Books & Authors Mixed Quiz: Set 17

The correct answer is B. The Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri is Jahangir’s own memoir, written by the emperor in Persian and carried forward by others once his health failed, and it is notable for its close observation of plants, animals and paintings as much as for its politics. Option A is wrong because Mutamad Khan wrote the Iqbalnama-i-Jahangiri, a separate work on the same reign, and confusing the two is the usual error here. Option C is wrong because Shah Jahan’s reign is covered by the Padshahnama of Abdul Hamid Lahori and by the Amal-i-Salih of Muhammad Salih Kambo. Option D is wrong because Barani’s treatise on kingship is the Fatwa-i-Jahandari, from the Tughlaq period. The three royal autobiographies to remember are Babur’s, Jahangir’s and Firoz Shah Tughlaq’s.

The correct answer is B, Abul Fazl, one of the nine jewels of Akbar’s court, who wrote the Akbarnama in three volumes; the Ain-i-Akbari is its third volume and is a gazetteer of the empire in five books, describing the departments, the provinces, the revenue, the coinage, the army and the customs of the people. Option A is wrong because Abdul Qadir Badauni wrote the Muntakhab-ut-Tawarikh, also called the Tarikh-i-Badauni, which criticises Akbar’s religious policy and is read as a counterweight to Abul Fazl. Option C is wrong because Nizamuddin Ahmad wrote the Tabaqat-i-Akbari, another history of the same reign. Option D is wrong because Faizi, Abul Fazl’s brother, was the poet laureate of the court and wrote verse, not this administrative record. The safest way to hold this set is to remember that one reign produced three histories with three tempers: Abul Fazl writing as an admirer, Badauni as a critic, and Nizamuddin Ahmad as a plain annalist.

The correct answer is A. After Alexander's death his general Seleucus Nicator took the eastern part of the empire, was defeated by Chandragupta Maurya and made peace with him, and sent Megasthenes to his court as ambassador. Megasthenes wrote Indica, which does not survive as a whole book but is known from the passages quoted by Arrian, Strabo and Diodorus; he described the walls and moat of Pataliputra, the king's routine, the administration of the city and a land free of famine, and he divided Indian society into seven classes, a division found in no Indian source. Option B is wrong because it was Deimachus who was sent to Bindusara and Dionysius, sent by Ptolemy Philadelphus of Egypt, who came to Ashoka. Option C is wrong because Alexander fought Porus in person and sent no such envoy. Option D is wrong because Darius the Persian belongs to a much earlier age and sent no ambassador to Bimbisara.

The correct answer is A, Hsuan Tsang. Hsuan Tsang, also written Hiuen Tsang or Xuanzang, reached India in the seventh century and spent years in the empire of Harshavardhana of Kannauj, who received him with honour; he studied at the monastery of Nalanda under Shilabhadra, attended the great religious assemblies at Kannauj and at Prayag, and recorded what he saw in the Si-Yu-Ki, or Records of the Western World. He is remembered as the prince of pilgrims. Option B is wrong because I-Tsing, spelt Etsing here, came later in the same century, after Harsha's death, and wrote chiefly on monastic discipline at Nalanda. Option C is wrong because Faxian, that is Fa-Hien, came far earlier, in the reign of Chandragupta the Second Vikramaditya of the Gupta dynasty. Option D is wrong because Ibn Battuta was not Chinese at all but a Moroccan judge of the fourteenth century who came in the reign of Muhammad bin Tughlaq.

The correct answer is A, Abdul Hamid Lahori, who followed the method Abul Fazl had established and produced the official chronicle of Shah Jahan’s reign; a work of the same title by Muhammad Amin Qazwini belongs to the same court, and the Amal-i-Salih of Muhammad Salih Kambo is a further history of the reign. Option B is wrong because Khafi Khan wrote the Muntakhab-ul-Lubab, and he wrote it without sanction because Aurangzeb had stopped official history writing. Option C is wrong because Mirza Muhammad Kazim wrote the Alamgirnama, which covers only the first ten years of Aurangzeb’s reign. Option D is wrong because Ishwardas Nagar, a Hindu official writing in Persian, wrote the Futuhat-i-Alamgiri. Lahori’s chronicle is also the work from which the celebrated illustrated manuscripts of Shah Jahan’s court take their name, and it is the main written source for the building of the new capital at Shahjahanabad and for the court ceremonial of the reign.

The correct answer is C, Girish Karnad. Girish Karnad wrote Yayati in 1961, his first play, which takes from the Mahabharata the story of the old king who asks his son to trade youth with him, and Tughlaq in 1964, on the reign of Muhammad bin Tughlaq. He wrote in Kannada and translated his own work into English, and his other plays include Hayavadana, Nagamandala and Tale-Danda. He received the Jnanpith Award in 1998 and the Padma Bhushan, and he also worked widely as an actor and film director. A is wrong because Viju Khote was a Hindi film actor. B is wrong because Shreeram Lagoo was a Marathi and Hindi actor and stage director rather than the author of these plays. D is wrong because Mohammed Zahur Khayyam was a music composer. Exam tip: Girish Karnad — Yayati, Tughlaq, Hayavadana, Nagamandala; wrote in Kannada, Jnanpith 1998.

The correct answer is B, Chandragupta the Second Vikramaditya. Fa-Hien travelled overland into India at the close of the fourth century and stayed for several years, coming chiefly to collect the texts of Buddhist monastic discipline; his account, known as the Record of the Buddhist Kingdoms, notes the charitable rest houses and hospitals, the mildness of punishments and the safety of the roads, and it is a valued picture of Gupta society. He is remarkable for never naming the emperor in whose realm he travelled. Option A is wrong because Samudragupta, the father of Chandragupta the Second, ruled earlier and is known from the Allahabad pillar inscription of Harisena. Option C is wrong because Harshavardhana of the seventh century was the host of Hiuen Tsang, not of Fa-Hien, and mixing up these two pilgrims is the commonest mistake here. Option D is wrong because Kanishka of the Kushanas ruled in the second century and is linked with the fourth Buddhist council.

The correct answer is A, Rousseau. Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote in The Social Contract (1762) that the English people are free only during the election of members of Parliament, and are slaves once the election is over. He used the line to attack representative government. For Rousseau sovereignty rested in the general will of the people and could not be handed over to deputies, so only direct democracy counted as real self-rule. The remark is quoted in polity papers as the classic criticism of indirect democracy. Option B is wrong because John Locke defended representative government and the natural rights to life, liberty and property, and his Two Treatises justified the settlement of 1688 in England. Option C is wrong because Plato, in The Republic, wanted rule by philosopher-kings and distrusted democracy altogether. Option D is wrong because Aristotle, in Politics, classified constitutions and called man a political animal, but this saying is not his. Exam tip: Rousseau — The Social Contract, general will, 'man is born free but everywhere he is in chains'.

The correct answer is B, Ziauddin Barani. Two different books carry the title Tarikh-i-Firoz Shahi, and the difference between them is the commonest trap in this topic: Barani’s runs from the reign of Balban down to the early years of Firoz Shah Tughlaq, while the other, by Shams-i-Siraj Afif, is devoted to the reign of Firoz Shah alone. Barani also wrote the Fatwa-i-Jahandari on the ideals of kingship. Option A is wrong for that reason, since Afif wrote the second of the two. Option C is wrong because Firishta wrote the Tarikh-i-Firishta, also called Gulshan-i-Ibrahimi, at the Bijapur court. Option D is wrong because Minhaj-us-Siraj wrote the Tabaqat-i-Nasiri in the Slave dynasty period. Barani’s account is valued for its detail on Alauddin Khalji’s market control and on the administration of Muhammad bin Tughlaq, although he writes as a partisan of the old nobility and judges sultans by how far they defer to it, which is why historians use him with caution.

The correct answer is B, Ilango Adigal. The Silappadikaram, whose name means the tale of the anklet, follows the merchant Kovalan, his wife Kannagi and the dancer Madhavi, and ends with Kannagi proving her husband's innocence before the Pandya king and bringing fire upon Madurai; she is worshipped afterwards as a goddess of chastity. Option A is wrong because Sattanar composed the Manimekalai, the Buddhist sequel about the daughter of Kovalan and Madhavi, and the two works together are called the twin epics. Option C is wrong because Thiruvalluvar wrote the Tirukkural, a book of couplets and not a narrative epic. Option D is wrong because Subramania Bharati was a poet of the twentieth century whose patriotic verse made him the national poet of Tamil. Fix the heroine with the epic: Kannagi belongs to the Silappadikaram and Manimekalai gives her name to the other.

The correct answer is B, Al-Biruni. Al-Biruni wrote this work in Arabic in the eleventh century as a careful account of Indian religion, philosophy, astronomy, mathematics, law, custom and measurement, setting out each belief as its own followers held it and comparing it with Greek and Islamic learning; he had learned Sanskrit for the purpose, and the book is why he is called the founder of Indology. Option A is wrong because Amir Khusrau was a poet of the Delhi Sultanate who wrote in Persian, and his works include the Tughlaq Nama and the Khazain-ul-Futuh. Option C is wrong because Ziauddin Barani wrote the Tarikh-i-Firoz Shahi, a Persian history of the Sultanate sultans. Option D is wrong because Minhaj-us-Siraj wrote the Tabaqat-i-Nasiri, the chief source for the reign of Iltutmish and Razia. Pair the books with their authors: Indica with Megasthenes, Si-Yu-Ki with Hiuen Tsang, Kitab-ul-Hind with Al-Biruni and Rihla with Ibn Battuta.

The correct answer is C, Gulbadan Begum. She was a daughter of Babur and a sister of Humayun, and she wrote her account of the family at the request of her nephew Akbar, who wanted material for the Akbarnama. Her book is valued because it describes the household and the women of the court from inside, a view that the formal chronicles never give. Option A is wrong because Humayun left no memoir of his own; his reign is known through his sister and through servants of the court. Option B is wrong because Akbar was unlettered and had others write for him, Abul Fazl above all. Option D is wrong because Babur wrote about himself in the Tuzuk-i-Baburi and died before the events of his son's reign.

The correct answer is B, Khafi Khan. Aurangzeb ended official history writing after the first ten years of his reign, which the Alamgirnama of Mirza Muhammad Kazim had covered, so Khafi Khan wrote his history privately; his very name is understood to mean the one who wrote in secret. Option A is wrong because Saqi Mustaid Khan wrote the Maasir-i-Alamgiri, which was completed after Aurangzeb’s death and is the standard account of the later years. Option C is wrong because Abdul Hamid Lahori belongs to Shah Jahan’s reign and wrote the Padshahnama. Option D is wrong because Nizamuddin Ahmad wrote the Tabaqat-i-Akbari in Akbar’s reign, three generations earlier. Khafi Khan’s history is therefore the fullest continuous account of the later Mughals left by a contemporary, and it carries the narrative past Aurangzeb’s death into the reigns that followed, which is exactly the stretch the official chronicles leave blank.

The correct answer is D, (A) is true but (B) is false. James Mill did publish A History of British India in 1817 in three volumes, so the first statement is correct. The second is not. Mill did not use the labels Ancient, Medieval and Modern; he split India's past into Hindu, Muslim and British periods, treating the first two as ages of superstition and British rule as the bringer of progress. Historians reject that scheme because it fixes a whole age by the religion of its rulers and hides everything else happening beneath. The Ancient, Medieval and Modern division came later, borrowed from European practice, and it too is criticised. A is wrong because the first statement is true, not false. B is wrong because the second statement is false. C is wrong because only one of the two is false. Exam tip: Mill, 1817, three volumes, and the Hindu, Muslim, British periodisation.

The correct answer is B, Devaraya the Second. Abdur Razzaq Samarqandi came from Herat in the fifteenth century as the envoy of the Timurid ruler Shah Rukh, and his account, part of the work Matla-us-Sadain, describes the great fortifications of Vijayanagara in seven concentric walls, the crowded bazaars, the jewel market and the court ceremony, and it is among the fullest descriptions of the city that survive. Option A is wrong because Harihara the First was a founder of the kingdom in the fourteenth century, long before this embassy. Option C is wrong because Krishnadeva Raya, the most famous of the Vijayanagara kings, ruled in the early sixteenth century and hosted the Portuguese writers Domingo Paes and Duarte Barbosa. Option D is wrong because Achyuta Deva Raya, who followed Krishnadeva Raya, was visited by the Portuguese Fernao Nuniz. The ordered list to remember is Nicolo Conti under Devaraya the First, Abdur Razzaq under Devaraya the Second, and Paes and Barbosa under Krishnadeva Raya.

The correct answer is B, George Orwell, the pen name of Eric Arthur Blair. Animal Farm is a short allegory in which farm animals overthrow their owner and the pigs take his place, and Nineteen Eighty-Four gave the language the words Big Brother, thought police and doublethink. Option A is wrong because Aldous Huxley wrote Brave New World, another famous imagined future but one ruled by comfort and conditioning rather than fear, and the two are the pair most often exchanged. Option C is wrong because William Golding wrote Lord of the Flies, about schoolboys stranded on an island who slide into savagery. Option D is wrong because E. M. Forster wrote A Passage to India, set in British India. Remember Orwell for fear and surveillance, Huxley for pleasure and control.

The correct answer is B, Dara Shikoh, the eldest son of Shah Jahan, who was a scholar of comparative religion; besides having the Upanishads rendered into Persian as the Sirr-i-Akbar, or the greatest secret, he wrote the Majma-ul-Bahrain, the mingling of two oceans, on the common ground between Hindu and Islamic thought. Option A is wrong because Akbar had the Mahabharata translated into Persian as the Razmnama and set up a translation bureau, but the Upanishads project was his great-grandson’s. Option C is wrong because Aurangzeb, who defeated and executed Dara in the war of succession, was opposed to such work. Option D is wrong because Abul Fazl wrote the Akbarnama and the Ain-i-Akbari and did not translate the Upanishads. Dara’s learning is part of the reason the war of succession is remembered as a contest of outlook as well as of arms, and his Persian version of the Upanishads later reached Europe in further translation, carrying Indian philosophy westward.

The correct answer is A, Dr. S. Radhakrishnan, the second President of India and a professor of philosophy before he entered public life. Besides these two titles he wrote Indian Philosophy in two volumes and The Philosophy of the Upanishads, and Teachers' Day is observed on his birthday, 5 September.

Option B, Dr. Rajendra Prasad, wrote on politics and on the Champaran movement, not on philosophy. Option C, Swami Vivekananda, is the strongest distractor because his lectures on Hinduism are famous, but he held no constitutional office and these particular titles are not his. Option D, Dr. Zakir Husain, the third President, was an educationist known for The Dynamic University. A quick rule keeps this family of questions safe: philosophy and the Upanishads point to Radhakrishnan, education to Zakir Husain, labour to V. V. Giri.

The correct answer is B, James the First, to the court of Jahangir. Sir Thomas Roe reached India in the second decade of the seventeenth century as the formal ambassador of James the First of England and spent about three years at Jahangir's court, seeking a firm commercial treaty for the East India Company; he obtained trading concessions but not the treaty he wanted, and his journal, with the writings of his chaplain Edward Terry, is a close account of the court. Option A is wrong because Charles the First reigned later, in Shah Jahan's time, and sent no such embassy. Option C is wrong because Elizabeth the First did write to Akbar and her letter was carried by John Mildenhall, but Roe was not her envoy; the earlier Englishman received at Jahangir's court was William Hawkins. Option D is wrong because George the First reigned in the eighteenth century, after Aurangzeb's death. Fix the sequence as Hawkins first, then Roe as ambassador, both at Jahangir's court.

The correct answer is C, Nawab of Awadh. The richly illustrated manuscript of the Badshah Nama that now lies in the Royal Library at Windsor reached King George the Third in 1799 as a gift from the Nawab of Awadh. The Badshah Nama, or Padshahnama, is the official Persian chronicle of Shah Jahan's reign, written by Abdul Hamid Lahori, and its paintings of court scenes, durbars and sieges are among the finest Mughal work that survives. Option A is wrong because Abul Fazl was Akbar's courtier, the author of the Akbarnama and the Ain-i-Akbari, and he was killed in 1602. Option B is wrong because Abdul Hamid Lahori wrote the chronicle but lived in the seventeenth century, so he could not have presented it in 1799. Option D is wrong because William Jones was the judge and orientalist who founded the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1784 and died in 1794. Exam tip: Badshah Nama, Abdul Hamid Lahori, Shah Jahan's reign, Windsor manuscript.