Indian History GK Questions with Answers – Page 55

The Chandelas ruled Jejakabhukti, the Bundelkhand region, from Khajuraho and Mahoba, and built the Khajuraho group of temples in the Nagara style between about 950 and 1050; the Lakshmana temple belongs to Yasovarman, the Vishvanatha temple to Dhanga and the great Kandariya Mahadeva temple to Vidyadhara.

In the First Battle of Tarain in 1191 Prithviraja III of Ajmer defeated Muhammad Ghori, who was wounded and carried from the field.

The Kavirajamarga, meaning the royal road of poets, is the earliest surviving work on poetics in Kannada and is attributed to Amoghavarsha I, in whose long reign the Rashtrakuta court at Manyakheta became a centre of Kannada and Jain learning.

The Kailasa temple at Ellora, cave sixteen, was cut downwards out of a single mass of rock in his reign in the eighth century and is the largest monolithic temple in the world, dedicated to Shiva and carved with scenes from the epics.

The Pala rulers were the last great royal patrons of Buddhism in India, and Dharmapala founded Vikramashila in present-day Bhagalpur district of Bihar and also revived Nalanda and founded Odantapuri.

He was raised to the throne about 750 by the chiefs of Bengal to end a period of disorder that the Khalimpur copper plate describes with the word matsyanyaya, the law of the fishes, in which the strong devour the weak.

Kannauj on the upper Ganga had been Harsha's capital, and whoever held it was accepted as the paramount power of north India, so the Gurjara-Pratiharas, the Palas and the Rashtrakutas fought over it for more than a century.

Rana Kumbha of the Sisodia house of Mewar was both a builder and a scholar: he raised the fort of Kumbhalgarh and the Vijaya Stambha at Chittorgarh and wrote on music, the Sangeet Raj being the best known of his works, along with commentaries on the Gita Govinda.

The Pratiharas held western India and Rajasthan, the natural route from Arab-held Sindh into the Ganga plain.

The Chahamanas, known in later tradition as the Chauhans, ruled from Shakambhari and then from Ajmer, and their most famous ruler was Prithviraja III, the Rai Pithora of the ballads, who defeated Muhammad Ghori at Tarain in 1191 and was defeated and killed by him there in 1192.

Silappadikaram, the story of the anklet, is attributed to Ilango Adigal, who tradition calls the brother of the Chera king Senguttuvan, and Manimekalai, which continues the story in a Buddhist setting, is attributed to Sattanar, also known as Chithalai Chathanar.

Statement 1 is correct, because Rock Edicts II and XIII of Ashoka name the Cholas, Pandyas, Satiyaputras and Keralaputras as peoples on the southern frontier of the Mauryan empire, and this is the firmest early date available for the chapter.

The correct answer is C, Arikamedu, on the Ariyankuppam river near modern Puducherry, where excavation uncovered Roman pottery including Arretine ware, amphora sherds that once held wine and oil, and the remains of warehouses, marking it as a trading station of the first centuries of the Christian era.

The correct answer is A, Kurinji, the hilly and forested tract whose people lived by hunting and gathering.

The poems credit him with the victory at Venni, which broke the power of a Chera and Pandya alliance, with developing Puhar at the mouth of the Kaveri, and with the embankment raised across that river.

The work belongs to the Pathinenkilkanakku, the Eighteen Minor Works, and is the most widely quoted book of Tamil literature.

It is a work on Tamil grammar and poetics in three books, and because its sections on poetic conventions describe the land, the people and their occupations, historians use it as a source for Sangam society, including the five-fold division of land into kurinji, mullai, marutham, neithal and palai.

The early Cholas ruled from Uraiyur on the Kaveri and later made Puhar, also called Kaveripattinam, their capital and chief port; their emblem was the tiger.

The Sangam corpus is the oldest body of Tamil literature and includes the grammar Tolkappiyam, the Eight Anthologies, the Ten Idylls and the Eighteen Minor Works, all in Tamil.

The correct answer is A, Nedunjeliyan II, the Pandya king of Madurai who is remembered in Sangam poetry as the victor of the battle of Talaiyalanganam, in which he is said to have defeated a confederacy of the Chera and Chola kings and five lesser chieftains.