Books & Authors GK Questions with Answers – Page 2

The remark that the commerce of India is the commerce of the world, and that whoever commands it exclusively is the dictator of Europe, is attributed to Peter the Great, Tsar of Russia from 1682 to 1725.

Narayana Bhatta, a Vaishnava scholar of the sixteenth century, wrote the Sanskrit text Vraja Bhakti Vilasa in 1552, describing the sacred sites of the Braj region around Mathura and Vrindavan.

Binodini Dasi, a leading actress of the Bengali stage, wrote Amar Katha ("My Story"), which first appeared in parts between 1910 and 1913 and was published as a book in 1913.

Rameshwar Bhattacharya's best-known work is the Shivayan, also called Shivasankirtan, a long Bengali poem on Shiva composed in the early eighteenth century.

In this poem Amir Khusrau sets out to show that India is superior to other lands, praising its climate, its languages, its arts and music, and even its animals.

Gandhi wrote Hind Swaraj, or Indian Home Rule, in Gujarati in 1909. He wrote it in about ten days on board the ship Kildonan Castle while returning from London to South Africa.

Netaji wrote The Indian Struggle, his own political account of India's freedom movement. Bose wrote the first part, covering 1920 to 1934, while living in Europe for medical treatment; it was published in London in 1935 and was banned in India by the British government.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote the Discourse on Political Economy in 1755, first as the article "Economy" for Diderot's Encyclopédie.

Tomb of Sand is the English translation of her Hindi novel Ret Samadhi. Ret Samadhi was translated into English by the American translator Daisy Rockwell.

In Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay's Bengali novel Anandamath (1882), the monk-rebels are shown three images of the Mother Goddess standing for the motherland: as she was, as she is and as she will be.

The words 'ascending sense of reverence and descending sense of contempt' are Ambedkar's own description of how the caste order works.

Bankim died in 1894, more than fifty years before the Partition of 1947, so he could not have written about it.

The Kiratarjuniya, a Sanskrit epic poem of the sixth century, was written by Bharavi. The Kiratarjuniya tells, in 18 cantos, a story from the Vana Parva of the Mahabharata: Arjuna performs penance to win divine weapons, and Shiva tests him by appearing as a Kirata, a mountain hunter.

Madhyama-vyayoga is a one-act Sanskrit play by Bhasa, based on an episode from the Mahabharata. Bhasa is one of the earliest known Sanskrit dramatists, admired by Kalidasa himself.

The revolutionary Sachindranath Sanyal wrote Bandi Jivan, an account of his life as a prisoner. Sanyal was closely linked with Rash Behari Bose in the Banaras conspiracy and was sent to the Cellular Jail in the Andamans.

While held in Yerwada jail, Gandhi translated old Indian hymns and devotional lyrics into English, and these were published as 'Songs from Prison'.

Pairs 2 and 4 are right; pairs 1 and 3 name the wrong authors. The Hammira-Mahakavya, a Sanskrit poem on the Chauhan ruler Hammira of Ranthambore, was written by the Jain poet Nayachandra Suri in the fifteenth century.

'Indian Unrest' (1910) was written by the British journalist Valentine Chirol, not by Annie Besant. Chirol, a writer for The Times, collected his articles on the rise of Indian nationalism into this book and called Bal Gangadhar Tilak the 'father of Indian unrest'.

The prose romance Vasavadatta was written by Subandhu, not Kalidasa, so this pair is wrong. Subandhu's Vasavadatta, of about the sixth or seventh century, is famous for its ornate style full of puns and long compounds.

Bharavi, a Sanskrit poet of the sixth century CE, wrote the Kiratarjuniyam. The Kiratarjuniyam is a mahakavya in eighteen cantos.