; 1680, his death; 1682-1707, the Mughal-Maratha wars; 1754, Maratha control over Delhi begins; 1761, defeat at Panipat; 1775-1782, the First Anglo-Maratha War, a Maratha win; 1818, the Third Anglo-Maratha War ends Maratha power.
- Who the Marathas are (pages 62-64): people of the Deccan plateau, mainly today's Maharashtra, who speak Marathi, a language with written works from the 12th century on. Bhakti saints such as Dnyaneshwar, Namdev, Tukaram and Ramdas brought texts like the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita into Marathi, which gave Maratha society a strong cultural base.
- Shivaji's rise (pages 64-67): born into the Bhonsle clan to Shahji and Jijabai, he grew up on the family's jagir at Pune. At 16 he began capturing neglected forts; his aim was Swarajya, self-rule. He set up a navy at a time when Bijapur had no full-time navy and the Mughals made little use of one, used guerrilla tactics, killed the Bijapur general Afzal Khan near Pratapgad, raided Shaista Khan's camp at night, and twice sacked Surat. After a defeat by Jai Singh he signed a treaty at Purandar, was held at Agra by Aurangzeb, and escaped hidden in baskets of sweets.
- King and conqueror (pages 67-69): crowned in 1674 at Raigad as "Shri Raja Shiva Chhatrapati", he started his own era and then led the southern campaign into today's northern Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. He stopped the Dutch from trading slaves in the south. He died of a fever at fifty.
- After Shivaji (pages 69-70): his son Sambhaji was captured and executed by Aurangzeb, who also took Raigad; Rajaram moved to Gingee, and after him Rajaram's queen Tarabai sent armies north. The state became looser, with the Peshwa ("prime minister") holding real power; Bajirao I and Nanasaheb led the spread across India. The Marathas lost to the Afghans at Panipat in 1761, recovered under Madhavrao I, and under Mahadji Shinde retook Delhi in 1771. Three Anglo-Maratha wars, 1775 to 1818, ended Maratha power; the book says the British took India more from the Marathas than from anyone else.
- Running the state (pages 71-73): Shivaji ended hereditary posts and land grants for officials, paid salaries from the treasury and transferred officials often; widows of soldiers got pensions. A council of eight ministers (the ashta pradhan mandal) helped him. Provinces outside direct rule paid chauth, 25 per cent, and sardeshmukhi, a further 10 per cent, in return for protection.
- Army, forts and navy (pages 73-75): infantry, cavalry and navy; bargirs rode horses paid for by the state, shiledars brought their own. Rockets were used from Shivaji's time, metal-tube rockets by 1770. Forts guarded routes and sheltered the army; his finance minister Ramachandrapant Amatya called them the core of the state. Kanhoji Angre won sea battles in the 18th century and made Europeans buy Maratha passes in place of their own cartaz.
- Courts and trade (pages 75-76): local panchayats of officials and leading men gave justice, rarely using the death penalty, with appeal to a chief; towns had a kotwal. Shivaji's ships traded as far as Mocha, Muscat and Malacca, and roads, ferries and bridges were kept up.
- Culture (pages 76-80): Shivaji's seal was in Sanskrit, not Persian, and a treatise he ordered, the Rajya-Vyavahara-Kosha, gave Sanskrit words for Persian terms. The Modi script was used for letters. Ahilyabai Holkar ruled the Holkar state around Indore for thirty years, built ghats, wells and roads across India, and revived Maheshwar weaving. Ekoji, Shivaji's half-brother, began Maratha rule at Thanjavur; there Serfoji II wrote the play Devendra Kuravanji, opened the Dhanwantari Mahal for free treatment, and started the first printing press run by an Indian ruler.
Shivaji's life
Question 1. (a) Put these in order, earliest first: Shivaji's coronation at Raigad; the founding of the Maratha navy; his escape from Agra; his birth; the start of his rule; his death. (b) Using the timeline, how old was he when his rule began, and how old at his coronation? (c) The chapter says he died at fifty. Check this from the timeline. (d) How many years did the Mughal-Maratha wars on the timeline last?
Answer: (a) birth (1630), start of rule (1646), navy (1657), Agra (1666), coronation (1674), death (1680); (b) 16, and 44; (c) 1680 − 1630 = 50, so the two agree; (d) 25 years. (a) The dates are on the timeline, Fig. 3.2 (page 62). (b) 1646 − 1630 = 16, the age at which the chapter says he began his campaigns (page 64); 1674 − 1630 = 44. (c) Page 69. (d) 1707 − 1682 = 25 (page 62).
Question 2. Match each event (a)-(f) to the place (i)-(vi) where the chapter puts it.
- Events: (a) the meeting at which Afzal Khan was killed; (b) the treaty Shivaji signed after his defeat by Jai Singh; (c) Shivaji kept under house arrest; (d) the coronation of 1674; (e) where Rajaram went after Sambhaji's death; (f) the region Ekoji conquered in the late 17th century.
- Places: (i) Agra; (ii) Thanjavur; (iii) Raigad; (iv) Gingee; (v) Purandar Fort; (vi) the foot of Pratapgad fort.
Answer: (a)-(vi); (b)-(v); (c)-(i); (d)-(iii); (e)-(iv); (f)-(ii). Pratapgad is on page 65, Purandar on page 66, Agra and Raigad on page 67, Gingee on page 69 and Thanjavur on page 78. Gingee, in today's Tamil Nadu, carried the Mughal-Maratha war into south India (page 69).
How the Marathas governed
Question 3. (a) Name the minister in Shivaji's council of eight who held each post: (i) finance; (ii) prime minister; (iii) land revenue; (iv) intelligence; (v) foreign affairs; (vi) commander-in-chief; (vii) chief justice; (viii) religious affairs. (b) Name two changes Shivaji made in how officials were appointed and paid. (c) Why were officials moved from post to post?
Answer: (a) (i) Amatya; (ii) Pradhan; (iii) Sachiv; (iv) Mantri; (v) Sumant; (vi) Senapati; (vii) Nyayadhish; (viii) Panditrao; (b) he ended hereditary posts and land grants, and paid every official a salary from the treasury; (c) so that no official grew strong enough to dictate terms to the king. (a) The council is shown in Fig. 3.13 (page 72), with the Chhatrapati, the king, at its centre. (b) and (c) Page 71, which adds that he gave pensions to soldiers' widows and posts in the army to their sons.
Question 4. A made-up province outside direct Maratha rule collects ₹2,00,000 in revenue in a year. (a) How much would it pay as chauth at the chapter's rate? (b) Take sardeshmukhi as a further 10 per cent of the same revenue. How much is that? (c) What is the total, and what percentage of the revenue is it? (d) What did the province get in return?
Answer: (a) ₹50,000; (b) ₹20,000; (c) ₹70,000, which is 35 per cent; (d) Maratha protection, with no interference in how it ran its own affairs. (a) Chauth was 25 per cent (page 73): 2,00,000 × 25 ÷ 100 = 50,000. (b) 2,00,000 × 10 ÷ 100 = 20,000. (c) 50,000 + 20,000 = 70,000, and 25 + 10 = 35 per cent. (d) Page 73, which adds that the Mughals accepted this through treaties and some of these provinces later joined the Maratha Empire.
Question 5. (a) What were the three parts of the Maratha armed forces? (b) In the cavalry, how did a bargir differ from a shiledar? (c) What was a cartaz, and how did the Marathas turn the practice round under Kanhoji Angre? (d) In 1665 four of Shivaji's ships were seized at Muscat. Why did the ruler there pull back his own ships?
Answer: (a) infantry, cavalry and navy; (b) the state paid for a bargir's horse and kit, while a shiledar bought his own; (c) a trade pass that European navies forced Indian ships to buy, on pain of losing the ship; the Marathas began to make European ships buy passes from them; (d) he heard that Shivaji's navy had more than a hundred ships. (a) and (b) Page 73. (c) Page 74: the Europeans answered by calling Kanhoji Angre a pirate. (d) Page 75.
After Shivaji, and the Maratha legacy
Question 6. (a) What does the Persian word "Peshwa" mean? (b) Which queen sent large Maratha armies into Mughal lands in the north while Aurangzeb was in the Deccan? (c) Mahadji Shinde retook Delhi in 1771, and the chapter says it stayed with the Marathas until the British took it three decades later. In about which year was that? (d) How many years separate the start of the first Anglo-Maratha war and the end of the third? (e) Give the two reasons the chapter gives for the British win.
Answer: (a) prime minister; (b) Tarabai; (c) about 1801; (d) 43 years; (e) growing disunity among the Marathas, and the better organisation and technology of the British. (a) Page 70. (b) Pages 69 and 77, which call her the architect of the northward expansion. (c) 1771 + 30 = 1801; "three decades" is a round figure, so the answer is approximate (page 70). (d) 1818 − 1775 = 43 (page 70). (e) Page 70.
Question 7. Match each person (a)-(e) to what the chapter credits them with (i)-(v).
- People: (a) Ahilyabai Holkar; (b) Serfoji II; (c) Ramachandrapant Amatya; (d) Nana Phadnavis; (e) Kanhoji Angre.
- Credits: (i) the first pan-Indian alliance against the British, joined even by Hyder Ali and the Nizam; (ii) many naval victories in the 18th century, through clever use of the coastline; (iii) reviving the Maheshwar handloom weaving of Madhya Pradesh; (iv) the Adnyapatra, which calls forts the core of the state; (v) a centre for free medical treatment and a printing press at Thanjavur.
Answer: (a)-(iii); (b)-(v); (c)-(iv); (d)-(i); (e)-(ii). Ahilyabai is on page 77, Serfoji II on page 79, Ramachandrapant Amatya and the Adnyapatra on page 74, Nana Phadnavis on page 71 and Kanhoji Angre on page 74.
Check your reasoning
Question 8. For each pair, choose: (A) both true, and R explains A; (B) both true, but R does not explain A; (C) A true, R false; (D) A false, R true.
- Pair 1. Assertion: Shivaji set up a navy. Reason: His kingdom had reached the west coast, and he wanted to secure the coast's resources.
- Pair 2. Assertion: Shivaji paid his officials a salary from the state treasury. Reason: Shivaji was crowned at Raigad in 1674.
- Pair 3. Assertion: The Marathas were defeated at Panipat in 1761. Reason: After Panipat, the Marathas never held Delhi again.
- Pair 4. Assertion: The Bijapur Sultanate kept a full-time navy that guarded its coast. Reason: The Bijapur Sultanate had merchant ships.
Answer: Pair 1 (A); Pair 2 (B); Pair 3 (C); Pair 4 (D). Pair 1: the chapter gives this as his reason (page 65). Pair 2: both are true (pages 67 and 71), but the coronation does not explain the pay system. Pair 3: the defeat is true, but they recovered and retook Delhi in 1771 (page 70), so R is false. Pair 4: Bijapur had merchant ships but no full-time navy to protect the coast (page 65), so A is false and R is true.
Practise more, and check your marks
- The first chapter of the same book: Class 8 Social Science Chapter 1, Natural Resources and Their Use, practice questions.
- Earlier Indian history, from the Class 9 book: Class 9 State and Society up to 1000 CE, practice questions.
- If your old notes use different Class 8 chapter names: Class 8 old NCERT chapter names and where they are now.
- For a 3-mark history answer, give one point per mark and tie each to the chapter: a name, a date or a place, as the answers above do.
- Using an AI to check your answers: how to use ChatGPT for homework without cheating yourself. The Class 8 Social Science book changed in 2025, and an AI may answer from the older Class 8 history book, so check its answer against your textbook page.
Where CMDLearn fits
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Sources
All opened and read on 4 November 2026. Page numbers are the printed page numbers of the textbook (PDF page + 60).
- NCERT, Exploring Society: India and Beyond, Social Science textbook, Part 1 for Class 8 (Reprint 2026-27), Chapter 3 "The Rise of the Marathas", pages 61-82 (the timeline, pages 62-63; Shivaji's rise and reign, pages 64-69; after Shivaji, pages 69-71; administration, pages 71-73; army, forts and navy, pages 73-75; courts and trade, pages 75-76; culture and the Maratha legacy, pages 76-80): ncert.nic.in/textbook/pdf/hees103.pdf
- NCERT, the same book's opening pages (First Edition July 2025, Reprinted March 2026; contents, Chapter 3 at page 61): ncert.nic.in/textbook/pdf/hees1ps.pdf
The facts are from the textbook pages above. The questions, the made-up province and its revenue, and the worked answers are our own, and every number was re-computed by script. This guide is general information; follow your teacher and your school's syllabus.
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