Indian History Mixed Quiz: Set 63

The correct answer is D, Steatite. Most Harappan seals were carved from steatite, a soft soapstone that hardens when fired.

Steatite is easy to cut, so craftsmen could carve fine animal figures and signs of the Harappan script on it. After carving, the seals were usually coated and heated, which turned the surface hard and white. Thousands of such square seals have been found at Mohenjo-daro, Harappa and Lothal; the best known shows a seated figure surrounded by animals, often called the Pashupati seal, and many carry a unicorn-like bull. The seals were probably used to mark goods in trade.

A is wrong: sandstone was used for some sculptures, such as the Harappa torso, not for seals.

B is wrong: lapis lazuli, brought from Badakhshan in Afghanistan, was used for beads and ornaments.

C is wrong: jasper was another bead stone, not the standard seal material.

Exam tip: Harappan seals = steatite; Dancing Girl = bronze; Priest-King = steatite.

The correct answer is B, Indian Opinion. Gandhi started Indian Opinion at Durban in 1903 to put the case of Indians settled in South Africa before the public.

The weekly was printed at the Phoenix Settlement near Durban and came out in English and Gujarati, with Tamil and Hindi sections in its early years. Gandhi later wrote that a struggle such as satyagraha could not be carried on without a journal of its own, and the paper carried his writings on the campaign against the Asiatic Registration Act.

Option A, Young India, was an English weekly Gandhi edited in India from 1919. Option C, Swaraj Hind, is not a paper associated with him. Option D, Navajivan, was his Gujarati weekly, also taken up in India in 1919.

Exam tip: Indian Opinion, 1903, South Africa; Young India and Navajivan, 1919, India.

The correct answer is B, Yaksha (demi-gods). Jainism names four states of existence, called gatis, and Yaksha is not one of them.

According to Jain thought, a soul (jiva) bound by karma is reborn again and again in one of four gatis: deva (heavenly beings), manushya (humans), tiryancha (animals, birds, insects and plants) and naraki (beings of hell). Only from the human state can a soul reach moksha, which is why human birth is valued so highly. Yakshas and yakshinis do appear in Jain art as attendant deities of the Tirthankaras, but they are not counted as a separate state of existence.

A is wrong: deva, the heavenly beings, is one of the four gatis.

C is wrong: manushya, the human state, is a gati and the only one from which liberation is possible.

D is wrong: tiryancha, covering animals and plants, is also one of the four gatis.

Exam tip: the four Jain gatis are deva, manushya, tiryancha and naraki; the missing one in such questions is usually naraki (hell beings).

The correct answer is A, 1905. Lord Curzon announced the partition of Bengal on 19 July 1905 and it came into effect on 16 October 1905, splitting the province into a Muslim-majority eastern half and the rest of Bengal. The reason given in public was that Bengal had grown too large to administer, but the real aim was to weaken the nationalist movement there by dividing Hindus and Muslims. The protest against it began the Swadeshi and boycott movement, in which foreign cloth was burnt and Indian goods, schools and banks were promoted, and Rabindranath Tagore's song Amar Sonar Bangla belongs to those days. The anger was so wide that the partition was finally cancelled in 1911, when the capital was also moved from Calcutta to Delhi. B is wrong because 1901 is the year Queen Victoria died. C is wrong because 1907 is the year of the Surat split in the Congress. D is wrong because 1911 is the year the partition was revoked, not made. Exam tip: announced in 1905 by Curzon, revoked in 1911 under Hardinge.

The correct answer is A, Vajji. The Vajji mahajanapada was a gana-sangha, ruled by an assembly of clan chiefs rather than by a single king.

Of the sixteen mahajanapadas named in Buddhist texts such as the Anguttara Nikaya, most were monarchies, but Vajji and Malla were ganas or sanghas. Vajji was a confederacy of clans, the Lichchhavis being the best known, with its capital at Vaishali in north Bihar. Its affairs were discussed by many rajas in an assembly, which is why historians call it an oligarchy or early republic. Magadha under Ajatashatru finally conquered it.

B is wrong: Kosala, with its capital at Shravasti, was a monarchy under kings such as Prasenajit.

C is wrong: Gandhara in the north-west, with Takshashila as its capital, was ruled by kings.

D is wrong: Magadha was the most powerful monarchy, ruled by the Haryanka, Shishunaga and Nanda kings.

Exam tip: the two well-known gana-sanghas among the sixteen mahajanapadas are Vajji (capital Vaishali) and Malla (Kushinagar and Pava).

The correct answer is C, Square or rectangular. At Mehrgarh the excavators found the remains of square and rectangular houses built of hand-made mud bricks, each divided into small compartments that appear to have been used to store grain. Mehrgarh lies on the Kachi plain near the Bolan Pass in Balochistan and was dug by Jean-Francois Jarrige from 1974. It is the earliest farming village known in the subcontinent, where wheat and barley were grown and sheep, goats and cattle were herded, so it is treated as the Neolithic forerunner of the Harappan world rather than a mature Harappan city. Burials there contained beads of lapis lazuli and turquoise and even show early dentistry. Option A is wrong because triangular houses are found at no site of this period. Option B is wrong because circular dwellings belong to Neolithic sites such as Burzahom in Kashmir, where people lived in pits. Option D is wrong for the same reason. Exam tip: Mehrgarh means the earliest evidence of farming, and square mud-brick houses with storage compartments.

The correct answer is A, Kanganahalli. A relief panel from the stupa at Kanganahalli in Karnataka shows a king with his queens and carries the label 'Raya Asoko' (Ranyo Ashoka), making it the only known portrait of Ashoka named in an inscription.

Kanganahalli lies near Sannati in Kalaburagi district, on the bank of the Bhima river. Excavations by the Archaeological Survey of India in the 1990s uncovered a large stupa (Adholoka Maha Chaitya) of the 1st century BCE to 3rd century CE. Among its carved slabs is the panel of Ashoka, labelled in Brahmi. Sannati itself has also yielded copies of Ashoka's edicts.

B is wrong: Sanchi has Ashokan pillars and a stupa, but no named portrait of the emperor.

C is wrong: Shahbazgarhi in Pakistan has a major rock edict written in Kharosthi, with no sculpture of Ashoka.

D is wrong: Sohgaura in Uttar Pradesh is known for a copper plate inscription about famine relief.

Exam tip: Kanganahalli (Karnataka) = Ashoka's portrait labelled 'Raya Asoko'; Maski and Gujarra edicts = his personal name Ashoka.

The correct answer is B, 1833. The Charter Act of 1833 ended the East India Company's last trading privilege, its monopoly over trade with China and in tea, and turned the Company into a purely administrative body holding India in trust for the British Crown. Pressure from British free-trade manufacturers, who wanted open access to Asian markets, forced the change. The same Act made the Governor-General of Bengal the Governor-General of India, with Lord William Bentinck the first to hold the title, centralised legislative power in his council and declared that no Indian was to be barred from office on grounds of religion, birth, descent or colour. Option A is wrong because the Charter Act of 1813 ended the monopoly on Indian trade but expressly kept the China and tea monopoly. Option C is wrong because 1838 saw no charter legislation. Option D is wrong because Company rule itself had ended in 1858 under the Government of India Act. Exam tip: 1813 Indian trade opened, 1833 China and tea monopoly ended, 1853 civil services opened to competition.

The correct answer is B, Chandragupta II. Fa-hien was in India from about 399 to 414 CE, when Chandragupta II Vikramaditya ruled the Gupta empire.

Faxian was a Chinese Buddhist monk who set out overland to collect Buddhist texts, especially rules of monastic discipline. He visited Buddhist sites such as Kapilavastu, Bodh Gaya, Sarnath and Pataliputra, and went home by sea via Sri Lanka. His account, known in English as A Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms, describes the Madhya-desha as peaceful and prosperous, with light taxes, rare use of the death penalty, free hospitals in Pataliputra, and Chandalas who lived outside towns. Oddly, he never names the king.

A is wrong: Samudragupta, father of Chandragupta II, ruled before Fa-hien arrived.

C is wrong: Kumaragupta I came to the throne around 415 CE, after Fa-hien had left.

D is wrong: Skandagupta ruled in the mid-5th century and faced the Huna invasions.

Exam tip: Fa-hien = Chandragupta II (Guptas); Hiuen Tsang = Harshavardhana; I-tsing = visited Nalanda in the late 7th century.

The correct answer is C, 17. Mahmud of Ghazni, who ruled the Ghaznavid kingdom from 998 to 1030, is recorded as having led seventeen raids into India between about 1000 and 1027. His aim was plunder and not permanent rule, so he carried away treasure and left no settled administration east of the Punjab. The best known of the raids destroyed the Somnath temple in Gujarat in 1025; earlier he had defeated Jayapala of the Hindu Shahi dynasty in 1001 and sacked the rich temple towns of Mathura, Thanesar and Kanauj. The scholar Al-Beruni, who wrote the Kitab-ul-Hind, and the poet Firdausi belonged to his court. A is wrong because five is far short of the recorded total. B is wrong because fifteen is the figure most often confused with the right one. D is wrong because seven is not the accepted count either. Exam tip: Mahmud of Ghazni made 17 raids and struck Somnath in 1025, while Muhammad Ghori's win at Tarain in 1192 began Turkish rule.

The correct answer is B, Madraspatam. In 1639 the English Company obtained a grant of land at Madraspatam on the Coromandel coast and built Fort St. George there.

Francis Day and Andrew Cogan of the East India Company secured the site from the local Nayaka, a governor under the Vijayanagara ruler, in 1639. The fortified factory, Fort St. George, was completed soon after and grew into the city of Madras, today Chennai. It became the Company's chief settlement on the east coast, replacing Masulipatnam, and later the headquarters of the Madras Presidency.

A is wrong: Cuddalore, where the English built Fort St. David, came under them only in the 1690s.

C is wrong: Kalahasti is a temple town inland in Andhra Pradesh, not a coastal trading post.

D is wrong: Karwar is on the west coast in Karnataka, and the English factory there was not the 1639 settlement.

Exam tip: Surat factory 1613, Madras (Fort St. George) 1639, Bombay received 1668, Calcutta (Fort William) 1690s.

The correct answer is A, Slave Dynasty. Razia Sultan was the daughter of Iltutmish, and Iltutmish belonged to the Slave dynasty, also called the Mamluk dynasty or the Ilbari Turks. She ruled Delhi from 1236 to 1240 and is the only woman to have sat on the throne of the Delhi Sultanate. Iltutmish named her his successor over his own sons, and she took the administration in hand, gave up the veil, held open court and led the army in person. The Turkish nobles, the group of forty, would not accept a woman ruler; she was overthrown and killed in 1240. B is wrong because the Khilji dynasty came to power only in 1290 under Jalaluddin Khilji. C is wrong because the Lodhi dynasty ruled from 1451 to 1526 and was the last house of the Sultanate. D is wrong because the Mughal empire was founded by Babur in 1526, nearly three centuries after her. Exam tip: Razia, daughter of Iltutmish, Slave dynasty, 1236 to 1240.

The correct answer is C, Both I and II. Ram Mohan Roy respected the philosophical heritage of the East while urging Indians to adopt reason, science and social equality.

Ram Mohan Roy (1772-1833), often called the father of the Indian Renaissance, studied the Upanishads and translated parts of them into Bengali and English to show that they taught the worship of one God; he also knew Persian, Arabic and Sanskrit thought deeply. At the same time he wanted a modern, rational outlook: he supported English and scientific education, campaigned against sati, which was banned in 1829, and argued for women's property rights. He founded the Atmiya Sabha in 1815 and the Brahmo Sabha in 1828, and opposed idol worship and caste rigidity.

A is wrong: it leaves out statement II, his call for reason and equality.

B is wrong: it leaves out statement I, his deep regard for Eastern philosophy.

D is wrong: both statements describe his outlook correctly.

Exam tip: Ram Mohan Roy = Atmiya Sabha 1815, Brahmo Sabha 1828, sati abolished 1829; Upanishads plus modern reason.

The correct answer is D, Dadabhai Naoroji. Dadabhai Naoroji set up the East India Association in London in 1866 to place Indian questions before the British public and members of Parliament, and branches of it were soon opened in Bombay, Calcutta and Madras. He had already started the London Indian Society a year earlier. Called the Grand Old Man of India, he wrote Poverty and Un-British Rule in India, in which he explained the drain of wealth from India to Britain, became the first Indian elected to the British House of Commons in 1892 and presided over the Indian National Congress three times. Option A is wrong because Gopal Krishna Gokhale founded the Servants of India Society in 1905. Option B is wrong because George Yule was the first English president of the Congress, at Allahabad in 1888. Option C is wrong because Womesh Chandra Bonnerjee was the first president of the Congress in 1885. Exam tip: London Indian Society 1865 and East India Association 1866, both of Dadabhai Naoroji.

The correct answer is C, Both 1 and 2. The Swadeshi Movement against the Partition of Bengal both revived Indian crafts and industry and set up national education.

The movement was formally launched on 7 August 1905 at the Calcutta Town Hall. Its call to boycott British goods created demand for Indian products, so handloom weaving, artisan crafts and new Indian enterprises grew; Swadeshi textile mills, match and soap factories, tanneries, banks and insurance companies were started, and P.C. Ray founded the Bengal Chemicals works. In education, the National Council of Education was set up in 1906 to run schools and colleges on national lines, and Bengal National College opened with Aurobindo Ghosh as its principal. The Bengal Technical Institute also came out of this effort.

A is wrong: it leaves out statement 2, which is also correct.

B is wrong: it leaves out statement 1, which is also correct.

D is wrong: both statements describe real outcomes of the movement.

Exam tip: Swadeshi 1905 = boycott + Swadeshi industry + National Council of Education (1906).

The correct answer is A, Nizam Shahis : Bijapur, which is the mismatched pair. The Nizam Shahis ruled from Ahmadnagar, founded by Malik Ahmad in 1490, while Bijapur belonged to the Adil Shahis of Yusuf Adil Shah. All five Deccan Sultanates grew out of the break-up of the Bahmani kingdom between about 1490 and 1518, and four of them joined hands to crush Vijayanagara at the battle of Talikota in 1565. Bijapur is remembered for the Gol Gumbaz, Golconda for its fort and diamonds, and Ahmadnagar for Chand Bibi’s defence against the Mughals. Option B is a correct pair, because the Barid Shahis held Bidar, the last Bahmani capital. Option C is a correct pair, because the Qutb Shahis of Quli Qutb Shah ruled Golconda and later founded Hyderabad. Option D is a correct pair, because the Imad Shahis held Berar, the first province to break away and the first to be annexed by Ahmadnagar. Exam tip: Ahmadnagar Nizam Shahi, Bijapur Adil Shahi, Golconda Qutb Shahi, Bidar Barid Shahi, Berar Imad Shahi.

The correct answer is C, Only three. Items I, II and IV were part of the Non-Cooperation programme, but item III was not: Indians were asked to give up their titles, not keep them quietly.

The programme was approved at the special Congress session in Calcutta in September 1920 and confirmed at the Nagpur session in December 1920. Its negative side included surrender of titles and honorary posts, boycott of government schools and colleges, law-courts, legislatures under the 1919 reforms and foreign cloth. Its constructive side included national schools and colleges, panchayats to settle disputes in place of British courts, spread of khadi and spinning, Hindu-Muslim unity and removal of untouchability. Strict non-violence was the basic condition, which is why Gandhi withdrew the movement in February 1922 after the violence at Chauri Chaura.

A is wrong: three items, not one, were part of the programme.

B is wrong: three items, not two, were part of the programme.

D is wrong: item III contradicts the actual call to surrender titles; Gandhi himself returned the Kaisar-i-Hind medal.

Exam tip: Non-Cooperation 1920-22 = surrender titles, boycott courts, schools, councils and foreign cloth; panchayats and khadi; ended after Chauri Chaura.

The correct answer is B, both statements are true but Statement II does not explain Statement I. The Act provided dyarchy at the Centre and autonomy in the provinces, two separate reforms.

The Government of India Act, 1935 abolished dyarchy in the provinces, which the 1919 Act had begun, and replaced it with provincial autonomy: provinces got responsible governments with ministers answerable to elected legislatures. At the same time it moved dyarchy to the Centre, dividing federal subjects into reserved subjects (defence, foreign affairs) under the Governor-General and transferred subjects under ministers. The central part depended on the All-India Federation, which never came into being. Provincial autonomy was a reform for the provinces; it is not the reason dyarchy was set up at the Centre.

A is wrong: the two reforms stand side by side; one does not cause or explain the other.

C is wrong: provincial autonomy was granted and took effect in 1937, so Statement II is true.

D is wrong: the Act did provide for dyarchy at the Centre, so Statement I is true.

Exam tip: 1919 Act = dyarchy in provinces; 1935 Act = provincial autonomy plus dyarchy at the Centre.

The correct answer is B, Prayaga Prashasti of Samudragupta. Harishena was the court poet and minister of the Gupta ruler Samudragupta and wrote this praise-poem in his honour.

The Prayaga Prashasti, also called the Allahabad Pillar Inscription, is in elegant Sanskrit and is engraved on the same pillar that carries an edict of Ashoka. It lists Samudragupta's campaigns in north India, his southern expedition against the kings of the Deccan, and the frontier rulers who paid him tribute. Because of these conquests, historian V. A. Smith called him the "Napoleon of India". The inscription is the main source for his reign.

A is wrong: the Nashik inscription was issued by Gautami Balashri, mother of the Satavahana king Gautamiputra Satakarni.

C is wrong: the Deopara Prashasti praises the Sena king Vijayasena of Bengal and was composed by the poet Umapatidhara.

D is wrong: the Hathigumpha inscription near Bhubaneswar records the deeds of Kharavela, the Jain king of Kalinga.

Exam tip: Harishena = Samudragupta; Ravikirti = Aihole inscription of Pulakeshin II.

The correct answer is C, Rajendra I (Chola). Around 1025 CE Rajendra Chola I sent a naval expedition that raided Kadaram (Kedah) and other ports of the Srivijaya kingdom.

Srivijaya, based in Sumatra, controlled the Strait of Malacca and the sea trade between India and China. Rajendra I, son of Rajaraja I, launched the expedition probably to protect Chola merchants and trade routes. His inscriptions list the places taken, including Kadaram, Palembang, Malaiyur and Ilamuridesam, and the capture of the Srivijaya king Sangrama Vijayottunggavarman. Rajendra also marched to the Ganga, took the title Gangaikonda and built a new capital, Gangaikonda Cholapuram. He is also called Kadaram Kondan, the conqueror of Kadaram.

A is wrong: Amoghavarsha was a 9th-century Rashtrakuta king known for the Kavirajamarga, not for overseas wars.

B is wrong: Prataparudra was the last Kakatiya king of Warangal, defeated by the Delhi Sultanate.

D is wrong: Vishnuvardhana was a 12th-century Hoysala king who built the Chennakeshava temple at Belur.

Exam tip: Rajendra I = Gangaikonda, Kadaram Kondan, Srivijaya expedition (c. 1025); Rajaraja I = Brihadeeswara temple and Sri Lanka.