Indian History Quiz: Post-Mauryan Period: Kushanas and Satavahanas

The correct answer is D, Mathura. The main Kushana capital was Purushapura, the modern Peshawar, which Kanishka I developed as his seat of power. As the empire spread into the Ganga-Yamuna plain, Mathura on the Yamuna became its second capital and the southern headquarters of the family. Mathura also grew into a great centre of sculpture, and a shrine of Kushana royal portrait statues, including a famous headless figure of Kanishka, was found at Mat near the city.

Option A, Pataliputra, was the Magadhan capital of the Nandas, the Mauryas and later the Guptas, not of the Kushanas. Option B, Delhi, did not exist as a capital in this period and rose only from the twelfth century under the Delhi Sultanate. Option C, Lahore, lay within Kushana territory but was never a Kushana capital and became important much later.

The correct answer is A, Nahapana. Nahapana belonged to the Kshaharata family of the Shakas, the Western Kshatrapas who ruled in western India, and not to the Kushanas at all. He is remembered because the Satavahana king Gautamiputra Satakarni defeated him and restruck his silver coins, a hoard of which was found at Jogalthembi in Maharashtra.

Option B, Vasishka, was a Kushana ruler of the family of Kanishka and is known from inscriptions of the line. Option C, Vasudeva, was the last important Kushana king, whose coins and devotion to Shiva mark the Indianisation of the dynasty; he should not be confused with Vasudeva the founder of the Kanva dynasty. Option D, Huvishka, ruled between Kanishka and Vasudeva and is known from a large coinage and from the Mat shrine near Mathura.

The correct answer is C, Kanishka. Ashvaghosha was a Buddhist monk and Sanskrit poet at the court of the Kushana ruler Kanishka I. He wrote the Buddhacharita, a life of the Buddha in Sanskrit verse, and the Saundarananda, and he acted as deputy to Vasumitra at the Fourth Buddhist Council held in Kashmir. Kanishka's court also held the physician Charaka and the philosopher Nagarjuna, and the group is a favourite one-line question.

Option A, Ashoka, ruled in the third century BCE, about three hundred years earlier, and is linked with Moggaliputta Tissa and the Third Buddhist Council. Option B, Bindusara, was Ashoka's father and received the Greek ambassador Deimachus, not Ashvaghosha. Option D, Gautamiputra Satakarni, was the Satavahana king praised in the Nasik prashasti and had no connection with the Buddhacharita.

The correct answer is C, Prakrit. The Gathasaptasati, also written as Gatha Saptasati, is an anthology of seven hundred short verses compiled by the Satavahana king Hala. It is written in Maharashtri Prakrit, the spoken language the Satavahanas favoured for their inscriptions and literature, and its verses describe village love and daily life in the Deccan rather than royal deeds. The work matters in an examination because it shows that the Satavahanas, unlike the later Guptas, promoted Prakrit as the language of the court.

Option A, Sanskrit, became the normal language of royal inscriptions later, with the Junagadh record of Rudradaman I as the first long example. Option B, Pali, is the language of the Buddhist Tripitaka and of the Milindapanho, not of Hala's anthology. Option D, Hindi, developed more than a thousand years after Hala and cannot belong to a first or second century text.

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 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, 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 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, 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 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.