Art & Culture Mixed Quiz: Set 24

The correct answer is B, Andhra Pradesh. Ugadi is the new year festival of Andhra Pradesh, and it is also kept in Telangana and Karnataka. The name comes from yuga and adi, meaning the beginning of an age, and it falls on the first day of the month of Chaitra, in March or April. Houses are cleaned and decorated with mango leaves and rangoli, and the special dish is Ugadi pachadi, which mixes six tastes, jaggery, raw mango, neem flowers, tamarind, salt and chilli, to stand for the mixed joys and sorrows of the year ahead. The panchanga sravanam, the reading of the new almanac, is also held. A is wrong because Madhya Pradesh does not keep Ugadi as its new year. C is wrong because Himachal Pradesh observes its new year as Bishu. D is wrong because Kerala celebrates Vishu as its new year in mid-April. Exam tip: group the new years - Ugadi in Andhra, Gudi Padwa in Maharashtra, Baisakhi in Punjab, Vishu in Kerala and Puthandu in Tamil Nadu.

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, Gautam. The Nyaya Sutra was composed by the sage Gautama, also called Akshapada Gautama, who founded the Nyaya school of Indian philosophy.

Nyaya is one of the six orthodox or astika schools. It is the school of logic and holds that right knowledge reaches us through four means, namely perception, inference, comparison and verbal testimony, and that clear reasoning is itself the path out of suffering. The sixteen categories set out in the Nyaya Sutra, beginning with the means of knowledge, became the standard framework for debate in classical India. This Gautama should not be confused with Gautama Buddha.

A is wrong: Vyasa is remembered for the Mahabharata and the Brahma Sutra. C is wrong: Kapila founded the Samkhya school. D is wrong: Charaka wrote the Charaka Samhita, a text of medicine.

Exam tip: pair the schools with their founders, Nyaya with Gautama, Vaisheshika with Kanada, Samkhya with Kapila, Yoga with Patanjali, Mimamsa with Jaimini and Vedanta with Badarayana.

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 B, the Gandhara school, which grew in the Peshawar valley and the north-west, a region long open to Hellenistic and later Roman culture, so the style is often called Greco-Buddhist or Indo-Greek. Its Buddhas have wavy hair, sharp features, muscular bodies and robes with thick naturalistic folds. Option A is wrong because the Mathura school is wholly indigenous, growing out of the older yaksha figures of the Yamuna region. Option C is wrong because the Amaravati school of the Krishna valley is also indigenous, and its mark is crowded narrative relief with slender figures. Option D is wrong because the Sarnath school belongs to the later Gupta age and produced the classical Indian Buddha in cream Chunar sandstone. All three of the first schools flourished between roughly the first century before the common era and the third century after it.

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, a process for elevating oneself. The word yoga comes from the Sanskrit root yuj, to join or to yoke, and the classical tradition treats it as a discipline that unites the individual self with the higher self. Patanjali defines it in the Yoga Sutras as the stilling of the modifications of the mind, and the Bhagavad Gita calls it samatvam, evenness of mind; both are descriptions of a person being raised, not entertained. Option A is wrong because physical exercise is only the third of the eight limbs, asana, and yoga also covers ethical conduct, breath control and meditation. Option B is wrong because yoga asks for concentration and inward attention, which is the opposite of distraction. Option C is wrong because yoga trains a practitioner to face life steadily and act without agitation; escape from reality is no part of it.

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, spotted red sandstone, quarried near Sikri in the Mathura region, a deep red stone flecked with cream and black spots that makes a Mathura piece recognisable at a glance. Option A is wrong because grey or bluish-grey schist is the stone of the Gandhara school in the north-west, which later also used stucco. Option C is wrong because white to greenish-white limestone belongs to the Amaravati school of the Krishna valley, so fine that its removed pieces are still called the Amaravati marbles. Option D is wrong because black basalt is the stone of the much later Pala sculpture of Bengal and Bihar and of some south Indian work, not of these three schools. Material is the fastest way to identify a school, so fix the three stones first: grey schist, spotted red sandstone, white limestone.

The correct answer is B, Only two. Bhaja is a Buddhist cave site and Sittanavasal a Jain one, but Besnagar has no Shaivite cave shrine. Besnagar, near Vidisha in Madhya Pradesh, is known for the Heliodorus pillar of about 113 BCE, a Garuda pillar set up by a Greek envoy who called himself a devotee of Vasudeva, so its link is Vaishnava. Bhaja, near Lonavala in Maharashtra, has some of the earliest Buddhist rock-cut chaityas and viharas, from about the second century BCE. Sittanavasal, near Pudukkottai in Tamil Nadu, is a Jain cave, the Arivar Koil, famous for its paintings of a lotus pond. So pair 1 is wrong and pairs 2 and 3 are right. Option A is wrong because two pairs match, not one. Option C is wrong because Besnagar is not a Shaivite cave site. Option D is wrong because Bhaja and Sittanavasal are correctly matched. Exam tip: Besnagar means Heliodorus and Vasudeva; Bhaja is Buddhist, Sittanavasal is Jain.

The correct answer is B, samatvam. Samatvam means equanimity or evenness, the steadiness of mind that is not shaken by success or failure, and the Bhagavad Gita uses the expression samatvam yoga uchyate, evenness of mind is called yoga. A mind in that state works without anxiety, which is why the term is linked with efficient performance of work. Option A is wrong because karmasu kaushalam means skill in action, a result of equanimity rather than the name of the state itself. Option C is wrong because purusha in Samkhya and Yoga philosophy is the conscious self or spirit, not a mental state. Option D is wrong because dukha samyoga viyoga refers to the separation from contact with suffering, a definition of yoga given elsewhere in the Gita but not the word asked for here.

The correct answer is B, Ranveer Singh. In Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Padmaavat he played the Delhi Sultan Alauddin Khalji, whose siege of Chittor in 1303 is the historical background of the story, which is drawn from the Padmavat of Malik Muhammad Jayasi. Option A is wrong because Shahid Kapoor played Maharawal Ratan Singh, the ruler of Chittor, in the same film. Option C is wrong because Ranbir Kapoor was not part of the cast. Option D is wrong because Rana Daggubati, known for the Baahubali films, also had no role in it. Questions of this kind pair a film with an actor or with the historical figure behind the character, so the history is worth remembering along with the cast. Padmaavat was released in 2018 after a long dispute over its content, and Deepika Padukone played the queen Padmavati in it.

The correct answer is B, the Satavahanas, who ruled the Deccan from the first century before the common era, with the school continuing later under the Ikshvakus of the Krishna valley. Option A is wrong because the Kushanas, ruling the north, patronised both Gandhara and Mathura, and that is exactly the pairing this question tests. Option C is wrong because the Guptas belong to the fourth century onward and are associated with the Sarnath school and the classical Buddha image, not with Amaravati. Option D is wrong because the Mauryas, two centuries earlier, are associated with the polished sandstone pillars and capitals of Ashoka, including the Lion Capital at Sarnath, and with a period in which the Buddha was not shown in human form at all. The Satavahana capital was at Pratishthana, modern Paithan, and Gautamiputra Satakarni was their greatest ruler.

The correct answer is B, Punjab. Gatka is the Punjabi martial art fought with the soti, a wooden stick, and the farri, a shield, and it is displayed at Sikh festivals such as Hola Mohalla. It was one of the indigenous disciplines brought into the Khelo India Youth Games from the 2021 edition. Option A is wrong; Haryana is known in sport for wrestling and boxing academies but not for a distinct traditional martial art in this list. Option C is wrong because Rajasthan is associated with Rajput sword traditions and the khanda as a weapon, yet Gatka is not a Rajasthani art. Option D is wrong; no standard martial art of the examination list is assigned to Jammu and Kashmir. Do not confuse the stick of Gatka with the stick used in Mardani Khel practice in Maharashtra, whose identifying weapon is the patta.

The correct answer is C, jnana yoga, bhakti yoga and karma yoga. Indian tradition, and the Bhagavad Gita in particular, sets out three classical paths by which a seeker may reach the spirit: jnana yoga, the path of knowledge and discrimination; bhakti yoga, the path of devotion and surrender; and karma yoga, the path of selfless action performed without attachment to its fruit. Raja yoga, the path of meditation taught by Patanjali, is often added as a fourth. Options A, B and D are wrong because sat, chit and ananda are not paths at all; they are the three attributes of the absolute in Vedanta, being, consciousness and bliss, joined in the compound Sachchidananda. The question tests whether a candidate can tell a path of practice from a description of the absolute.

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 C, Amaravati. Its sculptors worked mainly in relief on the drum slabs and railings of the great stupa, filling each panel with figures that tell a story from the Buddha's life or from the Jataka tales, and their bodies are slender and elongated, bent in the triple flexion called tribhanga, so that the whole surface seems to move. Option A is wrong because the Gandhara school, though it also carved narrative panels, is identified by its realistic muscular figures and heavy Greek style drapery rather than by this slenderness. Option B is wrong because Mathura is identified by heavy, energetic, broad-shouldered figures in spotted red sandstone. Option D is wrong because the Sarnath school of the Gupta age is known for the calm, smooth, free-standing Buddha with wet drapery. Amaravati relief also uses the lotus medallion and the pot and garland motif.

The correct answer is C, Ujjayi pranayama. In Ujjayi the throat is slightly narrowed while breathing through the nose, so the air makes a soft continuous hiss that is commonly compared with the sound of the sea or of waves; for that reason it is called the ocean breath, and the name itself means victorious. Option A is wrong because Kapalbhati is a rapid cleansing practice in which the exhalation is forced out by drawing in the abdomen, and its sound is a series of sharp puffs, not a steady murmur. Option B is wrong because Shitali is a cooling practice in which the breath is drawn in through a rolled tongue, and its characteristic feature is coolness rather than sound. Option D is wrong because dirgha simply means long or deep breathing and carries no such sound.

The correct answer is A, covering both shoulders in thick folds. The Gandhara sculptor treated cloth as a Roman sculptor did, with deep, heavy, naturalistic folds falling over both shoulders, and the halo behind the head is left plain. Option B is the description of the Mathura Buddha, whose robe is so thin that it is almost transparent, covers the left shoulder and leaves the right bare, with a richly decorated halo; this is the single commonest point of confusion between the two schools and is tested constantly. Option C is wrong because no school shows the robe on the right shoulder alone. Option D is wrong because the Buddha is never shown bare above the waist, though Jain tirthankara images from Mathura are shown without clothing, which is one way to tell them apart from Buddha figures.

The correct answer is B, Sowa-Rigpa. Sowa-Rigpa, the science of healing, is the Amchi system of medicine practised in the Himalayan belt of Ladakh, Lahaul and Spiti, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh and the Darjeeling hills, and its foundational text is the Gyud-Zhi or Four Tantras. Parliament gave it statutory recognition in 2010 by amending the law governing the central council for Indian medicine, which made it the seventh system in the AYUSH family. Options A, C and D are wrong because naturopathy, homoeopathy and Siddha were all part of the group from the beginning: the acronym AYUSH itself is built from Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy. A National Institute of Sowa-Rigpa was later set up at Leh in Ladakh, and the system is also practised across the Himalayan belt of Nepal, Bhutan and Mongolia, which is why it is sometimes described as the Himalayan or Tibetan system of medicine.