Art & Culture Mixed Quiz: Set 39

The correct answer is D, Dheera Shankarabharanam. Both ragas use all seven natural (shuddha) notes, the same scale as the Western major scale.

In Hindustani music, Bilawal is one of the ten thaats in Pandit V. N. Bhatkhande's system and is taken as the basic scale, with every note in its natural form. In Carnatic music, Dheera Shankarabharanam is the 29th melakarta raga of the 72-melakarta system and uses exactly the same set of notes. That is why musicians treat the two as counterparts across the two traditions.

A is wrong: Nat Bhairavi (20th melakarta) has a flat Ga, Dha and Ni, which matches Asavari thaat, not Bilawal.

B is wrong: Kamavardhini (51st melakarta) has a flat Re and Dha with a sharp Ma, close to Purvi thaat.

C is wrong: Hanumatodi (8th melakarta) has flat Re, Ga, Dha and Ni, which corresponds to Bhairavi thaat.

Exam tip: Bilawal = Shankarabharanam (all natural notes); Kalyan = Mechakalyani; Bhairavi thaat = Hanumatodi.

The correct answer is D, King George V. The Gateway of India at Apollo Bunder in Mumbai was raised to mark the landing of George V and Queen Mary in December 1911, the visit on which the Delhi Durbar was held and the transfer of the capital from Calcutta to Delhi was announced. The royal couple actually saw only a cardboard model; the stone arch designed by George Wittet in the Indo-Saracenic manner, in yellow basalt with a central dome and jaali screens, was completed in 1924. The same arch was the point from which the last British troops left India in 1948. Option A is wrong because Edward VII visited India in 1875 as Prince of Wales and is linked instead to the Prince of Wales Museum in Mumbai. Option B is wrong because George I never came to India and reigned in the early eighteenth century, before Crown rule. Option C is wrong because William IV reigned from 1830 to 1837, in the era of Company rule, and made no visit to India.

The correct answer is B. The India Gate, originally the All India War Memorial Arch, was designed by Edwin Lutyens as a memorial to the Indian soldiers of the British Indian Army who died in the First World War between 1914 and 1921 and in the Third Anglo-Afghan War. Its foundation stone was laid in 1921 by the Duke of Connaught and the arch was completed in 1931; the names of more than thirteen thousand soldiers are cut into its sandstone. Option A is wrong because 1857 is commemorated at the Mutiny Memorial on the northern ridge of Delhi and at sites such as Kanpur and Lucknow. Option C is wrong because the Jallianwala Bagh memorial stands in Amritsar at the site of the massacre of 1919. Option D is wrong because the Indian National Army memorial of the Second World War stands at Moirang in Manipur and at Singapore.

The correct answer is B, Rabindra Bhavan. The three national academies share the building on Ferozeshah Road in New Delhi named after Rabindranath Tagore, which is why a single question can cover all three at once. Option A is wrong because Azad Bhavan is the headquarters of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, named after its founder Maulana Abul Kalam Azad. Option C is wrong because Shastri Bhavan houses offices of several Union ministries and is not the home of the academies. Option D is wrong because Dharohar Bhavan is the office of the Archaeological Survey of India in New Delhi. A useful way to keep them apart is that Rabindra Bhavan holds the academies that give awards in the arts and letters, Azad Bhavan the body that works abroad, and Dharohar Bhavan the body that protects monuments.

The correct answer is A, Pala. Under the Pala rulers of Bengal and Bihar, from about the ninth century onwards, the monastery workshops of Nalanda and the village of Kurkihar near Gaya cast hundreds of small metal images of the Buddha, Tara, Avalokiteshvara and other Bodhisattvas in ashtadhatu, the eight-metal alloy. Pala figures are recognised by slim elongated bodies, sharply cut features, high ornamented crowns and a plain back slab. Option B is wrong because Gupta metal work is represented by the Buddha of Dhanesar Khera and the Sultanganj figure, which are earlier and heavier. Option C is wrong because the Kushana period is represented by the Jain hoard from Chausa in Bihar, not by Nalanda. Option D is wrong because Vijayanagara metal work belongs to the far south and is known for royal portrait figures. Pala bronzes also travelled to Tibet and Nepal and shaped the art there, a point UPSC has used.

The correct answer is B, Udayagiri caves, Odisha. The Hathigumpha or elephant cave at Udayagiri near Bhubaneswar carries the long Prakrit inscription of Kharavela, the Chedi or Mahameghavahana king of Kalinga, which records his campaigns and his patronage of Jainism; Udayagiri and the neighbouring Khandagiri form a Jain cave group. Option A, the Barabar caves in Bihar, are the oldest rock-cut caves in India, of the Mauryan period, and carry inscriptions of Ashoka and Dasharatha, not of Kharavela. Option C, the Ellora caves in Maharashtra, hold Buddhist, Hindu and Jain groups, the Jain caves being numbers 30 to 34. Option D, Sittanavasal in Tamil Nadu, is a Jain cave known for its early paintings. Keep Hathigumpha with Kharavela and Kalinga, just as the Junagadh rock carries both Ashoka and Rudradaman.

The correct answer is B, Madhya Pradesh. The Khajuraho Dance Festival is held every February at Khajuraho in the Chhatarpur district of Madhya Pradesh, with the Western group of temples as its setting, and it presents the recognised classical dance styles of the country on an open-air stage. Option A, Odisha, holds the Konark Festival at its Sun Temple in early December and the Mukteshwar Dance Festival at Bhubaneswar in January, which is why it is the strongest distractor; both are temple festivals of dance, but neither is Khajuraho. Option C, Rajasthan, is the home of the Jaipur Literature Festival and of the desert and camel fairs, not of this dance festival. Option D, Tamil Nadu, holds the Mamallapuram Dance Festival and the Natyanjali Festival at Chidambaram. Fix the pair Khajuraho and Madhya Pradesh, because it is the single most asked festival in the chapter.

The correct answer is C, Kathakali. Kathakali, which means 'story play', is the classical dance-drama of Kerala, performed traditionally by men, in which stories from the Ramayana and Mahabharata are told through hand gestures (mudras), eye movements and facial expressions. Its most striking feature is the heavy, colourful makeup and towering headgear: green (pacha) for noble heroes, a red-streaked face (kathi) for villains, and beard (thadi) types for demons and monkeys. The vigorous body training comes from Kalaripayattu, Kerala's ancient martial art. Performances are accompanied by the chenda and maddalam drums and go on through the night. A is wrong because Mohiniyattam, also from Kerala, is a gentle solo dance by women, the 'dance of the enchantress', with simple makeup and no masks. B is wrong because Kuchipudi is the classical dance of Andhra Pradesh. D is wrong because Odissi belongs to Odisha and is known for its tribhangi posture. Exam tip: Kerala has two classical dances, Kathakali (masks, makeup, martial vigour) and Mohiniyattam (graceful, feminine).

The correct answer is B, Guru Arjan Dev, the fifth Guru, under whom the Harmandir Sahib was built and who had the Adi Granth compiled and installed in it in 1604, appointing Baba Buddha as its first granthi. Option A, Guru Ram Das, the fourth Guru, founded the city of Amritsar and had the sacred tank excavated, so he is the natural trap: he made the site, his successor made the shrine and the scripture. Option C, Guru Hargobind, the sixth Guru, built the Akal Takht facing the shrine in 1606 and introduced the two swords of spiritual and temporal authority. Option D, Guru Tegh Bahadur, the ninth Guru, was executed at Delhi in 1675, where Gurdwara Sis Ganj Sahib now stands. The gold plating that gave the Golden Temple its popular name came much later, in the reign of Maharaja Ranjit Singh in the early nineteenth century.

The correct answer is B, Purandara Dasa. Purandara Dasa, a saint composer of the Kannada devotional tradition, is honoured as the Pitamaha of Carnatic music because he organised the way the music is taught. The graded exercises a beginner still starts with, and the choice of the raga Mayamalavagowla as the first raga to be learnt, are credited to him, and he composed a very large number of devotional songs.

Options A, C and D name the three composers known together as the Carnatic Trinity, who came two centuries later and were all born in the town of Tiruvarur in Tamil Nadu. Tyagaraja is remembered for the Pancharatna Kritis and for the annual Aradhana held at Thiruvaiyaru, Muthuswami Dikshitar for the Navagraha kritis and the signature Guruguha, and Syama Sastri for his compositions on the goddess Kamakshi. They are the greatest composers of the system, but the title of Pitamaha belongs to Purandara Dasa.

The correct answer is C, the Delhi Durbar of 1911. George V and Queen Mary came to India in December 1911 and at the Delhi Durbar announced both the transfer of the capital from Calcutta to Delhi and the reversal of the partition of Bengal of 1905. Work on the new city began in 1912 under Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker, and New Delhi was formally inaugurated in 1931. Option A is wrong because the Durbar of 1877, held under Lord Lytton, proclaimed Queen Victoria as Empress of India during a severe famine. Option B is wrong because the Durbar of 1903, held under Lord Curzon, marked the coronation of Edward VII and announced nothing about the capital. Option D is wrong because the Round Table Conferences in London from 1930 discussed constitutional reform, not the capital.

The correct answer is B, Sushira vadya. Sushira means hollow, and the class covers every instrument in which a column of air inside a tube is set vibrating. The bansuri, the shehnai, the nadaswaram, the pungi, the algoza and the conch all belong to it, and so does the harmonium, whose reeds are sounded by air from a bellows.

Option A, tata vadya, is the class of stringed instruments such as the sitar, the sarod, the sarangi, the veena and the santoor. Option C, avanaddha vadya, covers the instruments with a stretched hide, that is the drums, among them the tabla, the pakhawaj, the mridangam and the chenda. Option D, ghana vadya, covers the solid instruments of metal, clay or wood that sound when struck or shaken without any tuning, such as the manjira, the ghatam and the jaltarang. All four names come from the same classification, so they are always offered together.

The correct answer is A, Maharashtra. Daimabad lies on the Pravara river in the Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra and is the southernmost late Harappan site known. Its hoard of heavy solid-cast metal objects includes a chariot with two yoked bulls and a driver, and separate figures of an elephant, a rhinoceros and a buffalo, each mounted on a platform with wheels or legs. The pieces matter because they prove that metal casting of large animal figures continued in the Deccan after the Harappan cities declined. Option B is wrong because Gujarat's Harappan sites, Lothal, Dholavira, Rangpur and Surkotada, are known for the dockyard, water reservoirs and the horse-bone claim, not these bronzes. Option C is wrong because Kalibangan, the best known Harappan site of Rajasthan, gave ploughed fields and fire altars. Option D is wrong because Rakhigarhi and Banawali in Haryana are known for town plans and burials.

The correct answer is D, Assam. Ankiya Nat is the one-act devotional play written by Srimanta Sankardeva, the saint of the Vaishnava movement in Assam, and its performance is called a Bhaona, staged in the prayer hall of a satra or naamghar with a narrator, songs and masks. Option A is wrong because Bihar's folk theatre traditions are Bidesia and Reshma-Chuharmal, not Ankiya Nat. Option B is wrong because the street theatre of Tamil Nadu is Therukoothu, with Villu Paatu as its ballad form. Option C is wrong because Odisha shares the Jatra tradition with Bengal and has Prahlada Nataka of its own. Questions on folk theatre are almost always of this shape, a form against four states, so learn the pairs rather than the descriptions.

The correct answer is A, Odisha. The Konark Festival is held on an open-air stage beside the thirteenth century Sun Temple at Konark in Odisha, a World Heritage monument, and the classical styles of the country are performed there in the first week of December. Option B, Gujarat, is the trap, because it holds its own dance festival at a Sun Temple, the Modhera Dance Festival or Uttarardh Mahotsav at Modhera, so a candidate who remembers only the words Sun Temple can be led astray. Option C, Andhra Pradesh, is associated with Kuchipudi and with the Lepakshi and Tirupati temple traditions but not with this festival. Option D, West Bengal, holds the Dover Lane Music Conference and the Kolkata literary festivals. Pair Konark with Odisha and Modhera with Gujarat, and keep the two Sun Temples apart.

The correct answer is B, Kerala. Kalaripayattu belongs to Kerala, takes its name from the kalari, the arena in which it is taught, and is usually described as among the oldest surviving martial arts in the world. Its signature weapon is the urumi, a long flexible sword, and its training runs from body conditioning through wooden weapons and metal weapons to bare hands. Option A is wrong because Tamil Nadu gives Silambam, fought with a bamboo staff, and Kuttu Varisai, the unarmed art. Option C is wrong; Karnataka is associated with Vajra Mushti, wrestling with a knuckleduster shown at Mysore Dasara. Option D is wrong because Manipur gives Thang-Ta, Sarit Sarak and Cheibi Gad-ga. Candidates sometimes pick Tamil Nadu because the art is southern, so fix Kalaripayattu to Kerala and to the word kalari.

The correct answer is A, Nanded in Maharashtra, where Guru Gobind Singh spent his last days in 1708 and where Takht Sri Hazur Sahib was raised. The five Takhts, or seats of Sikh religious authority, must be learnt as a set, because the question is usually set by swapping one place for another. Option B, Patna in Bihar, is the site of Takht Sri Patna Sahib, which marks the birthplace of Guru Gobind Singh in 1666. Option C, Talwandi Sabo in Punjab, is Takht Sri Damdama Sahib, where Guru Gobind Singh had a recension of the Granth prepared. Option D, Anandpur Sahib in Punjab, is Takht Sri Keshgarh Sahib, where the Khalsa was founded in 1699. The fifth is the Akal Takht at Amritsar, built by Guru Hargobind in 1606. Note that three of the five are in Punjab, with one each in Bihar and Maharashtra.

The correct answer is A, Henry Irwin. The Amba Vilas Palace, the Mysore Palace of the Wadiyar rulers, was rebuilt in grey granite and pink marble to the design of Henry Irwin after the old wooden palace burned down in 1897, and the work was finished in 1912. Irwin combined Hindu, Rajput, Mughal and Gothic features in the Indo-Saracenic manner, with three storeys, a five-storey tower and a gilded dome. He had earlier designed the Madras High Court group and the Viceregal Lodge at Shimla. Option B is wrong because Stevens built in Victorian Gothic in Mumbai. Option C is wrong because Wittet designed the Gateway of India and the Prince of Wales Museum. Option D is wrong because Vincent Esch worked in Kolkata and Hyderabad, where he designed the Osmania General Hospital and the High Court.

The correct answer is A, West Bengal, Jharkhand, Odisha and Chhattisgarh. Dhokra takes its name from the Dhokra Damar metal workers and is the hollow lost-wax craft of this eastern and central belt, with Bikna village in the Bankura district of West Bengal and the Bastar region of Chhattisgarh as its best known centres; Bastar Dhokra carries a geographical indication tag. The products are small figures of horses, elephants, owls and deities, along with measuring bowls, lamps and jewellery, built from fine wax threads that leave a ribbed surface on the finished metal. Option B is wrong because the northern states are known for Koftgari, Thathera copper work and Jaipur enamel. Option C is wrong because the south is the home of solid-cast panchaloha icons, a different method. Option D is wrong because the north east is known for the bell metal of Sarthebari in Assam and for cane and bamboo work.

The correct answer is C, Nagaland. The Hornbill Festival is held at the Kisama heritage village near Kohima from 1 to 10 December, the days around Nagaland's statehood day, and it is called the Festival of Festivals because every major tribe of the state presents its own dances, songs, games and food in one place. The hornbill, a large bird whose feathers appear in traditional Naga headgear, gives it its name. Option A, Manipur, holds the Sangai Festival in late November, named after its brow-antlered deer, and that is the commonest confusion here. Option B, Mizoram, is associated with Chapchar Kut, its spring festival. Option D, Meghalaya, holds Wangala, the harvest festival of the Garos, also called the festival of a hundred drums. Learn the trio: Hornbill for Nagaland, Sangai for Manipur, Wangala for Meghalaya.