Indian History Quiz: Ancient Literature and Inscriptions

The correct answer is B, the Samaveda. Its name comes from saman, a melody, and it arranges hymns, most of them taken from the Rigveda, in the form in which the priest was to sing them at a sacrifice, so the earliest Indian system of musical notes is traced to it. Option A is wrong because the Rigveda is the oldest Veda and a collection of 1,028 hymns of praise, not of melodies. Option C is wrong because the Yajurveda gives the formulae and the procedure for performing sacrifices, in prose as well as verse, and is the handbook of the officiating priest. Option D is wrong because the Atharvaveda is a collection of charms, spells and remedies that reflects popular belief and early medicine. The pairing most often asked is Samaveda with music and Atharvaveda with magic and medicine.

The correct answer is B, James Prinsep. He was an officer of the East India Company mint and secretary of the Asiatic Society, and in 1837 he worked out the values of the Brahmi letters, which made the edicts of the king who called himself Devanampiya Piyadassi legible for the first time. Option A is wrong because Alexander Cunningham was the first Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India and surveyed sites rather than decipher scripts. Option C is wrong because John Marshall led the Archaeological Survey much later and is remembered for announcing the discovery of the Indus civilisation. Option D is wrong because William Jones founded the Asiatic Society in 1784 and worked on Sanskrit and comparative language, before the Brahmi problem was solved. Fix the year 1837 with the name Prinsep.

The correct answer is B, the Mundaka Upanishad. The words were adopted as the national motto and are inscribed in Devanagari below the lion capital on the state emblem of India. Option A is wrong because the Rigveda, though the oldest text, is not the source of this phrase; what comes from it to public life is the Gayatri mantra. Option C is wrong because the Bhagavad Gita is a part of the Mahabharata and supplies no national symbol. Option D is wrong because the Manusmriti is the earliest of the Dharmashastras and deals with law and social duty. Keep the three emblem facts together: the lion capital of Ashoka at Sarnath was adopted as the state emblem, the wheel on it became the chakra of the national flag, and the motto below it comes from the Mundaka Upanishad.

The correct answer is A, Kharavela of Kalinga. The inscription is cut in a cave of the Udayagiri hills near Bhubaneswar in Odisha, is written in Prakrit in the Brahmi script, and records year by year the campaigns, irrigation works and patronage of Jainism of this ruler of the Mahameghavahana line. Option B is wrong because Rudradaman I, the Shaka ruler of western India, is known from the Junagadh rock inscription. Option C is wrong because Gautamiputra Satakarni of the Satavahana dynasty is known from the Nasik prashasti issued by his mother Gautami Balashri. Option D is wrong because Samudragupta is known from the Prayag or Allahabad pillar prashasti composed by Harisena. The pairing of inscription with ruler is the whole of this question type.

The correct answer is B, Harisena. He was a court poet of Samudragupta, and the prashasti he composed in Sanskrit, partly in prose and partly in verse, lists the kings the emperor uprooted in the north, those he defeated and reinstated in the south, and the rulers who paid him homage, which makes it the main source for his reign. Option A is wrong because Ravikirti composed the Aihole inscription of the Chalukya king Pulakeshin II. Option C is wrong because Vatsabhatti composed the Mandasor inscription about a guild of silk weavers in the time of Kumaragupta. Option D is wrong because Banabhatta was the court writer of Harshavardhana and wrote the Harshacharita and the Kadambari, which are literary works and not inscriptions. The poet and his patron are asked in either direction.

The correct answer is B, Pulakeshin II, the greatest ruler of the Chalukyas of Badami. The inscription at Aihole, composed in Sanskrit by his court poet Ravikirti, praises his achievements and mentions his success against Harshavardhana, which is the only firm evidence that the ruler of Kanauj was checked on the Narmada. Option A is wrong because Harshavardhana is the king defeated in this record, and our knowledge of him comes from the Harshacharita of Banabhatta and the account of Hiuen Tsang. Option C is wrong because Narasimhavarman I was the Pallava ruler who later defeated and killed Pulakeshin II and took the title Vatapikonda. Option D is wrong because Dantidurga founded the Rashtrakuta power in the middle of the eighth century, long after this inscription.

The correct answer is A. The Junagadh rock inscription of the Shaka ruler Rudradaman I says that the Sudarshana lake, first built in the Mauryan period and improved under Ashoka, burst in a storm and was rebuilt at the ruler own cost without a levy on his subjects. The record is also famous as the earliest long inscription in Sanskrit. Option B is wrong because the Bhitari pillar inscription of Skandagupta speaks of his struggle against the Hunas. Option C is wrong because the Sohgaura copper plate from the Gorakhpur region deals with the storage of grain for famine relief. Option D is wrong because the Uttaramerur inscription of the Chola king Parantaka I describes how the village assembly chose its members, and is the standard source on local self government in the Chola country.

The correct answer is A. Tolkappiyam, ascribed to Tolkappiyar, is the oldest extant Tamil work and treats grammar along with the conventions of poetry, so it is the foundation of the whole Sangam corpus. Option B is wrong because the great works on medicine are the Charaka Samhita and, for surgery, the Sushruta Samhita, both in Sanskrit. Option C is wrong because astronomy belongs to the Aryabhatiya of Aryabhata and the Brihat Samhita and Panchasiddhantika of Varahamihira. Option D is wrong because statecraft is the subject of the Arthashastra of Kautilya. Keep the Sangam list in order: Tolkappiyam on grammar, the eight anthologies of the Ettutogai, the ten poems of the Pattuppattu, the Tirukkural among the minor works, and the twin epics Silappadikaram and Manimekalai.

The correct answer is C, the thirteenth major rock edict. It gives the number of people killed, who died and who were carried away from Kalinga, says the king felt sorrow and remorse, and announces that he would seek conquest through dhamma rather than through war; it also names the Hellenistic kings to whom he sent envoys. Option A is wrong because the first major rock edict prohibits animal sacrifice and festive gatherings. Option B is wrong because the seventh pillar edict is a summary of his measures for dhamma towards the end of the reign. Option D is wrong because the Rummindei pillar at Lumbini commemorates his visit to the birthplace of the Buddha and the reduction of the village tax. Note that the Kalinga war is not mentioned in the edicts installed in Kalinga itself.

The correct answer is B, Lumbini. The pillar stands at Rummindei in the Nepal terai, records that the king came in person in the twentieth year of his reign to worship at the spot where the Buddha was born, had a stone wall and a pillar set up, and reduced the tax of the village to an eighth, which makes it the firmest proof of the site. Option A is wrong because Bodh Gaya, where the Buddha attained enlightenment, is marked by the Mahabodhi temple of a later date. Option C is wrong because Sarnath, the site of the first sermon, is associated with the Ashokan pillar whose lion capital became the state emblem. Option D is wrong because Kushinagar is the place of the mahaparinirvana. These four sites of the life of the Buddha are asked together very often.

The correct answer is A, the Eran inscription. The record from Eran in present day Madhya Pradesh, of the time of Bhanugupta at the beginning of the sixth century, says that after a chief named Goparaja fell in battle his wife followed him on the funeral pyre, and this is the earliest epigraphic reference to the custom. Option B is wrong because the Mandasor inscription, composed by Vatsabhatti, records the building and repair of a sun temple by a guild of silk weavers. Option C is wrong because the Besnagar or Heliodorus pillar near Vidisha was set up by a Greek envoy who called himself a devotee of Vasudeva and is early evidence of Bhagavatism. Option D is wrong because the Hathigumpha inscription is the record of Kharavela of Kalinga. Eran is also known for a boar image inscription of the Huna chief Toramana.

The correct answer is B, Pali, the popular speech in which the Buddha is believed to have preached and in which the three baskets of the canon were put together, the Vinaya Pitaka on monastic discipline, the Sutta Pitaka on his discourses and the Abhidhamma Pitaka on philosophy. Option A is wrong as a description of the canon, although later Buddhist writers did use Sanskrit, as Ashvaghosha did in the Buddhacharita and the Mahayana schools did in their treatises. Option C is wrong because Ardhamagadhi Prakrit is the language of the Jain Agamas, the twelve Angas of the Jain canon. Option D is wrong because Tamil is the language of the Sangam works, including the Buddhist Tamil epic Manimekalai, which belongs to a different tradition. The language of each canon is a favourite single line question.