Indian History GK Questions with Answers – Page 76

The Fourth Buddhist Council met in Kashmir under the patronage of the Kushana ruler Kanishka I. Vasumitra presided over it and Ashvaghosha acted as his deputy, and its work of collecting commentaries on the canon went with the open division of Buddhism into the Mahayana and Hinayana schools.

The Nasik cave inscription praising Gautamiputra Satakarni was issued in the name of his mother Gautami Balashri, in the reign of her grandson.

Milindapanho means the questions of Milinda, and Milinda is the Indian name of the Indo-Greek king Menander, who ruled in the north-west in the second century BCE.

The Junagadh rock inscription of about 150 CE was issued by Rudradaman I, the Shaka ruler of the Western Kshatrapa line.

Brihadratha was the last ruler of the Mauryan dynasty. About 185 BCE his own commander-in-chief Pushyamitra Sunga killed him, according to tradition at a review of the army, and took the throne at Pataliputra.

The panel showing the submission of the mad elephant Nalagiri, sent by Devadatta to kill the Buddha and calmed by him in the street of Rajagriha, is among the best known carvings of the Amaravati stupa on the lower Krishna in Andhra Pradesh.

The Gathasaptasati, also written as Gatha Saptasati, is an anthology of seven hundred short verses compiled by the Satavahana king Hala.

Ashvaghosha was a Buddhist monk and Sanskrit poet at the court of the Kushana ruler Kanishka I. He wrote the Buddhacharita, a life of the Buddha in Sanskrit verse, and the Saundarananda, and he acted as deputy to Vasumitra at the Fourth Buddhist Council held in Kashmir.

Nahapana belonged to the Kshaharata family of the Shakas, the Western Kshatrapas who ruled in western India, and not to the Kushanas at all.

The main Kushana capital was Purushapura, the modern Peshawar, which Kanishka I developed as his seat of power. As the empire spread into the Ganga-Yamuna plain, Mathura on the Yamuna became its second capital and the southern headquarters of the family.

After attaining enlightenment, the Buddha walked to Sarnath near Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh and gave his first sermon there to the five ascetics who had once been his companions.

Chanda Pradyota ruled Avanti, the mahajanapada of western and central India whose capital was Ujjayini, the modern Ujjain in Madhya Pradesh.

The Diwan-i-insha was the department of royal correspondence in the Delhi Sultanate.

Balban, who ruled from 1266 to 1287, brought the Persian court customs of sijda, bowing low before the Sultan, and paibos, kissing his feet, into the Delhi court.

He founded the Swadesh Bandhab Samiti at Barisal in 1905, during the movement against the partition of Bengal.

Champa was the capital of the Anga mahajanapada, and its site lies near modern Bhagalpur in Bihar, where the Champa river meets the Ganga.

Ramanuja, born at Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu in the eleventh century, taught Vishishtadvaita, or qualified non-dualism. He held that the soul, even when it becomes one with the supreme God Vishnu, keeps its own separate existence, and that the surest way to salvation is intense devotion, bhakti, to Vishnu.

Mansab means a position or rank, and Akbar used it to place every officer of the empire on a graded ladder.

All three reasons together made Magadha the strongest mahajanapada in about two hundred years. Rivers such as the Ganga and the Son gave water for the fields, made the plain fertile and served as cheap routes for moving men and goods.

A dargah is the tomb of a Sufi saint, built over his grave and visited by people of every faith who tie threads, offer flowers and pray for their wishes.