Bihar Mixed Quiz: Set 9

Gautama attained enlightenment at Uruvela, the Bodh Gaya of today, under a peepal tree on the bank of the Niranjana river, which is called the Phalgu now.

Bihar had a literacy rate of 61.80 per cent in 2011, the lowest of any state, with male literacy at 71.20 per cent and female literacy at 51.50 per cent, so barely half the women of the state were counted as literate.

Nalanda was a Buddhist monastic university, a mahavihara, where the main course of study was the Mahayana canon along with logic, grammar, medicine and astronomy.

Udayin, the son and successor of Ajatashatru, built a fort at the meeting point of the Ganga and the Son and moved the Magadhan capital there from Rajagriha.

Tripitaka is a Pali and Sanskrit word in which pitaka means a basket, so the whole means three baskets, a name that came from the practice of keeping the palm leaf manuscripts of each collection in a separate basket.

The weavers of Bhagalpur have worked tussar silk for generations and the cloth is sold across the country as Bhagalpuri silk, which is why the city is called the silk city of Bihar.

The Gupta emperor Kumaragupta the first, who appears in the records with the title Shakraditya, founded the monastic university at Nalanda in the fifth century.

The Kosi comes down from Nepal carrying an enormous load of silt, drops it on the flat plain and so keeps raising its own bed.

The first Buddhist council met at Rajgriha, the Rajgir of today, in the Saptaparni cave soon after the Buddha's death, under the patronage of king Ajatashatru and the presidency of Mahakassapa.

West Bengal grows far more jute than any other state, and Bihar comes next, its crop concentrated in the north-eastern districts of Purnia, Katihar, Araria and Kishanganj, where high rainfall, standing water for retting and alluvial soil suit the fibre.

Hiuen Tsang reached Nalanda in the seventh century during the reign of Harshavardhana and spent several years there studying the Yogachara philosophy under Shilabhadra, who was then the abbot.

The Chitwan national park of Nepal lies immediately across the border from Valmiki, so the two together form one continuous block of Terai forest and grassland; tigers, leopards and the occasional one-horned rhinoceros move between them, and the two countries manage the landscape as a shared corridor.

Mahavira attained nirvana at Pavapuri in the present Nalanda district of Bihar at the age of seventy two, traditionally in 527 BCE, and the Jal Mandir, a marble temple standing in the middle of a tank, marks the place of his cremation.

Bihar, together with Odisha, was separated from the Bengal Presidency and constituted as a new province on 22 March 1912, with Patna as its capital.

The Pala king Dharmapala founded Vikramshila in the late eighth century at Antichak in what is now Bhagalpur district, on a height above the Ganga, as a rival and a complement to Nalanda.

The Kosi is called the Sapt Kosi because seven head streams gather in the Nepal Himalaya to make it, and of these the three main ones are the Sun Kosi from the west, the Arun from the north and the Tamur from the east.

The third council met at Pataliputra in the reign of Ashoka, with Moggaliputta Tissa presiding.

Vikramshila stood at Antichak village in Bhagalpur district, on raised ground overlooking the Ganga, and excavation has revealed a great cruciform stupa at the centre with monastic cells arranged in a square around it, a plan very different from the rows of monasteries at Nalanda.

The second council met at Vaishali about a century after the Buddha's death, under king Kalashoka of the Shishunaga dynasty, with Sabakami presiding.

Atisha was the most famous head of Vikramshila and left for Tibet in the eleventh century at the invitation of its western kings.