Art & Culture Mixed Quiz: Set 17

The correct answer is B, Karnataka. Yakshagana is the folk theatre of coastal Karnataka, performed mainly in the Dakshina Kannada, Udupi and Uttara Kannada districts. A show once ran all night and mixes dance, music, spoken dialogue and tall painted headgear with bright face make-up, and its stories are drawn from the Ramayana, the Mahabharata and the Puranas. A singer called the Bhagavata leads from the side with the chande and maddale drums and a harmonium, and the actors build their dialogue around his verses as they go, so no two performances are quite the same. It is played mostly in Kannada, and a Tulu form also exists. A is wrong because Kerala's comparable temple theatre forms are Kathakali and Koodiyattam. C is wrong because Haryana is known for Dhamal, Phag and Khoria. D is wrong because Rajasthan is known for Ghoomar, Kalbelia and Chari. Exam tip: Yakshagana belongs to coastal Karnataka, while the similar-looking Kathakali belongs to Kerala.

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 C, Sun Temple, Konark. The Sun Temple at Konark in Odisha is called the Black Pagoda, a name European sailors gave it because its dark stone tower stood out as a landmark along the coast, in contrast to the whitewashed Jagannath temple at Puri, which they called the White Pagoda. It was built in the thirteenth century by Narasimhadeva I of the Eastern Ganga dynasty in the Kalinga style, and the whole structure is shaped as the chariot of the sun god, with twelve pairs of carved stone wheels and seven horses drawing it. It became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1984. A is wrong because Omkareshwar is a Jyotirlinga on an island in the Narmada in Madhya Pradesh, not at Puri. B is wrong because the Somnath temple in Gujarat is a Jyotirlinga rebuilt many times after raids. D is wrong because the Jagannath temple stands at Puri in Odisha and is the White Pagoda. Exam tip: Konark is the Black Pagoda and Puri's Jagannath temple the White Pagoda.

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 C, Nandighosha. In the Rath Yatra of Puri, three chariots are drawn from the Jagannath temple to the Gundicha temple in the month of Ashadha. Nandighosha, the tallest of the three and yellow and red in colour, carries Jagannath. The ropes are pulled by lakhs of devotees, and the return journey is called Bahuda Yatra.

Option A, Taladhwaja, is the chariot of Balabhadra, the elder brother, and carries the palm tree emblem in its name. Option B, Darpadalana, is the chariot of Subhadra, the sister, and is the smallest of the three. Option D, Padmadhwaja, is not one of the Puri chariots at all and is put in as a plausible Sanskrit-sounding distractor. The set of three names is asked in almost this exact form.

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 B, Nagaland. The Hornbill Festival is held at the Naga Heritage Village at Kisama, near Kohima, from 1 to 10 December, and it opens on the day Nagaland became a state. Every major Naga tribe puts up its morung, or dormitory house, and the days are filled with log-drum pulling, wrestling, Naga chilli eating contests and folk songs. The festival takes its name from the hornbill, the bird whose feathers appear on Naga headgear.

Option A, Manipur, holds the Sangai Festival in November. Option C, Tripura, is the state of Kharchi Puja and the Garia festival. Option D, Meghalaya, holds Wangala, Behdienkhlam and the Shad Nongkrem dance. All three are North Eastern states with their own showpiece festivals, which is why they appear as distractors, but Kisama is in Nagaland.

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 B, African-Asian. There is no language family by that name in India. The Afro-Asiatic family, which the name echoes, covers Arabic, Hebrew and the Berber and Cushitic languages of West Asia and North Africa, and no Indian language belongs to it. Option A is wrong because the Tibeto-Burman family, a branch of the Sino-Tibetan family, is very much present in India and covers Manipuri, Bodo, Lepcha, Ladakhi and the Naga languages of the north-east. Option C is wrong because the Dravidian family is the second largest family in the country and covers Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Tulu and Gondi. Option D is wrong because the Austro-Asiatic or Munda family is spoken in Jharkhand, Odisha and Meghalaya and covers Santali, Mundari, Ho and Khasi. The families actually found in India are Indo-Aryan, Dravidian, Austro-Asiatic, Tibeto-Burman, and the small Andamanese and Tai-Kadai groups.

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, Darjeeling tea. After the Geographical Indications of Goods (Registration and Protection) Act, 1999 came into force on 15 September 2003, the tea of the Darjeeling hills was the first Indian good entered in the register, and its logo is still the best known Indian GI abroad. Option A is wrong because Mysore silk of Karnataka was registered later, though it is often given as a distractor because it was among the early entries. Option C is wrong because the Pashmina of Kashmir, woven from the fleece of the Changthangi goat, received its protection several years after Darjeeling tea. Option D is wrong because the Banaras brocades and saris of Uttar Pradesh were registered in the second half of the decade, after a long fight against machine made imitations. Remember the pair: first Act 1999, first GI Darjeeling tea.

The correct answer is A, Andhra Pradesh. Tholu Bommalata is the leather shadow puppet theatre of Andhra Pradesh.

The name means the dance of leather dolls. Puppets are cut from goat or deer hide, dyed on both sides so the colours glow when a lamp throws their shadow on a cloth screen, and worked from behind while singers and a harmonium and drums carry the story. The plays are drawn from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata and often run through the night. India has four famous shadow puppet forms: Tholu Bommalata here, Togalu Gombeyaata in Karnataka, Ravanachhaya in Odisha and Tholpavakoothu in Kerala.

Option B is wrong because Karnataka's shadow form is Togalu Gombeyaata. Option C is wrong as Kerala has Tholpavakoothu, performed in Bhagavati temples. Option D is wrong because Maharashtra's puppet tradition is Kalasutri Bahulya, worked with strings.

Exam tip: leather shadow puppets - Andhra Pradesh; string puppets - Rajasthan's Kathputli.

The correct answer is A, Kushana. The Gandhara school of art grew in the north-west, around Peshawar and Taxila, and reached its height under the Kushana rulers, above all Kanishka, in the first and second centuries. Its sculptors worked in grey schist and later in stucco, and they gave the Buddha a Greek-Roman face: wavy hair, a sharp nose, heavy drapery falling in folds, and a halo behind the head. This blending of styles is why it is called the Greco-Buddhist or Indo-Greek school. The Mathura school flourished in the same Kushana period but used red sandstone and a purely Indian idiom. B is wrong because the Mauryas are known for polished stone pillars and their animal capitals. C is wrong because the Nandas left no distinct school of sculpture. D is wrong because the Cholas are remembered for bronze images such as the Nataraja, many centuries later. Exam tip: Gandhara grey schist and a Greco-Roman Buddha, Mathura red sandstone — both under the Kushanas.

The correct answer is D, Ganga. Kashi, also called Varanasi or Banaras, stands on the left bank of the Ganga in eastern Uttar Pradesh and is among the oldest living cities in the world. Its name comes from the two small streams, the Varuna and the Assi, between which the old city lies. The riverfront has some eighty-four ghats, among them Dashashwamedh and Manikarnika, and the Kashi Vishwanath temple here is one of the twelve jyotirlingas. Sarnath, where the Buddha gave his first sermon, is only a few kilometres away. Option A is wrong because the Gomti flows past Lucknow and joins the Ganga near Ghazipur. Option B is wrong because the Saryu or Ghaghara flows past Ayodhya. Option C is wrong because the Yamuna passes Delhi, Mathura and Agra and meets the Ganga at Prayagraj. Exam tip: Varanasi on the Ganga, Lucknow on the Gomti, Ayodhya on the Saryu, Agra on the Yamuna.

The correct answer is C, Jammu & Kashmir. Pashmina is the very fine wool combed from the undercoat of the Changthangi goat, reared by herders on the cold high plateau of Ladakh, and it was first spun and woven into shawls in the valley of Kashmir. The craft is traced to the fifteenth century, when Sultan Zain-ul-Abidin is said to have brought weavers from Central Asia; the shawls later reached Europe and gave English the word cashmere. A single Kani or Jamawar shawl can take months on the loom, and Kashmir Pashmina now carries a GI tag. A is wrong because Uttar Pradesh is known for Banarasi silk and chikankari. B is wrong because Punjab is known for phulkari embroidery. D is wrong because Himachal Pradesh weaves Kullu shawls and Kinnauri patterns from sheep wool. Exam tip: Pashmina — Changthangi goat of Ladakh, woven in Kashmir, GI tagged.

The correct answer is C, Odisha. Patachitra is the traditional cloth-scroll painting of Odisha, closely tied to the Jagannath temple at Puri. The word comes from pata, meaning cloth, and chitra, meaning picture. Artists prepare the canvas by pasting layers of cloth with tamarind seed paste, use natural colours from conch shell, lamp black and mineral stones, and paint themes from the lives of Jagannath, Krishna and Radha with bold outlines and decorative floral borders. The village of Raghurajpur in Puri district is its best known centre and Odisha Patachitra carries a Geographical Indication tag. A is wrong because Gujarat is known for Pithora painting and Patola weaving. B is wrong because Tamil Nadu is known for Tanjore painting. D is wrong because Andhra Pradesh is known for Kalamkari and Cherial scrolls. Exam tip: Patachitra with Odisha and Raghurajpur; Madhubani with Bihar; Warli with Maharashtra; Kalamkari with Andhra Pradesh.

The correct answer is B, both statements are true, but B is not the correct explanation of A. Chola temples such as the Brihadisvara temple at Thanjavur, built by Rajaraja I, were far more than places of worship. They held land and villages, employed priests, garland makers, cooks, dancers and musicians, ran schools and craft workshops, and even lent money, so the religious, social and cultural life of the region gathered around them. Chola bronzes were cast by the lost wax method and mostly show deities such as Nataraja, Vishnu and Parvati, while a few portray donors and devotees, including saints and members of the royal family. Both statements are correct facts, but the subject matter of the bronzes does not explain why the temples were social centres; their land, wealth and grants do. So option A is wrong. Option C is wrong because Statement B is true, and option D is wrong because Statement A is true. Exam tip: Brihadisvara temple, Thanjavur, Rajaraja I; Chola bronzes by the lost wax method, Nataraja the most famous.

The correct answer is A, Haryana. The Surajkund International Crafts Mela is held every February at Surajkund in Faridabad district of Haryana, near the Delhi border. Craftspeople and weavers from across India set up stalls along with folk performers, one Indian state is named the theme state of the year and one or more countries are named partner nations, which makes the fair international in name.

Option B, Rajasthan, holds the Pushkar Fair on Kartik Purnima and the Desert Festival at Jaisalmer. Option C, Uttar Pradesh, holds the Magh Mela and the Kumbh at Prayagraj and the Taj Mahotsav at Agra. Option D, Punjab, has the Hola Mohalla at Anandpur Sahib and the rural sports meet at Kila Raipur. Surajkund itself is a reservoir built in the time of the Tomara rulers.

The correct answer is C, Telangana. The Sammakka Saralamma Jatara, usually called the Medaram Jatara, is held at Medaram in the Mulugu district of Telangana, once in two years in the month of Magha. It honours Sammakka and her daughter Saralamma, remembered as Koya women who fought the rulers of the Kakatiya kingdom, and the Koya tribe leads the rituals. Devotees offer bellam, or jaggery, equal to their own weight, and the fair draws a tribal crowd larger than any other in the country.

Option A, Chhattisgarh, holds the long Bastar Dussehra. Option B, Odisha, holds the Puri Rath Yatra and the Bali Yatra at Cuttack. Option D, Jharkhand, has Sarhul and Bhagta Parab. All are strong tribal states, but the Medaram Jatara is Telangana's.

The correct answer is A, Kannada. Kannada is one of the four major Dravidian languages, the others being Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam, and it is the official language of Karnataka. Option B is wrong because Hindi belongs to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European family and descends through Prakrit and Apabhramsha from Sanskrit. Option C is wrong because Oriya, now written as Odia, is also an Indo-Aryan language and is the official language of Odisha. Option D is wrong because Manipuri, also called Meitei, belongs to the Tibeto-Burman branch of the Sino-Tibetan family and is written in the Meitei Mayek script as well as in the Bengali-Assamese script. A useful rule for the exam is that the four southern State languages, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam, are Dravidian, while almost every northern and eastern State language is Indo-Aryan.