Art & Culture GK Questions with Answers – Page 7

Chowk purana, also written chowkpurna, means the filling in of the chowk, the square of the courtyard.

Muggu is the Telugu cousin of the Tamil kolam, drawn in rice flour or white powder before the door, often around a grid of dots.

Jhoti and chita are drawn with a thin white paste of ground rice, applied with a piece of cloth or with the fingertips, on the floor and the walls around the door.

Aripan, also written aripana, is drawn with a paste of ground rice on the floor of the courtyard, the place of worship and the marriage pavilion.

A pookalam is laid in concentric rings of petals, leaves and whole flowers, and a fresh one is made on each of the ten days of the festival, growing larger as the days pass, with competitions for the best design in schools, offices and neighbourhoods.

In aipan the surface is first washed with geru, the local red ochre, and the pattern is then drawn on it with a white paste of ground rice using the fingers.

Alpana, or alpona, is applied wet: rice is soaked, ground into a white paste and painted on the floor with a cloth wick or with the fingers, which lets the artist draw flowing creepers, paddy sheaves, lotuses, owls and footprints.

Mandana reverses the usual method: the floor or the lower wall is first washed with geru, the red ochre of the region, and the design is then laid over it in white chalk or lime, so the figure is light on a red field.

The kolam is the Tamil threshold drawing, made each morning in white rice flour on ground that has been swept and sprinkled.

The best-known Chandimangala, Chandimangal or Abhayamangal, was composed in Bengali by Mukundarama Chakravarti, honoured as Kavikankan, in the late 16th century.

The temple at Mitaoli near Morena is a circular yogini shrine built under the Kachchhapaghatas, and its round, colonnaded plan is popularly linked with the old Parliament House.

Sudarsan Pattnaik is a sand artist from Puri, Odisha, known for large sculptures on the beach that carry social messages.

The Dardic languages form a branch of the Indo-Aryan group, which is part of the Indo-European family. Dardic languages are spoken in the north-west of the subcontinent: in Kashmir, Gilgit-Baltistan, Chitral and parts of Afghanistan.

Saracenic, or Indo-Islamic, architecture is built on the true arch, the vault and dome, and lime mortar, while lintel and beam belong to the older Indian style.

The correct answer is A, Pandharpur, on the Bhima river in Solapur district, where Vithoba or Vitthal, a form of Vishnu, is enshrined; Warkaris walk there in the great pilgrimage procession called the wari, carrying the palanquins of their saints, and the sect produced Jnaneshwar, Namdev, Eknath and Tukaram with…

The Dasha Mahavidyas are the ten great forms of the goddess in Tantric Shaktism, the list beginning with Kali and Tara and including Tripura Sundari, Bhuvaneshvari, Bhairavi, Chhinnamasta, Dhumavati, Bagalamukhi, Matangi and Kamala.

The Devi Mahatmya, known also as the Durga Saptashati or Chandi Path from its seven hundred verses, is a section of that Purana; it narrates the goddess slaying Mahishasura, Shumbha and Nishumbha, and is recited through Navaratri, which is why it is treated as the first full statement of the…

The correct answer is A, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, the sixteenth century Bengali saint whose movement is called Gaudiya Vaishnavism after Gauda, the old name of Bengal; its philosophy of Achintya Bheda Abheda holds the soul to be inconceivably both different from and identical with God, and its practice is the congregational…

The correct answer is B, Ramanuja, who taught Vishishtadvaita or qualified non-dualism, in which the individual soul and the world are real and dependent on God rather than illusory, and who organised Sri Vaishnavism around Srirangam, giving the Tamil hymns of the Alvars a place beside Sanskrit scripture.

The correct answer is A, Basavanna, a minister and social reformer who led the Lingayat movement, gathered thinkers in the assembly called the Anubhava Mantapa, and whose followers wear a personal ishtalinga and reject caste, priesthood and temple ritual; the movement's literature is the body of Kannada vachana poems by…