Art & Culture GK Questions with Answers – Page 24

The Barabar and Nagarjuni hills lie near Gaya in Bihar and hold the oldest surviving rock-cut caves in the country, cut in the Mauryan period in the third century BCE and connected with the Ajivika sect; their polished interiors carry the mirror-like finish known as Mauryan polish.

Charvaka, also called Lokayata and attributed to Brihaspati, rejects the authority of the Vedas, denies rebirth and a soul surviving death and holds that perception alone is a valid means of knowledge, so it is classed as nastika or heterodox along with Buddhism and Jainism.

The fourth Buddhist council met in Kashmir under the patronage of the Kushana ruler Kanishka, and it is remembered because the assembly divided into the Hinayana and Mahayana schools; the proceedings were in Sanskrit, and Vasumitra presided with Ashvaghosha associated with it.

Shankaracharya expounded Advaita or non dualism, in which Brahman alone is real, the world of appearance is maya and the individual soul is not different from Brahman; he wrote commentaries on the Brahma Sutra, the principal Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita, and is credited with establishing monastic centres in the…

Mahavira was the twenty fourth and last of the Tirthankaras, born at Kundagrama near Vaishali, who renounced the world at thirty, attained kaivalya after twelve years of austerity and attained nirvana at Pavapuri in Bihar.

The Ahmadiyya movement was founded in 1889 at Qadian in the Punjab by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, and it is one of the religious movements of modern India that grew out of the reformist debates of the nineteenth century, drawing on both Islamic tradition and the liberal ideas of the age.

Kanada, also called Uluka, composed the Vaisheshika Sutra and taught that the material world is built of indivisible atoms called paramanu, which combine to form the objects of experience; the school also classifies reality into categories or padarthas and is treated as the companion of Nyaya in logic and physics.

Nyaya is the school of logic and holds that liberation follows from correct reasoning, so it pairs with logical thinking.

The eightfold path or ashtangika marga is the fourth of the noble truths preached by the Buddha in his first sermon at Sarnath, and it names the middle way between indulgence and mortification: right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration.

Purva Mimamsa is the school founded by Jaimini, which treats the karma kanda or ritual portion of the Vedas as authoritative and holds that liberation follows from the correct performance of Vedic duty.

Ramanuja taught Vishishtadvaita or qualified non dualism, in which souls and matter are real but exist as attributes of Brahman.

Mathura did stand on major trade routes, but those routes ran from the north-west to the east and from the north to the south, not from north to east and south to west as statement (A) puts it, so (A) is wrong as worded.

The Nehru Trophy Boat Race has been rowed on Punnamada Lake at Alappuzha since 1952, when it was instituted after Jawaharlal Nehru watched a race there, and the boats used are the long snake boats called chundan vallam.

Sagol Kangjei is the Manipuri game played on ponies with a stick and a ball and is widely held to be the forerunner of modern polo, which British officers took up in Manipur and Cachar in the nineteenth century before it spread across the world; the Mapal Kangjeibung ground at…

Madhya Pradesh declared Mallakhamb its state game in 2013, and the question survives in paper after paper because the art itself is associated with Maharashtra, where it was revived in the nineteenth century as training for wrestlers.

Inbuan is the belt wrestling of Mizoram, in which a wrestler grips a belt worn round the waist of the opponent and must lift him off the ground; kicking is not allowed and the knee may not be bent, and stepping outside the circle loses the bout.

Mardani Khel is the Maratha art of armed combat from Maharashtra, and it is identified by the patta, a straight sword fixed to a gauntlet that covers the forearm, and by the vita, a corded javelin.

Thoda is the archery based contest of Himachal Pradesh, played around the Baisakhi season, in which two groups called the Pashi and the Saathi shoot blunt wooden arrows aimed below the knee of the opposing players, and dance and drumming accompany the contest.

Gatka is the Punjabi martial art fought with the soti, a wooden stick, and the farri, a shield, and it is displayed at Sikh festivals such as Hola Mohalla.

Thang-Ta is the armed component of the Manipuri martial system called Huyen Langlon, where thang means sword and ta means spear, while the unarmed component is called Sarit Sarak.