Art & Culture Mixed Quiz: Set 42

The correct answer is A, Mattancherry in Kochi, Kerala, where the Paradesi Synagogue was built in 1568 beside the Mattancherry Palace, in the quarter long called Jew Town. It is famous for its floor of hand-painted blue Chinese tiles, each of them different, its Belgian glass chandeliers, its clock tower and the copper plates recording the privileges granted to the Jewish community of the Malabar coast. Option B, Byculla in Mumbai, belongs to the Bene Israel community, whose Gate of Mercy synagogue is the oldest in that city, while the Knesset Eliyahoo serves the Baghdadi Jews. Option C, Park Street in Kolkata, is near the Magen David and Beth El synagogues of the city's Baghdadi Jews. Option D, Thane, has a Bene Israel presence but no synagogue of this age. The three communities to remember are the Cochin Jews, the Bene Israel and the Baghdadi Jews.

The correct answer is C, 2004. UNESCO created the Creative Cities Network in 2004 to link cities that place their creative industries at the centre of local development, and a city joins in one of seven fields: Crafts and Folk Art, Design, Film, Gastronomy, Literature, Media Arts or Music. Option A is wrong because 1992 is the year the Memory of the World Programme for documentary heritage was launched, the natural confusion in this chapter. Option B is wrong because 2003 is the year of the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, under which Yoga, Ramlila and Durga Puja are listed. Option D is wrong because 2015 is the year Jaipur and Varanasi became India's first members of the network, not the year the network itself was set up. Separate the year of a programme from the year of a country's first entry.

The correct answer is B, Crafts and Folk Art. Jaipur joined the network in 2015 on the strength of its craft traditions, among them blue pottery, hand blockprinting, gem cutting, lac bangles, meenakari enamel and stone carving, and it was one of India's first two members along with Varanasi. Option A is wrong because Design is a separate field of the network, held by cities known for industrial and graphic design rather than for handmade craft. Option C is wrong because Gastronomy is the field in which Hyderabad was designated in 2019 for its biryani, haleem and Deccan culinary line. Option D is wrong because Media Arts covers digital and electronic art, a field in which no Indian city has been designated. Srinagar, in 2021, is the other Indian city in Crafts and Folk Art.

The correct answer is B, Suryavarman II, dedicated to Vishnu. The Khmer king Suryavarman II raised Angkor Wat in the twelfth century in what is now Cambodia as a temple of Vishnu, and its scale makes it the largest Vishnu temple in the world; the building later came to be used as a Buddhist shrine and now appears on the national flag of Cambodia. Option A is wrong because Jayavarman VII, who ruled later, built Angkor Thom with the Bayon at its centre and was a Mahayana Buddhist, which is why the faces on the Bayon are Buddhist. Option C is wrong because Rajendra Chola I was an Indian ruler whose fleet raided Srivijaya; he built the Gangaikonda Cholapuram temple in the Tamil country, not in Cambodia. Option D is wrong because Kaundinya belongs to the founding legend of the earlier kingdom of Funan and built nothing of this kind.

The correct answer is A, the Sailendra dynasty and Buddhism. Borobudur was built in the eighth and ninth centuries by the Sailendra rulers of Java as a Buddhist monument in the form of a stepped pyramid whose galleries carry carved panels of the life and teaching of the Buddha, with seated Buddha images in open stupas on the upper terraces. Option B is wrong because Majapahit was a later Hindu-Buddhist empire of Java and Islam came to the islands centuries after Borobudur was built. Option C is wrong on religion, since Jainism did not travel to South-East Asia in this way, although the dynasty named is correct. Option D is wrong because the Palas ruled in Bengal and Bihar and were patrons of Nalanda and Vikramashila; the Hindu monument of Java is Prambanan, built chiefly for Shiva.

The correct answer is A, the meditation of the Buddha. In early Buddhist art the Buddha was not shown in human form, and an empty seat stood for him seated in meditation.

Sculptors at Bharhut, Sanchi and other early sites of roughly the 2nd and 1st centuries BCE used symbols in place of the Buddha's figure. An empty seat, often under the Bodhi tree, showed his meditation and enlightenment. The wheel (dharmachakra) stood for the first sermon at Sarnath, the stupa for the mahaparinibbana, and a riderless horse for his departure from home. Human images of the Buddha became common only later, in the Gandhara and Mathura schools.

B is wrong: the first sermon is shown by the wheel of law, often with deer.

C is wrong: the mahaparinibbana, his final passing away, is shown by the stupa.

D is wrong: the mahabhinishkramana, the great departure, is shown by a horse without a rider.

Exam tip: empty seat = meditation; wheel = first sermon; stupa = mahaparinibbana; horse = great departure; lotus or elephant = birth.

The correct answer is A, Gujarat. Akbar raised the Buland Darwaza, the lofty southern gateway of the Jama Masjid at Fatehpur Sikri, in 1601 to mark his conquest of Gujarat, and it ranks among the tallest gateways in the world, approached by a long flight of steps and faced in red sandstone inlaid with white marble. Inside the same courtyard stands the marble tomb of Shaikh Salim Chishti, the saint whose blessing Akbar had sought for an heir. Option B, Mewar, was the kingdom of Rana Pratap, and Akbar's campaign there is remembered for the siege of Chittorgarh and the battle of Haldighati, not for this gateway. Option C, Bengal, was annexed earlier in Akbar's reign. Option D, Malwa, was taken in the 1560s. Fatehpur Sikri as a whole is on the UNESCO World Heritage List, and the gateway's inscriptions carry sayings attributed to Jesus, a detail papers occasionally use.

The correct answer is B, Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth and last human Guru of the Sikhs, who was born at Patna in 1666 while his father Guru Tegh Bahadur was travelling in the east. The gurdwara built on that site is Takht Sri Patna Sahib, one of the five Takhts, and the only one in Bihar. Option A, Guru Nanak, the first Guru, was born in 1469 at Rai Bhoi di Talwandi, now Nankana Sahib in Pakistan, and spent his last years at Kartarpur, also in present-day Pakistan, which is reached through the corridor opened in 2019. Option C, Guru Angad, the second Guru, is associated with Khadur Sahib in Punjab and with the Gurmukhi script. Option D, Guru Amar Das, the third Guru, is associated with Goindwal Sahib and its baoli. Keep the birthplaces of the first and the tenth Guru apart, since that is the pairing most often tested.

The correct answer is C, Gwalior. Gwalior in Madhya Pradesh joined the network as a City of Music in 2023, recognised for the Gwalior gharana, the oldest surviving gharana of khayal singing, and for its association with Tansen, the musician of Akbar's court, whose tomb and annual Tansen Samaroh are in the city. Option A is wrong because Varanasi was designated a City of Music earlier, in 2015, for the Banaras gharana, the shehnai and dhrupad. Option B is wrong because Chennai became a City of Music in 2017 for Carnatic music and its December music season. Option D is wrong because Pune, although a centre of Hindustani classical music and of the Sawai Gandharva festival, is not a member of the network. Three Indian cities hold the Music field: Varanasi, Chennai and Gwalior.

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.

The correct answer is B, Thailand. The Ramakien is the Thai retelling of the Ramayana, painted along the galleries of the Emerald Buddha temple at Bangkok and performed in masked dance; the kings of the present Thai dynasty take the title Rama from it, and the old capital Ayutthaya is named after Ayodhya. Option A is wrong because the Javanese version is the Kakawin Ramayana, which is performed in wayang kulit shadow theatre. Option C is wrong because the Cambodian version is called the Reamker, carved and painted in the Khmer temples. Option D is wrong because the Burmese version is known as the Yama Zatdaw. All four countries have a Ramayana of their own, which is itself the point of such a question, so the names must be matched carefully rather than guessed.

The correct answer is B, Alexander Cunningham. The Archaeological Survey of India was created in 1861 and Cunningham, an army engineer turned archaeologist who had surveyed Buddhist sites following the accounts of Chinese travellers, became its first Director-General; he is often called the father of Indian archaeology. Option A is wrong because James Prinsep was the scholar who deciphered the Brahmi and Kharosthi scripts in the 1830s, which made Ashoka's edicts readable, but he died long before the Survey was founded. Option C is wrong because John Marshall was a later Director-General, under whom the excavations at Harappa and Mohenjo-daro were announced in the 1920s. Option D is wrong because Mortimer Wheeler headed the Survey in the 1940s and is remembered for his work at Harappa and Arikamedu and for training Indian archaeologists.

The correct answer is B, Film. Mumbai was designated a UNESCO Creative City of Film in 2019, on the strength of the country's oldest and largest film industry, which grew from Dadasaheb Phalke's Raja Harishchandra of 1913 and now produces films in Hindi, Marathi and several other languages from one city. Option A is wrong because Literature is the field of Kozhikode in Kerala, designated in 2023 for Malayalam publishing and its reading culture. Option C is wrong because Design is a field of the network in which no Indian city has yet been designated. Option D is wrong because Music belongs to Varanasi, Chennai and Gwalior. Note that Mumbai and Hyderabad were announced together in 2019, which is why the two are often swapped: Mumbai for Film, Hyderabad for Gastronomy.

The correct answer is C, Edwin Lutyens. Sir Edwin Lutyens designed the Viceroy House on Raisina Hill, renamed Rashtrapati Bhavan after independence, and it was completed in 1929. The building has about 340 rooms, a copper central dome drawn from the Sanchi stupa railing, a Durbar Hall under that dome, carved elephants, chhajjas that throw off the monsoon and chhatris on the roofline, all set on a classical plan. Lutyens also laid out the plan of New Delhi and designed the India Gate. Option A is wrong because Herbert Baker, who worked alongside Lutyens, designed the North and South Blocks of the Secretariat and the circular Parliament House. Option B is wrong because Robert Tor Russell designed Connaught Place and the Eastern and Western Courts. Option D is wrong because Henry Irwin worked in the south and in Shimla, designing the Amba Vilas Palace at Mysuru and the Viceregal Lodge.

The correct answer is B. Ashoka sent his son Mahendra, known in the Pali chronicles as Mahinda, to Sri Lanka, where the king of the island received the teaching, and afterwards the nun Sanghamitra came with a branch of the Bodhi tree, which was planted at Anuradhapura. The story is told in the Pali chronicles Dipavamsa and Mahavamsa. Option A is wrong because Bodhidharma is linked with China, where his school became Chan and in Japan Zen, and Bodhisena with the Todaiji temple at Nara in Japan. Option C is wrong because Shantarakshita and Padmasambhava established Buddhism in Tibet in the eighth century, a thousand years after Ashoka. Option D is wrong because Faxian and Xuanzang were Chinese pilgrims who came to India to study, not Indian missionaries sent abroad. The mission to Sri Lanka is the one Ashoka sent that is remembered by name, and the Bodhi tree at Anuradhapura is pointed to as its living proof.

The correct answer is B, anda. The anda, meaning the egg, is the solid hemispherical dome of a stupa, raised over the relic chamber, and it is the part that gives the stupa its shape. Option A, the harmika, is the small square railing or balcony placed on top of the dome, from which the mast rises. Option C, the medhi, is the drum or circular base on which the dome sits and which often carries a raised walkway. Option D, the vedika, is the stone railing around the stupa that encloses the pradakshina path for circumambulation, and the ornamental gateways in it are the toranas; above the harmika come the yashti, the mast, and the chhatra, the umbrellas. The Great Stupa at Sanchi shows every one of these parts clearly, which is why examiners use it as the standard example.

The correct answer is A, Gastronomy. Hyderabad was designated a UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy in 2019 for a cuisine that grew in the kitchens of the Deccan courts, with Hyderabadi biryani, haleem, qubani ka meetha and the Irani chai of the city's cafes as its best known dishes. Option B is wrong because Crafts and Folk Art belongs to Jaipur, from 2015, and to Srinagar, from 2021. Option C is wrong because Film belongs to Mumbai, which was announced in the same round of 2019, making it the standard distractor here even though Hyderabad also has a large film industry at Ramoji Film City. Option D is wrong because Literature belongs to Kozhikode from 2023. The paired fact worth memorising is that India's two 2019 entries were Mumbai for Film and Hyderabad for Gastronomy.

The correct answer is B, Afghanistan. The two giant Buddhas were carved into a cliff in the Bamiyan valley, on the branch of the Silk Route that carried Buddhism from Gandhara into Central Asia, and they were destroyed in 2001; the valley remains on the World Heritage list for the surviving caves and paintings. Option A is wrong, and is the usual trap, because Pakistan holds the Gandhara sites of Taxila and Takht-i-Bahi and the museum sculptures of that school, but not the Bamiyan figures. Option C is wrong because Uzbekistan has the Buddhist remains of Termez and the great Islamic monuments of Samarkand and Bukhara. Option D is wrong because Iran lay on the route but is associated with the Zoroastrian and later Islamic tradition rather than with carvings of this kind.

The correct answer is B, Literature. Kozhikode in Kerala became India's first UNESCO City of Literature in 2023, recognised for a dense network of publishing houses, libraries and reading rooms, for Malayalam writing and for literary festivals held in the city. Option A is wrong because Music was awarded to Gwalior in the same round of 2023, and the two Indian cities of that year are therefore the commonest pair to swap. Option C is wrong because Gastronomy belongs to Hyderabad, from 2019. Option D is wrong because Design is a field of the network in which no Indian city has yet been named. A useful way to fix the Indian entries is by pairs: Jaipur and Varanasi in 2015, Mumbai and Hyderabad in 2019, Gwalior and Kozhikode in 2023, with Chennai in 2017 and Srinagar in 2021 standing alone.

The correct answer is A, Vietnam. The kingdom of Champa held the central coast of what is now Vietnam for many centuries, used Sanskrit in its inscriptions and built brick temples to Shiva, of which the group at My Son is the largest and is a World Heritage site. Option B is wrong because Laos is associated with Theravada Buddhism, the town of Luang Prabang and the Lao Ramayana, Phra Lak Phra Ram. Option C is wrong because Malaysia's early Indianised remains lie in Kedah and the Bujang valley, which are smaller shrines rather than a temple city. Option D is wrong because the Philippines shows Indian influence mainly through words, as in the Laguna copperplate inscription of the tenth century, and has no temple complex of this kind. Champa and the Cham people are the names to remember with Vietnam.