Art & Culture Quiz: Sects of Hinduism: Shaivism, Vaishnavism and Shaktism

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 pillar was set up by Heliodorus, the Greek ambassador of the Indo-Greek king Antialcidas at the court of a local ruler, and its Brahmi inscription calls it a Garuda pillar raised in honour of Vasudeva, the god of gods; it is the standard epigraphic proof that Bhagavatism, the early…

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.

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.

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.

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 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 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…

The Devi Mahatmya, known also as the Durga Saptashati or Chandi Path from its seven hundred verses, is a section of that Purana; it narrates the goddess slaying Mahishasura, Shumbha and Nishumbha, and is recited through Navaratri, which is why it is treated as the first full statement of the…

The Dasha Mahavidyas are the ten great forms of the goddess in Tantric Shaktism, the list beginning with Kali and Tara and including Tripura Sundari, Bhuvaneshvari, Bhairavi, Chhinnamasta, Dhumavati, Bagalamukhi, Matangi and Kamala.

The correct answer is A, Pandharpur, on the Bhima river in Solapur district, where Vithoba or Vitthal, a form of Vishnu, is enshrined; Warkaris walk there in the great pilgrimage procession called the wari, carrying the palanquins of their saints, and the sect produced Jnaneshwar, Namdev, Eknath and Tukaram with…