Art & Culture Mixed Quiz: Set 16

The correct answer is D, the President of India. Commemorative coins are issued by the Government of India under the Coinage Act, and the set marking the Nabakalebara of the Jagannath temple was released at a function in Puri in March 2018 by the President. Nabakalebara is the ritual in which the wooden images of Jagannath, Balabhadra, Subhadra and Sudarshana are renewed from fresh neem wood, in a year that has two months of Ashadha.

Option A, the Governor of Odisha, is the head of the state executive and does not release coins of the Union. Option B, the Chief Minister of Odisha, leads the state government, which had arranged the ceremony but did not issue the coins. Option C, the Prime Minister of India, releases commemorative coins on many occasions, which is why it is the trap here, but this particular release was made by the President.

The correct answer is D, Chhau. Chhau was inscribed on UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2010. It is a masked dance-drama of eastern India with three styles named after their homes: Seraikella in Jharkhand and Purulia in West Bengal, where masks are worn, and Mayurbhanj in Odisha, where the dancers perform without masks. The form grew out of martial training, so its steps imitate combat and the movements of birds and animals, while its stories come from the Ramayana, the Mahabharata and local legend. It is danced at the spring festival of Chaitra Parva to the beat of the dhol and the dhumsa. A is wrong because Fugdi is a women's folk dance of Goa. B is wrong because Jhoomar belongs to Punjab. C is wrong because Dalkhai is a folk dance of western Odisha. Exam tip: Indian entries on the UNESCO list include Chhau (2010), Ramlila, Kutiyattam, Vedic chanting and Sankirtana.

The correct answer is B, Nilgiri Hills. The Toda are a small pastoral people of the upper Nilgiri plateau in Tamil Nadu. They live in hamlets called munds, herd buffaloes and treat dairy work as a sacred duty carried out at the conical or barrel-vaulted temple huts that appear in every photograph of them. Their embroidery, the putukuli shawl worked in red and black, is a registered craft of the hills. The Kota, Kurumba, Irula and Badaga share the same hills with them.

Option A, the Kumaun Hills, and option D, the Garhwal Hills, are in Uttarakhand, where the Tharu, Bhotia, Jaunsari and Raji live. Option C, the Khasi Hills, are in Meghalaya, the home of the matrilineal Khasi. All three are genuine tribal regions, but only the Nilgiris of the Western Ghats are the Toda homeland.

The correct answer is B, France. Le Corbusier is counted as a French architect. He was born Charles-Édouard Jeanneret in Switzerland in 1887, settled in Paris, took French citizenship in 1930 and worked from France for the rest of his life. Jawaharlal Nehru brought him to India to plan Chandigarh, the shared capital of Punjab and Haryana, after the first planner Albert Mayer and his architect Matthew Nowicki left the project. Le Corbusier laid the city out in numbered sectors on a grid and designed the Capitol Complex in Sector 1 — the High Court, the Secretariat, the Legislative Assembly and the Open Hand monument — which UNESCO added to its World Heritage list in 2016. Option A is wrong because Germany is the home of the Bauhaus school and Walter Gropius, not of Le Corbusier. Option C is wrong because Italy is linked with Renaissance architects such as Brunelleschi and Palladio. Option D is wrong because Spain is known for Antoni Gaudí of Barcelona. Exam tip: Chandigarh — Le Corbusier; New Delhi — Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker.

The correct answer is B, Nagaland. The Hornbill Festival is held at the Naga heritage village of Kisama near Kohima from 1 to 10 December, the state formation day being 1 December. It is called the festival of festivals because every major tribe of the state sets up its own morung and presents its dances, songs, crafts, wrestling and food at a single venue, and it is named after the hornbill bird that appears in Naga folklore and headgear.

Option A, Mizoram, celebrates Chapchar Kut in spring with the bamboo dance Cheraw. Option C, Meghalaya, has Wangala of the Garo and Ka Pomblang Nongkrem of the Khasi. Option D, Manipur, has Yaoshang with the Thabal Chongba dance and Lai Haraoba. Each of these is a single-tribe or single-community festival, not a gathering of all the tribes of a state.

The correct answer is A, Greece. The Gandhara School of Art, which grew in the north west around Taxila and Peshawar between the first and fifth centuries, was shaped by Greek or Hellenistic sculpture that had reached the region after Alexander's campaign and stayed on through the Indo Greek and Kushana rulers. That is why its Buddha figures have wavy hair, sharp features, a halo without decoration and heavy robes with deep folds, carved mostly in blue grey schist. The school also produced the first images of the Buddha in human form, alongside the Mathura school. Kanishka was its best known patron. B is wrong because Roman influence came later and in small measure, mainly through trade. C and D are wrong because Hungary and Belgium had no contact with ancient India. Exam tip: Gandhara Greek and grey schist, Mathura Indian and red sandstone, Amaravati white marble.

The correct answer is D, Jharkhand. Bhagta Parab is observed by the tribal communities of Jharkhand in the weeks between spring and summer, and it is dedicated to Budha Baba. Devotees called bhagtas fast, carry water from a tank to the shrine and take part in feats of endurance, and the Chhau dance of the Seraikela and Purulia tradition is performed through the nights of the festival. Sarhul, Karma and Sohrai belong to the same festival calendar of the state.

Option A, Mizoram, celebrates Chapchar Kut, Mim Kut and Pawl Kut. Option B, Maharashtra, is the state of Ganesh Chaturthi and of the Warli people. Option C, Madhya Pradesh, holds the Bhagoria Haat of the Bhil and Bhilala before Holi, which sounds close to Bhagta Parab and is the trap in this question. Bhagta Parab, however, is a Jharkhand festival.

The correct answer is B, Painting. Amritlal Vegad, born in Jabalpur in Madhya Pradesh in 1928, was a painter and collage artist who trained at Kala Bhavan in Santiniketan under Nandalal Bose, and later taught art in Jabalpur. He is remembered for collages made from torn pieces of coloured paper, and for the sketches and paintings with which he filled his Hindi travel writing on the Narmada, a river he walked along for thousands of kilometres. That is why Madhya Pradesh papers place him with the visual arts rather than the performing arts. Option A is wrong because he worked on flat surfaces in paper and colour, not in stone or metal. Option C is wrong because he was never a singer. Option D is wrong because he had no place in music; that misreading comes from grouping every artist under the performing arts. Exam tip: Vegad, Jabalpur, painting and collage, Narmada travelogues in Hindi.

The correct answer is C, Rongali Bihu. Rongali Bihu, also called Bohag Bihu, falls in mid-April at the start of the Assamese month of Bohag and opens the new year and the sowing season. It runs for several days, begins with Goru Bihu for the cattle, and is the Bihu of the husori singing and the Bihu dance.

Option A, Magh Bihu or Bhogali Bihu, is the January harvest feast of Assam, celebrated with the meji bonfire and community eating, and it falls on the same day as Makar Sankranti. Option B, Kati Bihu or Kongali Bihu, in October, is the sober one, when lamps are lit before the tulsi plant and in the paddy fields at a time when the granary is empty. Option D, Ambubachi, is not a Bihu at all but the annual mela of the Kamakhya temple at Guwahati in June.

The correct answer is D, Mallika Sarabhai. She won the best actress award in 1975 for her role in the Gujarati film Meena Gurjari, early in a career that moved between cinema, theatre and dance. Trained by her mother Mrinalini Sarabhai in Bharatanatyam and Kuchipudi, she is also known for playing Draupadi in Peter Brook's stage and screen production of The Mahabharata, and she runs the Darpana Academy in Ahmedabad. Option A is wrong because Sonal Mansingh is an Odissi and Bharatanatyam exponent honoured with the Padma Vibhushan, not a film actress. Option B is wrong because Sitara Devi was the Kathak dancer whom Rabindranath Tagore called Nritya Samragini, and her film work came in the 1940s. Option C is wrong because Shovana Narayan is a Kathak dancer who also served as an officer of the Indian Audit and Accounts Service. Exam tip: link Mallika Sarabhai with Darpana Academy and her mother Mrinalini Sarabhai.

The correct answer is B, Maasai. The Maasai are a cattle-keeping people of East Africa, living in southern Kenya and northern Tanzania around the Rift Valley and the Serengeti. They are known for their red shuka cloth, their beadwork and their jumping dance, and they have no presence in India at all, which makes them the odd one out here.

Option A, the Gond, are the largest tribe of India and are spread across Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, Telangana and Odisha. Option C, the Santhal, are the largest tribe of eastern India, found in Jharkhand, West Bengal, Odisha and Bihar, and their language Santhali is listed in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution. Option D, the Tharu, live in the terai belt of Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar along the Nepal border. All three are Indian Scheduled Tribes.

The correct answer is B, Goa. Ranmale is a folk theatre of Goa, performed mainly in the Sattari and Sanguem areas.

It is staged at night in the open during the Shigmo festival and around Holi, in front of a village temple. Men play all the roles, including the female ones, and the episodes are taken from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, tied together by a narrator, drums and the ghumot. Goa's other well known folk forms are Jagor, Dashavatara, Kalo and Khell, and Zagor is listed among its temple traditions.

Option A is wrong because West Bengal's folk theatre is Jatra. Option C is wrong as Jharkhand is known for Chhau and Paika. Option D is wrong because Chhattisgarh's forms are Nacha and Pandavani, the ballad style made famous by Teejan Bai.

Exam tip: Ranmale, Dashavatara and Jagor - Goa; Jatra - West Bengal; Nautanki - Uttar Pradesh; Tamasha - Maharashtra; Bhavai - Gujarat.

The correct answer is A, Onam. Onam is the harvest festival of Kerala, celebrated in the Malayalam month of Chingam, and remembers the yearly return of the mythical king Mahabali to his people. Its main day is Thiruvonam, houses lay out the flower carpet called pookalam, and the long canoes called chundan vallam race on the backwaters in the Vallamkali, the best known being the Aranmula and Nehru Trophy races.

Option B, Pongal, is the four-day Tamil harvest festival of January, marked by the boiling over of the sweet pongal and by Jallikattu. Option C, Ugadi, is the new year of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Karnataka in the month of Chaitra. Option D, Vishu, is the Kerala new year in mid-April, with the auspicious arrangement called Vishukkani, and it has no boat race.

The correct answer is D, lotus. The star-shaped shrine of Gurudwara Shri Hemkund Sahib is built with a roof shaped like an upturned lotus, a flower that also appears in the story of the site. The gurudwara stands in Chamoli district of Uttarakhand at a height of over 4,600 metres, beside a glacial lake ringed by seven peaks called Sapt Shring. It is dedicated to Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth Sikh Guru, who describes the place in his composition Bachittar Natak, and the shrine stays open only from about May to October because of snow. Options A, B and C are wrong because the rose, the marigold and the sunflower have no place in the design of this gurudwara; the marigold is used in garlands and the other two are garden flowers. The lotus, on the other hand, is a standing symbol of purity in Indian religious architecture. Exam tip: Hemkund Sahib is in Uttarakhand, near the Valley of Flowers National Park.

The correct answer is B, Rajasthan. The Pushkar Fair is held at Pushkar in the Ajmer district of Rajasthan, on the bank of the Pushkar lake and beside the temple of Brahma. It runs up to Kartik Purnima, the full moon of the month of Kartik, which falls in November, and it is the best known camel and cattle fair of the country, with camel races, moustache contests and a large craft bazaar.

Option A, Gujarat, holds the Tarnetar fair at Surendranagar and the Rann Utsav in Kutch. Option C, Madhya Pradesh, has the Bhagoria Haat of the Bhil and the fair at Ujjain during the Simhastha Kumbh. Option D, Haryana, hosts the Surajkund Crafts Mela at Faridabad in February. Each is a fair state, but the Brahma temple and the camel fair of Pushkar are Rajasthan's own.

The correct answer is D, Copper and Silver. The craftspersons of Bidar were famous for inlay work in copper and silver, and the craft took the name Bidri from the town.

Bidar is in present-day Karnataka and was the capital of the Bahmani rulers and later of the Barid Shahi dynasty. In Bidriware the artisan casts an article from an alloy of zinc and copper, cuts a design into the blackened surface and presses pure silver wire or sheet into the grooves, so the bright pattern stands out against the dark body. Flower, vine and geometric patterns are the usual designs. Bidriware carries a Geographical Indication tag.

A is wrong: gold and bronze are not the metals of Bidri work. B is wrong: bronze is not inlaid in this craft. C is wrong: gold has no part in it, though copper does.

Exam tip: Bidri - Bidar in Karnataka, zinc-copper body with silver inlay, GI tagged.

The correct answer is B, Bal Gangadhar Tilak. Ganesh Chaturthi in the month of Bhadrapada had long been a household worship in Maharashtra. In 1893 Tilak organised it as a community celebration with public pandals, processions and lectures, so that people of every caste could gather in one place at a time when political meetings were watched. He used the Shivaji festival in the same way, and both became platforms of the early national movement.

Option A, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, was the moderate leader and founder of the Servants of India Society, who worked through councils rather than festivals. Option C, Jyotirao Phule, the social reformer who founded the Satyashodhak Samaj, died in 1890. Option D, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, belonged to a later generation. The 1893 date and the word public should fix the answer as Tilak.

The correct answer is C, Bihar. The Sonepur Mela is held at Sonepur in the Saran district of Bihar, where the Gandak joins the Ganga. It begins on Kartik Purnima, the same full moon as the Pushkar Fair, and is named the Harihar Kshetra Mela after the Harihar Nath temple there, which tradition links to Rama. Cattle, horses, birds and elephants were traded at it for centuries, and it remains one of the largest livestock fairs in Asia.

Option A, Odisha, holds the Bali Yatra at Cuttack on the same full moon, which is the neatest trap in this question. Option B, Uttar Pradesh, has the Nauchandi Mela at Meerut and the Magh Mela at Prayagraj. Option D, West Bengal, holds the Gangasagar Mela on Sagar Island at Makar Sankranti. Only Sonepur carries the Harihar Kshetra name.

The correct answer is B, Mizoram. Chapchar Kut is the best known festival of Mizoram, celebrated in late February or March after the jhum fields have been cleared and before the sowing. Its centrepiece is Cheraw, the bamboo dance, in which men tap long bamboo staves on the ground while women step in and out of the closing gaps, and the songs and dances Khuallam and Chheihlam are performed with it.

Option A, Tripura, is the state of Kharchi Puja and Garia Puja. Option C, Nagaland, holds the Hornbill Festival in December and tribal festivals such as Sekrenyi and Moatsu. Option D, Sikkim, observes Pang Lhabsol for the guardian deity of Khangchendzonga and Losoong as its harvest new year. Cheraw is the pointer that decides this question.

The correct answer is A, Garo. Wangala is the post-harvest thanksgiving festival of the Garo of Meghalaya, offered to Saljong, the sun god who grants the harvest. It is popularly called the festival of the hundred drums, because rows of dancers move to long drums, gongs and the buffalo-horn trumpet in the Garo Hills, and it is held around November.

Option B, the Angami, are a Naga tribe of Nagaland whose great festival is Sekrenyi, a purification festival in February. Option C, the Apatani, live in the Ziro valley of Arunachal Pradesh and celebrate Dree, an agricultural festival, and Myoko. Option D, the Bhutia, live in Sikkim and observe Losar and Losoong, the Tibetan new year festivals. All four are genuine tribes, but only the Garo keep Wangala.