Art & Culture Mixed Quiz: Set 49

The correct answer is B, Varaha, the boar, third in the usual sequence of ten avatars, carved either fully as a boar or with a boar's head on a human body, often lifting the earth goddess on one tusk.

The correct answer is A, Lakulisha, who is held in Pashupata tradition to be an incarnation of Shiva and is shown in sculpture holding a club, the lakula from which his name comes; the Pashupata school is the earliest Shaiva order for which texts and inscriptions survive.

The sixty-three Nayanars sang in Tamil to Shiva between roughly the sixth and ninth centuries; the hymns of the three greatest, Appar, Sambandar and Sundarar, make up the Tevaram, which forms the first seven books of the twelve-book Tirumurai canon, while Sekkizhar's Periya Puranam, the twelfth book, tells their lives.

In the Bhumisparsha, or earth-touching, mudra the Buddha sits with the left hand in his lap and the right hand lowered with the fingers pointing to the ground, calling the earth to witness that he had earned the right to enlightenment against the temptations of Mara.

The Nataraja shows Shiva within a ring of flames, hair flying, the damaru drum in one hand and fire in another, the right foot pressing down the dwarf of ignorance called Apasmara and one hand raised in the gesture of protection; the form is linked with Chidambaram and is the…

The reverse of the one hundred rupee note of the Mahatma Gandhi new series carries the motif of Rani ki Vav at Patan, chosen because it is a World Heritage Site that stands for Indian water architecture.

The correct answer is B, the Nalayira Divya Prabandham, whose very name means the divine collection of four thousand, compiled from the hymns of the twelve Alvars and treated in Sri Vaishnavism as the Tamil Veda, recited in temple worship alongside Sanskrit scripture.

Incredible India was launched by the Ministry of Tourism in 2002 as an international marketing campaign, and its advertisements in foreign magazines and on television turned Indian tourism into a recognised brand, with the exclamation mark in the logo forming the letter I. The campaign has since had further editions.

The correct answer is C, Parshvanatha, the twenty-third Tirthankara, who is shown with the hood of a serpent, usually of seven heads, spread over his head and the coils rising behind him; his lanchana, the emblem on the pedestal, is a snake.

UNESCO set up the Memory of the World Programme in 1992, after recognising that war, neglect, damp, insects and illegal trade were destroying archives and manuscript collections across the world.

The correct answer is B, Andal, the only woman among the twelve Alvars, whose Tiruppavai and Nachiyar Tirumozhi are sung in Vaishnava temples, especially in the month of Margazhi, and who is worshipped at Srivilliputhur.

It lets the central government declare a monument or an archaeological site to be of national importance, controls excavation and punishes damage, and its amendment of 2010 fixed the hundred metres around such a monument as a prohibited area and the next two hundred metres as a regulated area.

Saraswati is shown with the veena, a manuscript or palm-leaf book, a rosary and the swan, the bird also given to Brahma, whose consort she is in the later tradition.

The correct answer is C, Kanishka, the Kushan ruler who called the fourth Buddhist council in Kashmir and under whose empire, stretching from the Gangetic plain into Central Asia, Mahayana Buddhism and the Gandhara and Mathura styles of sculpture travelled up the trade routes to Khotan, Kucha and Dunhuang.

The correct answer is A, Basavanna, a minister and social reformer who led the Lingayat movement, gathered thinkers in the assembly called the Anubhava Mantapa, and whose followers wear a personal ishtalinga and reject caste, priesthood and temple ritual; the movement's literature is the body of Kannada vachana poems by…

The building is named after Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, who founded the Council on 9 April 1950 and was its first President, and it houses the body that runs India's cultural centres abroad, the scholarship schemes for foreign students and the chairs of Indian studies in foreign universities.

The sculptor first models the figure in wax, coats it in fine clay to form a mould, and heats the mould so that the wax melts and runs out; molten metal is poured into the empty space, and the mould is broken to free the image, so each bronze is…

The correct answer is B, Ramanuja, who taught Vishishtadvaita or qualified non-dualism, in which the individual soul and the world are real and dependent on God rather than illusory, and who organised Sri Vaishnavism around Srirangam, giving the Tamil hymns of the Alvars a place beside Sanskrit scripture.

The reclining image, lying on the right side with the head resting on the hand and the eyes half closed, shows the Buddha's final passing away, and the colossal figures at Kushinagar and Ajanta are the examples usually cited.

The correct answer is A, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, the sixteenth century Bengali saint whose movement is called Gaudiya Vaishnavism after Gauda, the old name of Bengal; its philosophy of Achintya Bheda Abheda holds the soul to be inconceivably both different from and identical with God, and its practice is the congregational…