Indian History Mixed Quiz: Set 16

The correct answer is B, 1921. Harappa in Punjab was excavated in 1921 by Daya Ram Sahni of the Archaeological Survey of India, and that dig brought the civilisation to light. A year later, in 1922, R.D. Banerji found Mohenjo-daro on the Indus in Sindh. Sir John Marshall, then Director-General of the ASI, put the two finds together and in 1924 announced a new Bronze Age civilisation older than anything then known in India. It is called the Harappan civilisation after the first site excavated and the Indus Valley civilisation after the river along which many of its sites lie. Option A is wrong because no such excavation took place in 1905. Option C is wrong because by 1926 work at these sites was already going on. Option D is wrong because 1932 is a full decade after the discovery. Exam tip: Harappa 1921 - Daya Ram Sahni; Mohenjo-daro 1922 - R.D. Banerji; announced by John Marshall in 1924.

The correct answer is B, Third. The Third Anglo-Maratha War, fought in 1817-18 under Lord Hastings, ended Maratha power. Peshwa Baji Rao II was beaten at Khadki, Koregaon and Ashti, the office of Peshwa was abolished, and his lands around Poona were taken over and joined to the Bombay Presidency. Baji Rao II was pensioned off to Bithur near Kanpur, and a small kingdom was carved out at Satara for a descendant of Shivaji. With this the East India Company became the paramount power in India. Option A is wrong because there was no fourth Anglo-Maratha war; the Marathas fought three. Option C is wrong because the Second War of 1803-05 followed the Treaty of Bassein and cost the Marathas Orissa, Delhi and Agra, but the Peshwa stayed on his seat. Option D is wrong because the First War of 1775-82 ended in the Treaty of Salbai, which restored the position as it was before the war. Exam tip: Salbai 1782, Bassein 1802, Peshwaship abolished 1818.

The correct answer is B, Pavapuri. Mahavira attained nirvana, or salvation, at Pavapuri in the Nalanda district of Bihar, at the age of 72. He was the twenty-fourth and last Tirthankara of Jainism, born at Kundagrama near Vaishali to Siddhartha and Trishala. He left home at 30, gained enlightenment at Jrimbhikagrama on the bank of the Rijupalika river after twelve years of penance, and preached in Prakrit for three decades. Pavapuri today has the Jal Mandir, a marble temple standing in a tank at the place of his cremation, and Diwali is observed by Jains as the day of his nirvana. Option A is wrong because Sonagiri in Madhya Pradesh is a Jain pilgrimage hill, but not the site of his nirvana. Option C is wrong because Shravanabelagola in Karnataka is famous for the statue of Bahubali. Option D is wrong because Mount Abu holds the Dilwara temples, built much later. Exam tip: fix Mahavira's four places as Kundagrama for birth, Jrimbhikagrama for enlightenment, Pavapuri for nirvana, and Vaishali as his home region.

The correct answer is C, Kesari. Bal Gangadhar Tilak started Kesari in 1881 and used it to carry the message of swaraj to Marathi readers.

Tilak brought out two papers from Pune in the same year, Kesari in Marathi and Maratha in English. His writings in Kesari on the Bengal partition and on the Muzaffarpur bomb case led to a charge of sedition, and in 1908 he was sentenced to six years of transportation to Mandalay in Burma. It was Tilak who declared that swaraj is my birthright and I shall have it, and he began the public Ganapati and Shivaji festivals to reach ordinary people.

Option A is wrong because Yugantar was started in Bengali by Barindra Kumar Ghosh and Bhupendranath Datta. Option B is wrong because the Bengalee was edited by Surendranath Banerjee. Option D is wrong because Amrita Bazar Patrika was founded by Sisir Kumar Ghosh and Motilal Ghosh.

Exam tip: Tilak - Kesari in Marathi and Maratha in English; Gandhi - Young India and Navajivan.

The correct answer is C, Avanti. Avanti covered the Malwa region and had two capitals: Ujjain in its northern half and Mahishmati on the Narmada in its southern half. Under Pradyota it was one of the four powers that fought for supremacy, and it was finally annexed by Shishunaga of Magadha. Ujjain later became the seat of the Mauryan viceroy and a famous centre of learning.

Option A, Vatsa, had its capital at Kaushambi near modern Prayagraj and was ruled by Udayana, the hero of later Sanskrit plays. Option B, Kosala, had Shravasti as its capital and Ayodhya and Saketa as its other great towns; its king Prasenajit was a contemporary of the Buddha. Option D, Panchala, was divided into a northern half with its capital at Ahichhatra and a southern half with its capital at Kampilya. Papers commonly swap Ujjain with Kaushambi, so keep Ujjain tied to Avanti and Kaushambi to Vatsa.

The correct answer is A, Maharana Pratap. The Battle of Haldighati was fought on 18 June 1576 near Gogunda in Rajasthan, between Maharana Pratap of Mewar and the Mughal army sent by Akbar. Pratap rode his horse Chetak and fought alongside his Rajput soldiers and the Bhil archers of the hills; the Mughal force was led by Raja Man Singh of Amber with Asaf Khan. The Mughals held the field, but Pratap escaped and carried on a long guerrilla war, winning back much of Mewar at Dewair in 1582. Option B is wrong because Amar Singh was Pratap's son and became Rana after him. Option C is wrong because Udai Singh II, Pratap's father, founded Udaipur and died in 1572. Option D is wrong because Man Singh commanded the Mughal side, not Mewar. Exam tip: Haldighati 1576 - Maharana Pratap against Akbar's general Man Singh; Pratap's horse was Chetak.

The correct answer is B, James Prinsep. Prinsep, an official of the mint at Calcutta and secretary of the Asiatic Society, worked out the values of the Brahmi letters in 1837 and so made Ashoka's edicts readable. Until then the inscriptions were known but silent, and the identification of Devanampiya Piyadasi with the Ashoka of Buddhist tradition followed from this work.

Option A, Alexander Cunningham, was the first Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India and surveyed many of the sites, but he came later and used the readings Prinsep had established. Option C, John Marshall, headed the Archaeological Survey in the early twentieth century and is associated with the announcement of the Harappan discoveries, not with Brahmi. Option D, William Jones, founded the Asiatic Society in 1784 and showed the kinship of Sanskrit with Greek and Latin, but he died long before the script was read.

The correct answer is C, Lal Bahadur Shastri. Lal Bahadur Shastri was Prime Minister from 1964 to 1966 and led the country through the war with Pakistan in 1965. He gave the slogan Jai Jawan Jai Kisan, which linked the soldier at the border with the farmer in the field, and his years saw the beginning of the Green Revolution and the setting up of the Food Corporation of India. The war ended with the Tashkent Agreement, signed with Ayub Khan on 10 January 1966; Shastri died in Tashkent the same night. He was given the Bharat Ratna after his death, and 2 October is remembered as his birthday as well as Gandhi Jayanti. Option A is wrong because Morarji Desai became Prime Minister in 1977. Option B is wrong because Indira Gandhi took office in 1966 and led India in the 1971 war. Option D is wrong because Jawaharlal Nehru died in May 1964, before this war. Exam tip: 1962 China under Nehru, 1965 Pakistan under Shastri, 1971 Bangladesh war under Indira Gandhi.

The correct answer is C, China. The Panchsheel agreement was signed on 29 April 1954 between India and China, as part of the treaty on trade between India and the Tibet region of China. Jawaharlal Nehru and Zhou Enlai gave it the name Panchsheel, the five principles: respect for each other's territorial integrity and sovereignty, non-aggression, non-interference in each other's internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence. The slogan Hindi-Chini bhai-bhai belongs to those years, and the five principles later shaped the Non-Aligned Movement. The war of 1962 showed how little the agreement held. Option A is wrong because India's main agreements with Pakistan are the Indus Waters Treaty of 1960 and the Simla Agreement of 1972. Option B is wrong because Bangladesh came into being only in 1971. Option D is wrong because the India-Nepal Treaty of Peace and Friendship was signed in 1950. Exam tip: Panchsheel - India and China, 29 April 1954, five principles.

The correct answer is A, Chahamana. The Bijolia rock inscription, at Bijolia in Bhilwara district of Rajasthan, is dated to 1170 CE, in the reign of Someshvara, and it sets out the family line of the Chahamanas, the Chauhans of Shakambhari. Written in Sanskrit, it was engraved near a Parshvanatha temple by the Jain merchant Lolaka, and it names the rulers from Samantaraja down to Someshvara, the father of Prithviraj Chauhan. Historians value it because it calls the Chahamanas Brahmins of the Vatsa gotra and gives the old names of places such as Ajayameru for Ajmer. Option B is wrong because the Chandelas of Bundelkhand, builders of Khajuraho, are known from the Khajuraho and Mau inscriptions. Option C is wrong because the Paramaras of Malwa appear in the Udaipur Prashasti. Option D is wrong because the Gahadavalas of Kannauj are known from the Chandrawati and other copper plates. Exam tip: Bijolia - Chahamanas; Khajuraho - Chandelas; Udaipur Prashasti - Paramaras.

The correct answer is B, French Revolution. The storming of the Bastille in Paris on 14 July 1789 marks the beginning of the French Revolution. French society then had three estates: the clergy first, the nobility second and everyone else, from peasants to merchants, in the third, which paid the taxes but had no privileges. The Bastille was a royal fortress prison and a symbol of the despotic power of Louis XVI, so the crowd attacked it for arms and gunpowder. The revolution gave the world the slogan of liberty, equality and fraternity and the Declaration of the Rights of Man, and 14 July is still the national day of France. Option A is wrong because the Russian Revolution of 1917 began with strikes in Petrograd. Option C is wrong because the Soviet Union broke up in 1991. Option D is wrong because the Tsar, Nicholas II, abdicated in the February Revolution of 1917. Exam tip: 14 July 1789 Bastille, 1917 Russian Revolution, 1991 end of the Soviet Union.

The correct answer is A, mansabdari system. Mansab means a position or rank, and Akbar used it to place every officer of the empire on a graded ladder. A mansabdar's rank had two numbers: zat, which fixed his personal standing and pay, and sawar, which fixed how many horsemen he had to keep ready for service. Most mansabdars were paid not in cash but by the revenue of an assigned piece of land, and they were moved from one place to another so that no family could settle into a region. B is wrong because the iqta was the revenue assignment of the Delhi Sultanate, held by muqtis, and it did not grade officers in this way. C is wrong because zabt, or the dahsala system worked out under Todar Mal, was a way of assessing land revenue from measured land and average produce, not of ranking nobles. D is wrong because the jagir was only the land whose revenue paid a mansabdar's salary. Exam tip: mansab equals zat plus sawar; zabt or dahsala is revenue assessment.

The correct answer is B, because pattvaya was the guild of silk weavers, not of washermen. The washermen had their own body, known as the rajaka guild. The famous Mandasor stone inscription of the time of Kumaragupta records a guild of silk weavers who migrated from Lata in Gujarat to Dasapura and built a temple of the Sun there, and it is the best known reference to this craft group. Option A is correctly matched, since a shreshthi, the word behind today's seth, was the rich merchant banker who headed a guild. Option C is correctly matched, because a puga was a corporation whose members followed different callings, unlike a shreni, which brought together the workers of one craft. Option D is correctly matched, as a sartha was a body of traders travelling together, and its leader was called a sarthavaha. Exam tip: shreni is one craft, puga is many trades together, sarthavaha leads the caravan, and rajaka means washerman.

The correct answer is A, 1773. The Boston Tea Party took place on 16 December 1773, when American colonists threw British tea into Boston harbour. The protest was against the Tea Act of 1773, which let the East India Company sell tea in the colonies without paying the usual duties and undercut local merchants. Members of the Sons of Liberty, some dressed as Mohawk Indians, boarded three ships at Griffin's Wharf and dumped 342 chests of tea into the water. Britain replied with the Intolerable Acts, and the anger they caused led to the First Continental Congress in 1774 and to the American War of Independence from 1775. B is wrong because 1776 is the year the Declaration of Independence was adopted, on 4 July. C is wrong because 1775 is when fighting began at Lexington and Concord. D is wrong because 1774 is the year of the Intolerable Acts and the First Continental Congress. Exam tip: Boston Tea Party 1773, war begins 1775, independence declared 1776.

The correct answer is D, Chirand. Chirand stands on the bank of the Ganga in the Saran district of Bihar and belongs to the Neolithic and Chalcolithic ages, not to the Harappan civilisation. It is known for its bone and antler tools, which are among the richest such finds in eastern India. A is wrong because Rakhigarhi, in the Hisar district of Haryana, is a Harappan city and the largest Harappan site found in India. B is wrong because Sotkakoh is a Harappan coastal settlement on the Makran coast, a port of call on the sea route westwards. C is wrong because Ganweriwala lies in the Cholistan desert on the dry bed of the Ghaggar-Hakra and is counted among the large Harappan sites, though it has been little excavated. Remember that Harappan sites cluster along the Indus and the Ghaggar-Hakra and on the Gujarat and Makran coasts. Exam tip: Chirand is Neolithic Bihar; Rakhigarhi, Sotkakoh and Ganweriwala are Harappan.

The correct answer is D, 1905. Gopal Krishna Gokhale founded the Servants of India Society in Pune on 12 June 1905. Its members took a vow to serve the country for life on a modest allowance, and they worked in education, famine relief, the uplift of backward classes and public life. Gokhale was a leading Moderate in the Congress; he presided over its Benares session in 1905, and Gandhi regarded him as his political guru. After Gokhale's death in 1915, V. S. Srinivasa Sastri led the society. The year is easy to fix because 1905 was also the year of the Partition of Bengal. Option A is wrong because 1907 was the year of the Surat split, when the Congress divided into Moderates and Extremists. Option B is wrong because 1906 saw the founding of the Muslim League at Dhaka. Option C is wrong because 1904 was the year of the Indian Universities Act passed under Lord Curzon. Exam tip: Servants of India Society, Pune, 1905, founded by Gokhale, Gandhi's political guru.

The correct answer is B, Non-violence. Ahimsa, or non-violence, is the first and greatest vow of Jainism, and every other rule of Jain life follows from it, down to the mask and the soft broom a Jain monk carries to avoid harming the smallest creature. Mahavira, the twenty-fourth Tirthankara, taught five vows: ahimsa or non-violence, satya or truth, asteya or non-stealing, aparigraha or non-possession and brahmacharya or celibacy. Parshvanatha, the twenty-third Tirthankara, had already taught the first four, and Mahavira added celibacy. The three jewels of Jainism are right faith, right knowledge and right conduct. Option A is wrong because karma explains the soul's bondage and is shared with other Indian religions, so it is not the chief rule of conduct. Option C is wrong because dispassion follows from keeping the vows rather than standing above them. Option D is wrong because loyalty is not a Jain vow at all. Exam tip: the five vows of Mahavira are ahimsa, satya, asteya, aparigraha and brahmacharya.

The correct answer is D, Haryanka dynasty. Bimbisara was the first great ruler of the Haryanka line of Magadha, traditionally dated from about 544 BCE, with his capital at Girivraja, also called Rajgriha. He annexed Anga with its river port of Champa and strengthened Magadha through marriage alliances with Kosala, the Licchavis of Vaishali and Madra in the Punjab. He was a contemporary and patron of both the Buddha and Mahavira.

Option A, the Shishunaga dynasty, came later and is remembered for annexing Avanti. Option B, the Nanda dynasty, ruled immediately before the Mauryas and was founded by Mahapadma Nanda. Option C, the Maurya dynasty, was founded by Chandragupta Maurya about 321 BCE after he overthrew the last Nanda, so it is two dynasties removed from Bimbisara. The correct order to memorise for Magadha is Haryanka, Shishunaga, Nanda, Maurya.

The correct answer is B, Sarnath. The Sarnath capital has four lions standing back to back on an abacus that carries an elephant, a bull, a horse and a lion separated by wheels, the whole resting on an inverted lotus. It was adopted as the State Emblem of India, and the wheel from its abacus is the chakra of the national flag. Sarnath, near Varanasi, is also where the Buddha preached his first sermon.

Option A, Sanchi, has an Ashokan pillar with a four-lion capital as well, but it is broken and it is not the emblem. Option C, Vaishali, carries a pillar with a single lion capital facing north, the direction of the Buddha's last journey. Option D, Lauriya Nandangarh in Bihar, also has a single lion capital on a well preserved shaft, so all three are plausible distractors for a student who remembers only the word lion.

The correct answer is D, Inamgaon. Inamgaon is a Chalcolithic farming settlement on the Ghod river in the Pune district of Maharashtra. Excavations there found that grown-up people were buried in the ground, laid out straight with the head pointing north, and that pots of food and water were placed beside them for the life after death; this is the description NCERT's Class 6 history book gives. The site also shows round and rectangular houses, grain stored in large jars, and remains of wheat, barley, peas and millets. A is wrong because Lothal, in Gujarat, is a Harappan town famous for its dockyard and bead making. B is wrong because Gufkral is a Neolithic site in Kashmir known for pit dwellings, like Burzahom nearby. C is wrong because Mehrgarh, in the Bolan valley, is one of the earliest farming villages, where the dead were buried with goats. Exam tip: Inamgaon, Ghod river, Maharashtra, Chalcolithic burials with the head to the north.