Art & Culture Previous Year Questions (PYQ) with Answers – Page 11

The Buland Darwaza, the lofty gateway on the south side of the Jama Masjid at Fatehpur Sikri, was raised by Akbar in 1575 to mark his conquest of Gujarat.

Pietra dura, an Italian term meaning hard stone, is the craft of cutting coloured semi-precious stones and setting them into marble to form flowers and creepers.

Dabu is a mud resist hand block printing craft of Rajasthan, practised mainly at Akola in Chittorgarh and at Bagru and Sanganer near Jaipur.

Lavani is the best known folk dance of Maharashtra, performed by women in a nine-yard sari to the beat of the dholki.

Hampi on the Tungabhadra in Karnataka was the capital of the Vijayanagara empire, and its Virupaksha, Vittala and Hazara Rama temples are Dravidian work of the most elaborate kind: walled enclosures, towering gopurams, pillared kalyana mandapas, the famous stone chariot and the musical pillars.

The garbhagriha, the womb house, is the small square windowless cell that holds the image of the presiding deity. Every other part of a temple is added around it: the tower rises over it, the hall stands in front of it and the circumambulatory passage runs around it.

The Hornbill Festival is held every year from 1 to 10 December at Kisama Heritage Village near Kohima, the capital of Nagaland.

Ghoomar is a folk dance of Rajasthan performed by women in long, flared skirts called ghaghras, who spin gracefully in circles.

Baiju, also called Baiju Nayak, was the leading singer at the court of Raja Man Singh Tomar in Gwalior and later served Sultan Bahadur Shah of Gujarat.

Kharosthi was written from right to left, like the Aramaic script from which it grew. It was the script of Gandhara in the north-west, now in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and was used roughly from the third century BCE to the third century CE, mostly for Prakrit.

The Elephanta caves are Shaiva rock-cut shrines, and their imagery is linked by scholars to the Pashupata order of Shiva worshippers.

In November 2018 the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion of the Commerce Ministry launched a common logo for GI-tagged products with the tagline "Invaluable Treasures of Incredible India".

Stupas grew up near towns and along trade routes, where traders and townspeople could visit and fund them. A stupa is a hemispherical mound built over relics of the Buddha or of revered monks.

The Nalayira Divya Prabandham, the 4,000 sacred verses of Tamil Vaishnavism, is the work of the twelve Alvars, gathered into one collection in the 10th century.

Ginans are the devotional hymns of the Khoja Ismailis, composed by their pirs in Indian languages and sung in their prayer halls.

Its careful restoration earned the Award of Merit in UNESCO's Asia-Pacific Awards for Cultural Heritage Conservation, 2017. The Sri Ranganathaswamy Temple stands on Srirangam, an island in the Kaveri near Tiruchirappalli in Tamil Nadu.

Keoladeo, Sundarbans and Kaziranga national parks are UNESCO World Heritage Sites, while Ranthambore National Park is not one in its own right.

Khasi, spoken mainly in Meghalaya, belongs to the Mon-Khmer group of the Austric (Austro-Asiatic) languages, along with its close relatives Pnar and War.

Sthanakvasi is a sub-sect of the Svetambara branch of Jainism that rejects idol worship. Jainism split early into two main branches, Digambara and Svetambara.

The huge open-air rock relief at Mahabalipuram (Mamallapuram) in Tamil Nadu, known as the Descent of the Ganga or Arjuna's Penance, shows the river coming down from heaven to the earth.