Art & Culture Mixed Quiz: Set 22

The correct answer is B, Shudraka. Mrichchhakatika, the little clay cart, tells the story of the merchant Charudatta and the courtesan Vasantasena and is valued for its picture of ordinary city life rather than of kings. Option A is wrong because Kalidasa wrote Abhijnanashakuntalam, Malavikagnimitram and Vikramorvashiyam. Option C is wrong because Harsha, the ruler of Kanauj, is credited with Ratnavali, Nagananda and Priyadarshika. Option D is wrong because Bhavabhuti wrote Uttararamacharita and Malatimadhava. One more name worth keeping is Vishakhadatta, the author of Mudrarakshasa, which is set around Chandragupta Maurya and Chanakya, because papers place him among these four. The play was later adapted for the screen as Utsav, and it is counted among the finest works of the classical Sanskrit stage. Shudraka himself is described in the prologue of the play as a king, though nothing certain is known about him.

The correct answer is B, Bihar. The Barabar and Nagarjuni hills lie near Gaya in Bihar and hold the oldest surviving rock-cut caves in the country, cut in the Mauryan period in the third century BCE and connected with the Ajivika sect; their polished interiors carry the mirror-like finish known as Mauryan polish. Option A is wrong because Maharashtra has the far more numerous Western Deccan caves at Bhaja, Karle, Ajanta and Ellora, but all of these are later. Option C is wrong because Odisha has the Udayagiri and Khandagiri Jain caves of Kharavela, which belong to the first century BCE. Option D is wrong because Madhya Pradesh is the home of the Sanchi and Bharhut stupas and the Bagh caves, not of the earliest rock-cut excavations. Fix the sequence as Barabar first, then the Deccan chaityas, then Ajanta and Ellora.

The correct answer is C, Madhya Pradesh. Madhya Pradesh declared Mallakhamb its state game in 2013, and the question survives in paper after paper because the art itself is associated with Maharashtra, where it was revived in the nineteenth century as training for wrestlers. Option A is therefore the trap: Maharashtra is the home of the art but it is not the state that adopted it as its state game. Option B is wrong; Chhattisgarh has no such declaration on record in the standard lists. Option D is wrong because Rajasthan is not linked to Mallakhamb at all. Read the stem carefully in such questions, since a paper setter can ask either where the art comes from or which state adopted it, and the two answers are different. Mallakhamb was also among the indigenous games added to the Khelo India Youth Games from 2021.

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 D, Gautam Buddha. The eightfold path or ashtangika marga is the fourth of the noble truths preached by the Buddha in his first sermon at Sarnath, and it names the middle way between indulgence and mortification: right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration. Option A, Shankaracharya, taught Advaita Vedanta, in which liberation comes from the knowledge that Brahman alone is real; he set out no eightfold path. Option B, Mahavir Swami, taught the triratna of right faith, right knowledge and right conduct and five great vows, so his scheme is threefold and fivefold, not eightfold. Option C, Ramanuja, taught Vishishtadvaita and the path of devotion or prapatti. Candidates also confuse this path with the eight limbs of Patanjali's yoga, which are yama to samadhi and belong to a different tradition.

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, a carved cow representing the South direction. The abacus of the Sarnath capital carries four animals, not a cow: an elephant, a horse, a bull and a lion, and in the usual reading the horse stands for the south while the bull stands for the west. There is no cow anywhere on the capital, so option A is the component that does not exist. Option B is wrong as a choice because four lions standing back to back are the topmost element of the capital and the reason for its name. Option C is wrong because four twenty-four spoked Dharma Chakras separate the animals on the abacus, and one of them was placed at the centre of the national flag. Option D is wrong because the whole capital rests on an inverted lotus shaped like a bell. The capital was adopted as the State Emblem of India on 26 January 1950.

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, polo. Sagol Kangjei is the Manipuri game played on ponies with a stick and a ball and is widely held to be the forerunner of modern polo, which British officers took up in Manipur and Cachar in the nineteenth century before it spread across the world; the Mapal Kangjeibung ground at Imphal is among the oldest polo grounds anywhere. Option A is wrong because field hockey developed separately and has no such Manipuri ancestry. Option C is wrong, though it is a reasonable guess, because the Manipuri game that resembles rugby is Yubi Lakpi, in which players carry a greased coconut to the goal. Option D is wrong; the archery tradition of the hills is Thoda in Himachal Pradesh. The word sagol means pony in Manipuri, which is a useful hook for remembering the answer.

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, A-4, B-3, C-1, D-2. Nyaya is the school of logic and holds that liberation follows from correct reasoning, so it pairs with logical thinking. Mimamsa treats the ritual portion of the Vedas as binding and holds that salvation comes from performing Vedic rituals. Samkhya teaches that bondage ends with the acquisition of real knowledge, namely the discrimination of purusha from prakriti. Vedanta rests on the Upanishads and holds that liberation comes from knowledge of the self as identical with Brahman. Option A is wrong because it assigns knowledge of the self to Nyaya and logical thinking to Mimamsa, reversing both. Option C is wrong because it gives Nyaya the acquisition of real knowledge, which belongs to Samkhya. Option D is wrong because it makes Nyaya the school of Vedic ritual, a pairing that belongs to Mimamsa alone.

The correct answer is C, Manipur. Thang-Ta is the armed component of the Manipuri martial system called Huyen Langlon, where thang means sword and ta means spear, while the unarmed component is called Sarit Sarak. Option A is wrong because Mizoram is associated with Inbuan wrestling, a belt wrestling contest in which kicking is barred and the knee may not be bent, and with Insuknawr or rod push. Option B is wrong; no classical martial art in the standard examination list is fixed to Nagaland. Option D is wrong because Assam gives the traditional ball game Dhopkhel, played in the spring season, not Thang-Ta. Manipur is the densest state in this chapter, since Cheibi Gad-ga, Sagol Kangjei, Yubi Lakpi and Hiyang Tannaba all belong to it as well, so learn them as one group.

The correct answer is B, Ashoka. The Great Stupa, Stupa 1 at Sanchi in Madhya Pradesh, began as a brick mound raised in Ashoka's reign in the third century BCE, beside which he also set up a pillar with a lion capital; the Shungas later encased the mound in stone and added the railings, and the four carved gateways, the toranas, were put up in the Satavahana period. Option A is wrong because Chandragupta Maurya, Ashoka's grandfather, is not associated with stupa building. Option C is wrong because the Kushana ruler Kanishka is linked with Gandhara art and with a great stupa at Peshawar, not with Sanchi. Option D is wrong because Harshavardhana ruled in the seventh century CE, long after the stupa was finished. Sanchi was noticed by General Henry Taylor in 1818 and became a World Heritage Site in 1989.

The correct answer is D, Bhanu Athaiya. She won the Academy Award for costume design in 1983 for Richard Attenborough's Gandhi, sharing it with John Mollo, and was the first Indian to win an Oscar in any category. Option A is wrong because Satyajit Ray received an honorary Academy Award for lifetime achievement in 1992, which came later and was not a competitive award. Option B is wrong because A. R. Rahman won two Academy Awards in 2009 for Slumdog Millionaire, for original score and for the song Jai Ho, again later than 1983. Option C is wrong because Guru Dutt, the director of Pyaasa and Kaagaz Ke Phool, never received an Academy Award. Resul Pookutty won for sound mixing in the same year as Rahman.

The correct answer is C, Punnamada Lake at Alappuzha. The Nehru Trophy Boat Race has been rowed on Punnamada Lake at Alappuzha since 1952, when it was instituted after Jawaharlal Nehru watched a race there, and the boats used are the long snake boats called chundan vallam. Option A is wrong in the form given, because although Punnamada is part of the wider Vembanad backwater system, the race is not held at Kumarakom and the paper expects the name Punnamada. Option B is wrong; Ashtamudi Lake at Kollam hosts its own boat races but not the Nehru Trophy. Option D is wrong because Sasthamkotta is a freshwater lake and a Ramsar site, not a venue for this race. The general name for the Kerala boat race is Vallam Kali, and the Nehru Trophy is one event within that tradition.

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, Kanada. Kanada, also called Uluka, composed the Vaisheshika Sutra and taught that the material world is built of indivisible atoms called paramanu, which combine to form the objects of experience; the school also classifies reality into categories or padarthas and is treated as the companion of Nyaya in logic and physics. Option A, Kapila, founded Samkhya, the oldest of the six schools, which explains the world through the dualism of purusha, the conscious principle, and prakriti, the material principle. Option C, Jaimini, founded Purva Mimamsa, the school of Vedic ritual, whose commentators were Kumarila Bhatta and Prabhakara. Option D, Patanjali, compiled the Yoga Sutra and set out the eight limbs of yoga from yama to samadhi. Papers most often switch Kapila and Kanada because the names begin alike, so fix the pair atom with Kanada firmly.

The correct answer is B, Karle. The chaitya at Karle, near Lonavala in Maharashtra, is the largest such hall in the country: an apsidal prayer chamber with a high barrel-vaulted roof still carrying its wooden ribs, a screen wall pierced by a great horseshoe window, a rock-cut stupa at the far end and rows of pillars whose capitals show elephants with riders. It was excavated in the Satavahana period beside a trade route through the Western Ghats. Option A is wrong because Bhaja, though older and important as an early chaitya, is much smaller. Option C is wrong because Kanheri near Mumbai is famous for the sheer number of its excavations rather than for the size of any one hall. Option D is wrong because Pitalkhora is an early but modest group. Merchants and guilds paid for these caves, which is why they line the old trade passes.

The correct answer is D, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad. The Ahmadiyya movement was founded in 1889 at Qadian in the Punjab by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, and it is one of the religious movements of modern India that grew out of the reformist debates of the nineteenth century, drawing on both Islamic tradition and the liberal ideas of the age. Option A, Mir Nisar Ali, better known as Titu Mir, led a peasant movement in Bengal in the Tariqah i Muhammadiya tradition and died in 1831. Option B, Haji Shariatullah, founded the Faraizi movement in eastern Bengal early in the nineteenth century, calling on Muslims to give up practices he held to be un Islamic. Option C, Shah Waliullah, was the eighteenth century scholar of Delhi whose writings shaped later reform, and he belongs to a century before the date in the question, which is the easiest way to eliminate him.

The correct answer is A, the Waghora. The Ajanta caves in the Aurangabad district of Maharashtra are excavated in the curved cliff of a gorge cut by the small Waghora river, and it was on this cliff that a British hunting party led by John Smith came upon the caves in 1819. Option B is wrong because the Godavari, though the great river of the Deccan, does not flow past Ajanta. Option C is wrong because the Tapi flows further north and west into the Gulf of Khambhat. Option D is wrong because the Wainganga belongs to the Godavari system in eastern Maharashtra. The caves fall into two phases, an early Hinayana group of the Satavahana period and a larger Mahayana group of the Vakataka period under Harisena, and they hold the Padmapani and Vajrapani paintings of Cave 1.