Art & Culture Previous Year Questions (PYQ) with Answers – Page 5

Jainism holds that souls (jiva) live not only in humans, animals and plants but also in earth, water, fire and air.

Bhaja is a Buddhist cave site and Sittanavasal a Jain one, but Besnagar has no Shaivite cave shrine.

Bharatanatyam grew out of Sadir Attam, also called Dasiattam, the temple dance performed by devadasis in Tamil Nadu. In the early 19th century the Tanjore Quartet, four brothers at the Thanjavur court, arranged its items into the order still followed in a recital.

Kathakali, which means 'story play', is the classical dance-drama of Kerala, performed traditionally by men, in which stories from the Ramayana and Mahabharata are told through hand gestures (mudras), eye movements and facial expressions.

Raja Parba is Odisha's three-day festival of womanhood held in mid-June, when the sun enters Mithuna (Gemini). The three days are Pahili Raja, Raja Sankranti or Mithuna Sankranti, and Basi Raja, and a ritual bath of Mother Earth, Vasumati Snana, closes it on the fourth morning.

The Quwwat-ul-Islam mosque, "Might of Islam", stands in the Qutub complex at Mehrauli in Delhi, next to the Qutub Minar and the Iron Pillar.

The Hastyayurveda, an ancient Sanskrit treatise on the care and medicine of elephants, is traditionally ascribed to the sage Palakapya.

Charvaka, also called Lokayata, is the materialist school of Indian philosophy linked with the sage Brihaspati. It accepts perception as the only valid source of knowledge, denies the soul, rebirth and the authority of the Vedas, and holds that the body is made of four elements.

In the early sculpture at sites such as Sanchi, Bharhut and Amaravati, the Buddha was not carved as a man; his presence was suggested through symbols, each tied to an event of his life.

Somnath is a Jyotirlinga and Al-Biruni described it, but the present temple was consecrated by President Rajendra Prasad, not S. Radhakrishnan.

Ramanuja taught that loving devotion (bhakti) to Vishnu and complete surrender (prapatti) are the surest path to liberation.

Statements 1 and 3 are correct; statement 2 is wrong because the woman surrounded by lotuses and elephants is a different figure, usually identified as Gajalakshmi or Maya.

Onam is the harvest festival of Kerala and is kept in the Malayalam month of Chingam, which falls in August and September.

Ugadi is the new year festival of Andhra Pradesh, and it is also kept in Telangana and Karnataka. The name comes from yuga and adi, meaning the beginning of an age, and it falls on the first day of the month of Chaitra, in March or April.

In Ujjayi the throat is slightly narrowed while breathing through the nose, so the air makes a soft continuous hiss that is commonly compared with the sound of the sea or of waves; for that reason it is called the ocean breath, and the name itself means victorious.

Indian tradition, and the Bhagavad Gita in particular, sets out three classical paths by which a seeker may reach the spirit: jnana yoga, the path of knowledge and discrimination; bhakti yoga, the path of devotion and surrender; and karma yoga, the path of selfless action performed without attachment to its…

Samatvam means equanimity or evenness, the steadiness of mind that is not shaken by success or failure, and the Bhagavad Gita uses the expression samatvam yoga uchyate, evenness of mind is called yoga.

The word yoga comes from the Sanskrit root yuj, to join or to yoke, and the classical tradition treats it as a discipline that unites the individual self with the higher self.

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.

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.