Art & Culture Mixed Quiz: Set 25

The correct answer is B, the Kushanas, whose empire stretched from Central Asia across the north-west into the Ganga plain, so that both Gandhara in the Peshawar valley and Mathura on the Yamuna lay within it. Kanishka, the greatest Kushana ruler, is linked with both, and the Kushanas also set up royal portrait statues at Mat near Mathura. Option A is wrong because the Satavahanas ruled the Deccan and patronised Amaravati. Option C is wrong because the Shungas, who followed the Mauryas, are associated with the earlier railing and gateway art of Bharhut and Sanchi, in which the Buddha appears only as a symbol. Option D is wrong because the Guptas came later and are linked with the Sarnath school. Kanishka's court is also connected with the fourth Buddhist council in Kashmir, the poet Ashvaghosha and the physician Charaka.

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, Sushruta. The Sushruta Samhita is the classical Indian treatise on Shalya Tantra, surgery, and it describes operations for cataract and for bladder stone, the repair of a severed nose that later writers called rhinoplasty, the eight kinds of surgical procedure and a long list of surgical instruments, which is why Sushruta is titled the father of surgery. Option A is wrong because Charaka wrote the Charaka Samhita on Kayachikitsa, internal medicine, and is called the father of Indian medicine instead. Option C is wrong because Vagbhata wrote the Ashtanga Hridaya and the Ashtanga Sangraha, compendia that summarise both earlier works. Option D is wrong because Bhavamishra wrote the much later Bhavaprakasha, one of the three texts of the Laghu Trayi.

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, Mathura, the broadest of the three schools in subject matter. Besides Buddhist figures it carved the earliest known images of the Jain tirthankaras, found at the Kankali Tila mound, and the earliest images of Brahmanical deities including Vishnu, Shiva, Surya, Balarama and Kubera, along with a long line of yakshi figures. Option A is wrong because the Gandhara school worked almost entirely on Buddhist subjects, with no Jain and essentially no Brahmanical images. Option C is wrong because Amaravati is a Buddhist school, devoted to the stupa and to narrative scenes from the Buddha's life and the Jatakas. Option D is wrong for both of the reasons just given. This breadth is why Mathura is called the first truly pan-Indian workshop, and why its influence outlasted Gandhara's.

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 C, Patanjali. Patanjali compiled the Yoga Sutras, the foundational text of the yoga school of Indian philosophy, and in it he lays out Ashtanga Yoga, the eight limbs: Yama, Niyama, Asana, Pranayama, Pratyahara, Dharana, Dhyana and Samadhi. He is for that reason called the father of yoga. Option A is wrong because Swatmarama wrote the Hatha Yoga Pradifika, a much later Hatha text on asanas, pranayamas and mudras. Option B is wrong because Gheranda is the teacher of the Gheranda Samhita, another Hatha manual, which arranges the practice in seven limbs rather than eight. Option D is wrong because Kapila is held to be the founder of the Samkhya school, the philosophical companion of Yoga among the six orthodox systems, and not the author of the Sutras.

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, the Krishna. Amaravati lies in the lower Krishna valley in Andhra Pradesh, and the other sites of the same school, Nagarjunakonda, Jaggayyapeta, Ghantasala and Bhattiprolu, are in the same stretch of country. The stupa itself is called the Mahachaitya, and it was surveyed by Colin Mackenzie in 1816, after which many of its sculptures were removed and are now held chiefly by the British Museum in London and the Government Museum at Chennai. Option A is wrong because the Godavari, though the larger river of the region, is not the valley of this school. Option C is wrong because the Kaveri belongs to Tamil Nadu and Karnataka and to a much later tradition of Chola bronzes and temples. Option D is wrong because the Mahanadi is in Odisha and Chhattisgarh and is associated with sites such as Udayagiri and Khandagiri.

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, 21 June. The United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution on 11 December 2014 declaring 21 June the International Day of Yoga, and the day was observed for the first time in 2015. The date was chosen because 21 June is the summer solstice, the longest day of the year in the northern hemisphere, a day of special significance in Indian tradition. Option A is wrong because 21 March is the spring equinox and is observed as International Day of Forests and World Poetry Day. Option C is wrong because 10 April is World Homoeopathy Day, kept on the birthday of Samuel Hahnemann. Option D is wrong because 7 April is World Health Day, which marks the founding of the World Health Organization.

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 C, the wheel, the dharmachakra, which stands for the first sermon delivered in the deer park at Sarnath, an event called the dharmachakra pravartana, the turning of the wheel of law. Option A is wrong because the lotus, often with an elephant, stands for the birth of the Buddha at Lumbini. Option B is wrong because the horse stands for the Great Departure, the night on which Siddhartha left Kapilavastu, and the riderless horse is the usual way of showing it. Option D is wrong because the stupa stands for the mahaparinirvana, the passing away at Kushinagar. One more symbol completes the set: the bodhi tree stands for the enlightenment at Bodh Gaya. This symbolic or aniconic phase belongs to Bharhut and Sanchi and ended when Gandhara and Mathura began carving the Buddha as a man.

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 A, Samuel Hahnemann. Hahnemann was a German physician who set out the principles of homoeopathy in the Organon of Medicine, chief among them the maxim similia similibus curentur, let like be cured by like, together with the law of the minimum dose and the method of potentisation. World Homoeopathy Day is kept on 10 April, his birthday. Option B is wrong because Ibn Sina, known in Europe as Avicenna, wrote the Unani classic Al-Qanun fi al-Tibb. Option C is wrong because Hippocrates is the founder of the Unani system and is called Buqrat in its literature. Option D is wrong because Edward Jenner developed vaccination against smallpox using cowpox material and is linked with immunology, not with homoeopathy. Homoeopathy reached India in the eighteenth century and took its deepest root in Bengal.

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 B, Mat near Mathura, where the Kushanas built a shrine with a gallery of royal portrait statues, an idea quite new in India and probably borrowed from Central Asian and Iranian practice. The best known of them is the standing figure of Kanishka in spotted red sandstone, broken at the neck, whose inscription names him Maharaja Rajatiraja Devaputra Kanishka, and it is now in the Government Museum at Mathura. Option A is wrong because Taxila, in the Gandhara region, is famous for its monasteries, its university tradition and its Buddhist sculpture, but not for this statue. Option C is wrong because Sarnath is the site of the first sermon, of Ashoka's Lion Capital and of the Gupta period Buddha images. Option D is wrong because Nagarjunakonda belongs to the Amaravati school in the Krishna valley.

The correct answer is B, Ibn Sina. Ibn Sina, called Avicenna in Europe, compiled Al-Qanun fi al-Tibb, the Canon of Medicine, which organised the medical knowledge of his age into a single system and was taught in Asian and European schools for centuries; it remains a basic text of Unani medicine. Option A is wrong because Al-Razi, known as Rhazes, wrote the Kitab al-Mansuri and the Kitab al-Hawi, important works but not the Canon. Option C is wrong because Galen, Jalinoos in Unani literature, systematised the theory of the four humours but wrote in Greek and long before the Canon. Option D is wrong because Hippocrates, Buqrat, is honoured as the founder of the system, and the humoral doctrine is traced to him, not this book.

The correct answer is A, Gandhara. Bamiyan, in the highlands of what is now Afghanistan, lay on the trade route through the Hindu Kush and was part of the wide Gandhara cultural region, along with Hadda, Begram, Jalalabad, Swat and Taxila. Its two colossal standing Buddhas, cut into a cliff face and once plastered and painted, were destroyed in 2001. Option B is wrong because Mathura lies far to the east on the Yamuna and worked in spotted red sandstone, not in rock-cut cliffs. Option C is wrong because Amaravati is in the Krishna valley of Andhra Pradesh and worked in limestone relief. Option D is wrong because Sarnath, near Varanasi, is a Gupta period centre in Chunar sandstone. The spread of Gandhara art along this route is how the Buddha image travelled to Central Asia, China and beyond.

The correct answer is B, Charaka Samhita, Sushruta Samhita and Ashtanga Hridaya. These three are the Brihat Trayi, the great triad of Ayurvedic literature: Charaka on internal medicine, Sushruta on surgery and Vagbhata summarising both in the Ashtanga Hridaya. Option A is wrong because the Madhava Nidana, the Sharngadhara Samhita and the Bhavaprakasha form the Laghu Trayi, the lesser triad, written much later and dealing with diagnosis, pharmaceutical preparations and materia medica. Option C is wrong because those three books belong to three different systems altogether, yoga, Sowa-Rigpa and homoeopathy. Option D is wrong because it mixes one text of the great triad with a Hatha yoga manual and a text of the lesser triad, which is the usual trap in this question. Remember the triads by their authors: Charaka, Sushruta and Vagbhata for the great, Madhavakara, Sharngadhara and Bhavamishra for the lesser.