Indian History Quiz: Harsha and the South Indian Kingdoms

The correct answer is C, because Harshavardhana's court poet was Banabhatta, not Harishena. Harishena belonged to an earlier century altogether: he was the court poet of Samudragupta and composed the Prayag Prashasti, the Allahabad Pillar Inscription. The statement is therefore the one that is not correct, which is what the question asks for.

Option A is correct, because Harsha ruled from 606 CE to about 647 CE, which is roughly fourteen hundred years before our own time. Option B is correct, because the Chinese pilgrim Xuan Zang, written in older books as Hiuen Tsang, travelled in India between 629 and 645 CE and spent several years at Harsha's court, leaving his account in the Si-yu-ki. Option D is correct, because the Harshacharita is the biography of Harsha written by Banabhatta and is regarded as the first historical biography in Sanskrit.

The correct answer is D, Gauda. Shashanka was the king of Gauda, the region of Bengal with its centre at Karnasuvarna. He killed Harsha's elder brother Rajyavardhana, and it was to avenge that killing, and to recover his sister Rajyashri, that Harsha declared war and allied with Bhaskaravarman of Kamarupa.

Option A, Kanyakubja, is the old name of Kannauj, the Maukhari capital that Harsha himself took over and made his own seat, so it is not the kingdom Harsha attacked. Option B, Junagarh, is a place in Saurashtra in Gujarat known for the rock edicts of Ashoka and the Rudradaman and Skandagupta inscriptions, and had no connection with Shashanka. Option C, Magadha, is the south Bihar kingdom of the Haryankas, Nandas, Mauryas and Guptas; by Harsha's day it was part of his own empire and not the base of Shashanka.

The correct answer is C, Ratnavali. Harshavardhana was a dramatist as well as a king, and three Sanskrit plays are credited to him: Ratnavali, Priyadarshika and Nagananda. Ratnavali is a court comedy about the love of King Udayana for Ratnavali, and it is the work most often named in question papers.

Option A, the Harshacharita, is about Harsha but was not written by him; it is the biography composed by his court poet Banabhatta. Option B, Kadambari, is also by Banabhatta, a Sanskrit prose romance left unfinished at his death and completed by his son. Option D, the Gitagovinda, is much later: it was written by Jayadeva in the twelfth century at the court of the Sena king Lakshmanasena of Bengal, and it celebrates Radha and Krishna. Only Ratnavali is the king's own composition.

The correct answer is D, Harshavardhana. Banabhatta was the court poet of Harsha in the seventh century CE. He wrote the Harshacharita, the biography of his patron and the first historical biography in Sanskrit, and the prose romance Kadambari, which was completed by his son Bhushanabhatta.

Option A, Ashoka, ruled in the third century BCE, nine hundred years earlier, and left edicts in Prakrit rather than a body of Sanskrit court poetry. Option B, Bindusara, was Ashoka's father and an even earlier Mauryan king. Option C, Chandragupta II of the Guptas, ruled around 375 to 415 CE; the writers associated with his court in tradition are the nine gems, including Kalidasa, while the inscriptional poet of his father Samudragupta was Harishena. Banabhatta belongs to none of these courts, only to Harsha's.

The correct answer is B, Pulakeshin II. The Aihole inscription was composed in Sanskrit by Ravikirti, the Jain court poet of the Chalukya king Pulakeshin II of Badami. It praises his victories and states that Harsha, the lord of the north, lost his joy when his elephants fell in battle, which is the only record of Harsha's defeat on the Narmada in about 618 CE.

Option A, Narasimhavarman I, was the Pallava king who later captured Vatapi and killed Pulakeshin II, but the inscription is not his. Option C, Dantidurga, was the Rashtrakuta ruler who ended Chalukya rule about 753 CE, more than a century after the inscription was cut. Option D, Mahendravarman I, was the Pallava father of Narasimhavarman I and the author of the play Mattavilasa Prahasana; Pulakeshin II defeated him, so he would hardly have commissioned a eulogy of his rival.

The correct answer is B, Kannauj. Harsha inherited Thanesar in modern Haryana from the Pushyabhuti family. When his sister Rajyashri's husband Grahavarman, the Maukhari king of Kannauj, was killed, Harsha united the two realms and moved his seat to Kannauj on the Ganga, which then became the symbol of paramountcy in northern India for the next two centuries.

Option A, Pataliputra, had been the capital of the Mauryas and the Guptas but had lost its importance by Harsha's time. Option C, Ujjain, was the great city of Avanti and a Gupta provincial seat, but never Harsha's capital. Option D, Prayag, at the confluence of the Ganga and the Yamuna, is the place where Harsha held his quinquennial assembly and gave away his treasury, but it was a religious centre for him, not the seat of his government.

The correct answer is C, Narasimhavarman I. He is also called Mamalla, the great wrestler, and the port city of Mamallapuram or Mahabalipuram takes its name from that title. The five monolithic rathas there, each cut out of a single rock and named after the Pandavas and Draupadi, belong to his reign in the middle of the seventh century.

Option A, Simhavishnu, was the early Pallava who ended the Kalabhra hold over the Tamil country but left no monument of this kind. Option B, Mahendravarman I, began the rock-cut cave phase of Pallava architecture, such as the mandapas at Mandagapattu, but not the free-standing rathas. Option D, Aparajita, was the last Pallava king, defeated by the Chola Aditya I in the ninth century, by which time Pallava building had long passed its great period. The later structural Shore Temple was built by Narasimhavarman II Rajasimha.

The correct answer is A, Narasimhavarman II Rajasimha. He ruled in the early eighth century and marks the structural phase of Pallava architecture, when temples were built up of dressed stone instead of being cut from living rock. Both the Shore Temple by the sea at Mahabalipuram and the Kailasanatha temple at Kanchipuram are his.

Option B, Pulakeshin II, was the Chalukya king of Badami, remembered for defeating Harsha, and his dynasty built at Aihole, Badami and Pattadakal instead. Option C, Krishna I, was the Rashtrakuta king who had the Kailasa temple at Ellora carved out of a single hill in the eighth century, a work often confused with the Kanchipuram temple of similar name. Option D, Rajaraja I, was the Chola who built the Brihadeshwara temple at Thanjavur around 1010 CE, three centuries later.

The correct answer is B, Hiuen Tsang. He reached India in 630 CE, stayed for about fifteen years, and studied Yogachara philosophy at the Nalanda mahavihara under its head, the aged monk Shilabhadra. His travel account, the Si-yu-ki, is the fullest description of Harsha's empire that survives.

Option A, Fa-Hien, came two centuries earlier, during the reign of Chandragupta II of the Guptas, and Nalanda had not yet grown into the university he is sometimes credited with visiting. Option C, I-tsing, arrived later in the seventh century, after Harsha's death, and wrote about monastic discipline and the sea route through Sumatra. Option D, Wang-hiuen-tse, was not a pilgrim but a Chinese envoy; he came after Harsha died, was attacked by the usurper Arunashva, and returned with Tibetan and Nepalese troops to defeat him.

The correct answer is B, Madurai. The Pandyas ruled the extreme south of the peninsula from Madurai on the Vaigai, with the pearl-fishing port of Korkai on the coast. Their line was revived in the sixth century by Kadungon, who helped end the Kalabhra interregnum, and Madurai remained their seat through the Pallava and Chola centuries.

Option A, Kanchipuram, was the Pallava capital in the northern Tamil country, famous for the Kailasanatha temple. Option C, Vatapi, modern Badami in Karnataka, was the capital of the Chalukyas, who fought both the Pallavas and Harsha. Option D, Thanjavur, became important only later, as the capital of the imperial Cholas from the time of Vijayalaya in the ninth century, and is remembered for the Brihadeshwara temple of Rajaraja I. Only Madurai is the Pandya answer.

The correct answer is B, Nayanars. The Nayanars were the Shaiva saints of the Tamil bhakti movement, traditionally counted as sixty-three, and they included Appar, Sambandar, Sundarar and Manikkavachakar. Their hymns were collected as the Tevaram, and their devotion drew ordinary people away from Jainism and Buddhism towards temple worship.

Option A, the Alvars, were the Vaishnava counterparts, twelve in number, whose hymns to Vishnu form the Nalayira Divya Prabandham; Andal is the one woman among them. Option C, the Siddhars, were a separate Tamil tradition of mystics and healers, not a group of temple hymnists of this kind. Option D, the Acharyas, such as Nathamuni and Ramanuja, came later and were teachers who systematised Vaishnava philosophy rather than the singing saints themselves. The Shiva-Vishnu pairing of Nayanars and Alvars is the fact papers test.

The correct answer is A, Dantidurga. He was the founder of Rashtrakuta power and overthrew the last important Chalukya of Badami, Kirtivarman II, about 753 CE. The Rashtrakutas then ruled the Deccan from Manyakheta and left the rock-cut Kailasa temple at Ellora, begun under Dantidurga's successor Krishna I.

Option B, Aditya I, was a Chola king of the ninth century who defeated the last Pallava, Aparajita, not a Chalukya. Option C, Bhaskaravarman, was the king of Kamarupa in Assam and an ally of Harsha against Shashanka of Gauda, and he never campaigned in the Deccan. Option D, Kubja Vishnuvardhana, was a brother of Pulakeshin II who founded the Eastern Chalukya branch at Vengi in coastal Andhra; he extended the family's power instead of ending it. Dantidurga alone closed the Badami line.