Art & Culture Mixed Quiz: Set 23

The correct answer is C, Vardhamana Mahavira. Mahavira was the twenty fourth and last of the Tirthankaras, born at Kundagrama near Vaishali, who renounced the world at thirty, attained kaivalya after twelve years of austerity and attained nirvana at Pavapuri in Bihar. He added brahmacharya to the four vows already taught, making the five great vows of Jainism, and the doctrines of anekantavada and syadvada are associated with him. Option A, Rishabhanatha, also called Adinath, was the first Tirthankara and is mentioned in the Rigveda and the Bhagavata tradition. Option B, Parshvanatha, was the twenty third Tirthankara and is the immediate predecessor of Mahavira, which makes him the commonest wrong answer here. Option D, Neminatha, was the twenty second Tirthankara. Remember the three in order: Rishabhanatha first, Parshvanatha twenty third, Mahavira twenty fourth.

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 B, Rashtrakuta. Cave 16 at Ellora, the Kailasa temple, was cut out of a single mass of rock from the top downwards in the eighth century during the reign of the Rashtrakuta king Krishna I, and it is the largest monolithic excavation in the world. Option A is wrong because the Chalukyas of Badami made the rock-cut cave temples of Badami and the structural temples of Aihole and Pattadakal. Option C is wrong because the Pallavas carved the rathas and mandapas of Mamallapuram in Tamil Nadu. Option D is wrong because the Vakatakas patronised the later caves of Ajanta, not Ellora. Ellora has thirty-four caves in all, Buddhist in Caves 1 to 12, Hindu in Caves 13 to 29 and Jain in Caves 30 to 34, which makes it the clearest example of three faiths sharing one cliff.

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, Shankaracharya. Shankaracharya expounded Advaita or non dualism, in which Brahman alone is real, the world of appearance is maya and the individual soul is not different from Brahman; he wrote commentaries on the Brahma Sutra, the principal Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita, and is credited with establishing monastic centres in the four quarters of the country. Option B, Ramanuja, taught Vishishtadvaita or qualified non dualism, in which souls and matter are real as attributes of Brahman, and he made devotion central. Option C, Madhvacharya, taught Dvaita, an outright dualism in which god and soul are eternally separate, the position furthest from Advaita. Option D, Nimbarka, taught Dvaitadvaita, in which difference and non difference are both real. These four are the standard option set for every Vedanta question, so the four pairs must be learnt together.

The correct answer is B, the Lomas Rishi cave. Its doorway copies in stone the curved wooden arch and lattice of a real chaitya hall, and above it runs a band of elephants moving towards a stupa; this carved arch is the ancestor of the horseshoe-shaped chaitya window, the gavaksha, seen later at Bhaja, Karle and Ajanta. Option A is wrong because the neighbouring Sudama cave, though also Mauryan and highly polished, has a plain entrance. Option C is wrong because the Karan Chaupar cave is a single polished chamber without the decorated facade. Option D is wrong because Vishwakarma is the name of Cave 10 at Ellora, the Carpenter's Cave, and belongs to a much later period. The Lomas Rishi facade is the standard illustration of stone copying timber in Indian art.

The correct answer is B, the Mahabodhi Temple Complex. It stands at Bodh Gaya in Bihar beside the Bodhi tree under which Gautama Buddha attained enlightenment, and the teaching he then carried to the world is tied to this spot; a shrine was first raised here in Ashoka's time and the tall brick temple that survives belongs to the Gupta period, with the site inscribed as a World Heritage Site in 2002. Option A is wrong because Humayun's Tomb in Delhi is a Mughal garden tomb of the sixteenth century. Option C is wrong because the Qutub Minar was begun by Qutb-ud-din Aibak in the Delhi Sultanate period. Option D is wrong because the Red Fort was built by Shah Jahan. Only one option in the set is Buddhist at all, which is the shortcut in such questions.

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 D, Kanishka. The fourth Buddhist council met in Kashmir under the patronage of the Kushana ruler Kanishka, and it is remembered because the assembly divided into the Hinayana and Mahayana schools; the proceedings were in Sanskrit, and Vasumitra presided with Ashvaghosha associated with it. Option A, Ajatashatru, patronised the first council at Rajgir immediately after the death of the Buddha, where the Vinaya and the Sutta were recited and settled. Option B, Ashoka, patronised the third council at Pataliputra, which completed the canon with the Abhidhamma and sent out missions to Sri Lanka and beyond, and he is the strongest distractor because he is the ruler most associated with Buddhism. Option C, Kalashoka, patronised the second council at Vaishali, where the sangha first split into the Sthaviravadins and the Mahasanghikas.

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, Shiva. The great three-headed bust in the main cave on Elephanta island in Mumbai harbour shows Shiva in three aspects, the calm, the fierce and the gentle, and the Elephanta group as a whole is Shaiva in character. Option A is wrong because Vishnu's avatars are the subject of Cave 15 at Ellora, the Dashavatara cave, not of Elephanta. Option C is wrong because Brahma is rarely given a temple of his own anywhere in India. Option D is wrong because Surya is the deity of Konark and Modhera. The island was named Elephanta by the Portuguese after a stone elephant found on its shore, and its Indian name is Gharapuri; the caves were inscribed as a World Heritage Site in 1987. Papers often pair Elephanta's Trimurti with Ellora's Kailasa temple in the same question.

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, Charvaka. Charvaka, also called Lokayata and attributed to Brihaspati, rejects the authority of the Vedas, denies rebirth and a soul surviving death and holds that perception alone is a valid means of knowledge, so it is classed as nastika or heterodox along with Buddhism and Jainism. The six orthodox or astika schools, known together as the shad darshana, are Samkhya, Yoga, Nyaya, Vaisheshika, Mimamsa and Vedanta. Option A, Nyaya, founded by Gautama, is the orthodox school of logic and the four pramanas. Option C, Samkhya, founded by Kapila, is the oldest of the six and explains the world by purusha and prakriti. Option D, Mimamsa, founded by Jaimini, upholds the ritual portion of the Vedas. Remember that astika and nastika are decided only by the attitude to the Vedas, not by belief in god.

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, Kharavela. The Hathigumpha or Elephant Cave inscription, cut in the Udayagiri hill near Bhubaneswar in Odisha, is a Prakrit record in the Brahmi script listing the campaigns and public works of Kharavela, the Chedi or Cheti king of Kalinga in the first century BCE, who was a patron of Jainism; the twin hills of Udayagiri and Khandagiri hold Jain caves of his time, the largest of them the Rani Gumpha. Option B is wrong because Rudradaman is known from the Junagadh rock inscription, the first long record in Sanskrit. Option C is wrong because the Pallava Mahendravarman I is linked with the cave temples of Mandagapattu. Option D is wrong because Pulakeshin II of Badami is known from the Aihole inscription of Ravikirti.

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, Mamallapuram. Also called Mahabalipuram, the site on the Coromandel coast of Tamil Nadu was developed by the Pallavas, and its five rathas, named after the Pandavas and Draupadi, are each cut from a single boulder in a different temple form, which makes them a stone catalogue of early southern architecture. Option A is wrong because Badami in Karnataka has rock-cut cave temples of the Chalukyas in red sandstone, not monolithic shrines. Option C is wrong because Aihole is a field of experimental structural temples. Option D is wrong because Pattadakal holds the mature structural temples of the Chalukyas. Mamallapuram also has the Shore Temple, which is structural rather than rock-cut, and the huge open-air relief usually called Arjuna's Penance or the Descent of the Ganges.

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, the harmika. A stupa rises as a hemispherical dome, the anda, above which sits the harmika, a small railed square that holds the mast or yashti carrying the tiers of stone umbrellas, the chhatras. Option A is wrong because the medhi is the drum or raised terrace on which the dome stands. Option C is wrong because the vedika is the railing that encloses the circumambulatory path, the pradakshina patha, around the stupa. Option D is wrong because a torana is the carved gateway in that railing, of which Sanchi has four. Stupas are also classified by what they hold: shariric when they contain bodily relics, paribhogika when they hold objects used by the Buddha, and uddeshika when they merely commemorate an event, and these terms are asked as often as the parts.

The correct answer is D, Golconda. Golconda Fort near Hyderabad in Telangana was first raised as a mud fort by the Kakatiya rulers of Warangal in the thirteenth century. The Bahmani sultans took it later, and the Qutb Shahi kings rebuilt it in granite in the sixteenth century, adding the long walls, the eight gates and the palaces seen today. The fort is famous for its acoustics: a clap at the Fateh Darwaza can be heard at the pavilion on the hilltop, a signal once used to warn the garrison. The diamond mines around it, such as Kollur, made Golconda a great market for stones like the Koh-i-Noor and the Hope diamond. A is wrong because Panhala in Kolhapur is linked with the Shilaharas and later with Shivaji. B is wrong because Raigad was Shivaji's capital fort in Maharashtra. C is wrong because Neemrana in Rajasthan was a Chauhan fort. Exam tip: Golconda, a Kakatiya mud fort rebuilt by the Qutb Shahis, known for diamonds and acoustics.