Indian History Previous Year Questions (PYQ) with Answers – Page 13

Sylhet, then a Muslim-majority district of Assam, held a referendum in July 1947, and its people voted to join East Bengal, which became part of Pakistan.

All three statements describe the royal centre of Vijayanagara (Hampi) as the archaeological study of the site records it. The royal centre lay in the south-western part of the settlement, away from the sacred centre on the bank of the Tungabhadra.

The Bengali poet Mukundaram Chakrabarti, honoured with the title Kavikankan, composed the Chandimangala in the sixteenth century. Mangalkavyas are long Bengali narrative poems in praise of a deity, and the Chandimangala celebrates the goddess Chandi.

National Handloom Day falls on 7 August precisely to honour the Swadeshi Movement launched on that date in 1905. On 7 August 1905, a large meeting at the Calcutta Town Hall passed the boycott resolution against British goods in protest against the partition of Bengal, formally launching the Swadeshi Movement.

All five were British officials and scholars who excavated and documented ancient sites, mostly in South India. Walter Elliot, a Madras civil servant, dug at the Buddhist stupa of Amaravati in the 1840s and sent its sculptures to Madras and later London.

All three statements are true: Lachit Borphukan was the Ahom commander who defeated the Mughals at Saraighat, and the NDA's best cadet receives a gold medal in his name.

Nattar does not mean a male serpent deity; the nattar were the members of the nadu, the assembly of a group of villages in early medieval Tamil Nadu.

Andal was a woman Alvar, a Vaishnava saint devoted to Vishnu, not a Nayanar. The Bhakti movement in Tamil Nadu grew between about the sixth and ninth centuries through two groups of poet-saints: the 63 Nayanars, devotees of Shiva, and the 12 Alvars, devotees of Vishnu.

Shivaji took Torna first, then Javli, then killed Afzal Khan, and later raided Shaista Khan's camp. In 1646, still a teenager, Shivaji captured the fort of Torna from the Bijapur Sultanate, his first major conquest.

Indian tradition credits Shalihotra with the science of horses, and veterinary medicine for horses came to be called Shalihotra Shastra after him.

Both statements match the Jaina tradition: the place of Mahavira's enlightenment and the meaning of asrava. Mahavira left home at about thirty and spent some twelve years in hard penance.

The Danish East India Company set up its first settlement at Tranquebar, now Tharangambadi, on the Tamil Nadu coast in 1620.

The brothers Harihara I and Bukka Raya I founded the Vijayanagara kingdom in 1336. Harihara and Bukka were sons of Sangama, so their line is called the Sangama dynasty, the first of four dynasties to rule Vijayanagara (Sangama, Saluva, Tuluva and Aravidu).

The shrauta rites did use three sacred fires, but statement 2 gets their shapes the wrong way round. Shrauta sacrifices are the grand rituals laid down in the Shrauta Sutras and the Brahmanas.

Under the Mughal mansabdari system, every officer held a numerical rank called zat, which fixed his position in the hierarchy and his personal salary.

Kanaklata Barua was shot dead by the police on 20 September 1942 while leading a procession to hoist the tricolour at the Gohpur police station in Assam.

CCE is not the name of any pottery tradition; the other three are standard pottery types of early India. Archaeologists date and group early Indian sites by the pottery found in their layers.

The Alvars were devotees of Vishnu, not of the goddess Shakti, so this pair is wrong. The Bhakti movement began in Tamil Nadu between the sixth and ninth centuries with two groups of poet-saints.

The INA drew its soldiers largely from Indian prisoners of war held by Japan, and Bose created the Rani of Jhansi Regiment for women.

The words come from the Quit India Resolution passed by the All India Congress Committee in Bombay on 8 August 1942.