Indian History Mixed Quiz: Set 21

The correct answer is B, Amaravati. The panel showing the submission of the mad elephant Nalagiri, sent by Devadatta to kill the Buddha and calmed by him in the street of Rajagriha, is among the best known carvings of the Amaravati stupa on the lower Krishna in Andhra Pradesh. The Amaravati school flourished under Satavahana patronage and worked in white limestone, filling its panels with crowded, slender and flowing figures.

Option A, Bharhut, is a Sunga period stupa in Madhya Pradesh whose railings carry Jataka scenes labelled in Brahmi. Option C, Mathura, is a school of red sandstone sculpture in the north and not the site of this panel. Option D, Sanchi, is famous for its stupa gateways with scenes of the Buddha's life shown through symbols, but the Nalagiri panel belongs to Amaravati.

The correct answer is D, Dantidurga. Dantidurga founded the Rashtrakuta kingdom in the Deccan in about 753 CE.

Dantidurga was a feudatory of the Chalukyas of Badami and overthrew the Chalukya ruler Kirtivarman II to set up independent rule, with Manyakheta, today's Malkhed in Karnataka, becoming the capital. The Rashtrakutas were one of the three powers in the long tripartite struggle for Kannauj, along with the Palas and the Pratiharas. Arab traveller Al-Masudi called their ruler one of the great kings of the world.

A is wrong: Ashoka was a Mauryan emperor of the third century BCE. B is wrong: Amoghavarsha was a later Rashtrakuta king, the author of Kavirajamarga in Kannada. C is wrong: Krishna I was Dantidurga's successor and is remembered for the rock-cut Kailasa temple at Ellora.

Exam tip: Rashtrakutas - founded by Dantidurga about 753 CE, capital Manyakheta, Kailasa temple built by Krishna I.

The correct answer is C, Chandragupta II. He ended the long rule of the Shaka Kshatrapas over Gujarat, Kathiawar and Malwa, took the title Shakari meaning enemy of the Shakas, and is also known by the title Vikramaditya. The conquest gave the Guptas the western sea ports and the revenue of the trade passing through them, and it is the reason he began issuing silver rupakas modelled on Shaka coins for that region.

Option A, Samudragupta, campaigned in the Ganga plain and the Deccan but left the western Kshatrapas alone; the Prayag Prashasti names the Shakas only among rulers offering submission. Option B, Kumaragupta I, is remembered for founding Nalanda and for the first signs of Huna pressure. Option D, Skandagupta, fought the Hunas and repaired the Sudarshana lake, not the Shakas.

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 C, Brihadratha. Brihadratha was the last ruler of the Mauryan dynasty. About 185 BCE his own commander-in-chief Pushyamitra Sunga killed him, according to tradition at a review of the army, and took the throne at Pataliputra. The event closes Mauryan rule and opens the post-Mauryan age, and the date about 185 BCE is worth memorising as the boundary between the two.

Option A, Dasharatha, was a grandson of Ashoka who granted the Nagarjuni caves to the Ajivikas, and he ruled well before the end of the line. Option B, Samprati, was another later Mauryan ruler linked in Jain tradition with the spread of Jainism. Option D, Devabhuti, was not a Maurya at all; he was the last Sunga ruler, killed by his minister Vasudeva who then founded the Kanva dynasty.

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, Fa-Hien. Fa-Hien came to India in search of Buddhist texts and travelled through the Gupta dominions during the reign of Chandragupta II. His account describes a peaceful realm with light punishments, notes that people could travel without passes, records charitable hospitals at Pataliputra, and also reports that Chandalas lived outside towns and had to strike wood to warn others of their approach.

Option A, Hiuen Tsang, came two centuries later in the seventh century, during the reign of Harshavardhana, and studied at Nalanda. Option C, I-tsing, also belongs to the seventh century and wrote about monastic practice in India and the islands of South East Asia. Option D, Megasthenes, was not Chinese at all: he was the Greek ambassador of Seleucus Nicator at the Mauryan court of Chandragupta Maurya and wrote the Indica.

The correct answer is A, Third battle of Panipat. Ahmad Shah Abdali, also called Ahmad Shah Durrani, defeated the Marathas in the Third Battle of Panipat on 14 January 1761. The Maratha army was led by Sadashivrao Bhau with the young Vishwasrao, while Abdali was joined by Najib-ud-Daula of the Rohillas and Shuja-ud-Daula of Awadh. The Marathas lost a whole generation of commanders, and the defeat ended their march towards supremacy in north India, clearing the field for the British. Option B is wrong because the Battle of Khanwa in 1527 was fought between Babur and Rana Sanga of Mewar. Option C is wrong because the Battle of Buxar in 1764 saw the English under Hector Munro beat the combined forces of Mir Qasim, Shuja-ud-Daula and Shah Alam II. Option D is wrong because the First Battle of Tarain in 1191 was won by Prithviraj Chauhan against Muhammad Ghori. Exam tip: Panipat 1526 Babur beat Ibrahim Lodi, 1556 Akbar beat Hemu, 1761 Abdali beat the Marathas.

The correct answer is A, Rudradaman I. The Junagadh rock inscription of about 150 CE was issued by Rudradaman I, the Shaka ruler of the Western Kshatrapa line. It is the first long inscription written in polished Sanskrit, at a time when royal records were still normally in Prakrit, and it describes the repair of the Sudarshana lake in Saurashtra after a storm broke its embankment. The lake had been built under Chandragupta Maurya and improved under Ashoka, so the record links three dynasties on one rock, which also carries Ashoka's major rock edicts.

Option B, Nahapana, was an earlier Kshaharata ruler known from Nasik cave records. Option C, Gondophernes, was a Parthian king of the north-west. Option D, Menander, was the Indo-Greek king of the Milindapanho.

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 C, Kumaragupta I. Kumaragupta I, who bore the title Mahendraditya, is credited with founding the Nalanda Mahavihara in present-day Bihar. Later rulers, including Harshavardhana and the Palas, endowed it further, and it grew into the largest residential centre of Buddhist learning in Asia before it was destroyed in the late twelfth century. Its fame rests largely on the detailed account left by the seventh century pilgrim Hiuen Tsang, who studied there.

Option A, Samudragupta, is remembered for conquests and for the Prayag Prashasti. Option B, Chandragupta II, is linked with the Shaka conquest, the Vakataka marriage alliance and the visit of Fa-Hien, who in fact does not describe Nalanda as a great university. Option D, Skandagupta, spent his reign defending the empire against the Hunas and restoring the Sudarshana lake in Saurashtra.

The correct answer is A, Akbar. Akbar introduced the mansabdari system in the closing years of the sixteenth century to grade every officer of the empire. Mansab means rank, and each mansabdar held two numbers: zat, which fixed his personal status and pay, and sawar, the number of armed horsemen he had to keep ready. Ranks ran from ten to five thousand, with higher ones kept for princes of the royal house. Akbar also brought in the dagh system of branding state horses and the chehra, a written description of each soldier, to stop officers from showing borrowed men at muster. Option D is wrong because Jahangir only added the du-aspa sih-aspa device, which raised a noble's cavalry without raising his zat. Option B is wrong because Shah Jahan merely introduced the month-scale, or mahana, to adjust pay. Option C is wrong because Aurangzeb continued the system as he found it. Exam tip: Akbar gave the mansabdari ranks and Todar Mal's dahsala revenue settlement.

The correct answer is B, Menander. Milindapanho means the questions of Milinda, and Milinda is the Indian name of the Indo-Greek king Menander, who ruled in the north-west in the second century BCE. The Pali text sets out his questions to the monk Nagasena on the soul, rebirth and the nature of the self, and ends with the king accepting Buddhism. It is a standard example of the Greek contact with Indian religion.

Option A, Kanishka, belongs to the Kushanas and to the Fourth Buddhist Council, not to this text. Option C, Demetrius, was an earlier Indo-Greek ruler who invaded India but is not the king of the dialogue. Option D, Antialcidas, was the Indo-Greek king whose envoy Heliodorus raised the Garuda pillar at Besnagar.

The correct answer is A, Hicky's Bengal Gazette. It was started in Calcutta in 1780 and was the first printed newspaper in India.

James Augustus Hicky brought it out as a weekly and called it the Bengal Gazette or Calcutta General Advertiser. It carried sharp attacks on Warren Hastings and the officials of the East India Company, so the government stopped its postal circulation and shut the paper down in 1782, jailing Hicky. It remains the starting point of press history in India and of the long fight over press freedom.

Option B, The Madras Courier, appeared in 1785, five years later, as the first paper in Madras. Option C, The Bombay Herald, began in 1789. Option D, Maratha, was an English weekly founded by Bal Gangadhar Tilak in 1881, a century later.

Exam tip: 1780 Bengal Gazette, 1785 Madras Courier, 1789 Bombay Herald; Tilak ran Kesari in Marathi and Maratha in English.

The correct answer is A, Skandagupta. The Sudarshana lake near Girnar in Saurashtra was an artificial reservoir first built in Mauryan times and repaired more than once. The Junagadh rock carries three sets of records on it: the edicts of Ashoka, the inscription of the Shaka ruler Rudradaman I on an earlier repair, and the inscription of Skandagupta recording that his governor rebuilt the embankment after it burst. Skandagupta is otherwise remembered for beating back the Hunas.

Option B, Chandragupta I, ruled more than a century earlier and left no such record. Option C, Samudragupta, is known from the Allahabad pillar, not from Junagadh. Option D, Kumaragupta I, is known from the Bilsad pillar and the Damodarpur copper plates, and it was in his reign that Huna pressure first appeared on the frontier.

The correct answer is D, Surya Sen. Surya Sen led the Chittagong Armoury Raid of 1930 in Bengal and had no part in the Kakori case. The Kakori train action took place on 9 August 1925, when members of the Hindustan Republican Association (HRA) stopped a train at Kakori near Lucknow and took the government cash it was carrying to fund their struggle. In the trial that followed, four revolutionaries were sentenced to death, and all four were hanged in December 1927. Option A is wrong because Ramprasad Bismil planned the action and was hanged at Gorakhpur. Option B is wrong because Rajendra Lahiri took part and was hanged at Gonda, two days before the others. Option C is wrong because Ashfaqulla Khan, Bismil's close friend, was hanged at Faizabad; the fourth martyr was Roshan Singh. Chandrashekhar Azad also took part but escaped arrest. Exam tip: Kakori 1925 with the HRA; Chittagong 1930 with Surya Sen.

The correct answer is A, Gautami Balashri. The Nasik cave inscription praising Gautamiputra Satakarni was issued in the name of his mother Gautami Balashri, in the reign of her grandson. It calls the king the destroyer of the Shakas, Yavanas and Pahlavas, the ruler who stopped the mixing of the four varnas, and the lord of many hill ranges, and it records a grant of land to Buddhist monks. The claim about the varnas shows that the Satavahanas presented themselves as protectors of the Brahmanical order even while they gave caves and villages to Buddhist monasteries.

Option B, Vashishthiputra Pulumavi, was the reigning king when the record was engraved, but the inscription is issued in his grandmother's name. Option C, Hala, was the Satavahana king who compiled the Gathasaptasati and had no part in this record. Option D, Simuka, founded the dynasty long before Gautamiputra and could not have praised him.

The correct answer is C, Aryabhata. Aryabhata completed the Aryabhatiya in 499 CE at the age of twenty-three. In it he held that the apparent daily movement of the stars is caused by the rotation of the earth on its axis, explained solar and lunar eclipses as shadows rather than as the work of Rahu and Ketu, and gave a close approximation for the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter.

Option A, Varahamihira, belongs to the sixth century and wrote the Brihat Samhita and the Panchasiddhantika, works on omens, astrology and the five earlier astronomical systems. Option B, Brahmagupta, wrote the Brahmasphutasiddhanta in 628 CE and is famous for rules on zero and negative numbers. Option D, Bhaskara II, is a twelfth century mathematician, the author of Siddhanta Shiromani, which includes the Lilavati.

The correct answer is D, Kashmir. The Fourth Buddhist Council met in Kashmir under the patronage of the Kushana ruler Kanishka I. Vasumitra presided over it and Ashvaghosha acted as his deputy, and its work of collecting commentaries on the canon went with the open division of Buddhism into the Mahayana and Hinayana schools. Tradition says the proceedings were engraved on copper sheets and placed in a stupa, and the council is the reason Kanishka is remembered in Buddhist writing as a second Ashoka. The four councils, their venues, their royal patrons and their presiding monks make a fixed list in examinations, and a question usually removes one item from it.

Option A, Rajagriha, hosted the First Council soon after the death of the Buddha, under Ajatashatru, with Mahakassapa presiding. Option B, Vaishali, hosted the Second Council about a century later, under Kalashoka. Option C, Pataliputra, hosted the Third Council under Ashoka, presided over by Moggaliputta Tissa.

The correct answer is B, Uparika. The Gupta empire was divided into provinces called bhuktis, each placed under a governor called an uparika who was often a prince of the royal family. The bhukti was subdivided into districts, and the whole structure is known mainly from the Damodarpur copper plates of Bengal, which also name the town board of the chief banker, the caravan leader, the chief artisan and the chief scribe.

Option A, vishayapati, was the officer in charge of a vishaya, that is a district, one level below the bhukti. Option C, gramika, was the headman of a village, the lowest unit of the system. Option D, rajuka, belongs to Mauryan administration, where rajukas were rural officers entrusted by Ashoka with both revenue duties and judicial authority, and the term is not used for Gupta provinces.