Madhya Pradesh Quiz: Khajuraho, Sanchi, Bhimbetka and Other Monuments

The Chandelas of Jejakabhukti built the Khajuraho group in Chhatarpur district between about 950 and 1050 CE, and the names of their rulers are tied to individual temples: Yashovarman to the Lakshmana temple and Vidyadhara to the Kandariya Mahadeva.

Built in the reign of Vidyadhara, it is the tallest and most fully worked out of the Khajuraho temples, with the complete sequence of ardhamandapa, mandapa, antarala and garbhagriha, a cluster of subsidiary shikharas rising towards the main one, and bands of sculpture over its walls.

The core of Stupa 1 at Sanchi, in Raisen district, was raised in the third century BCE in Ashoka's reign, with the Ashokan pillar carrying the schism edict beside it.

The archaeologist Vishnu Shridhar Wakankar noticed the shelters in the Vindhyan foothills of Raisen district in 1957 and began the study of their paintings, made in red and white ochre and showing hunters, dancers, animals and later riders with weapons.

The Khajuraho temples are classic north Indian Nagara temples: they stand on a high platform without a boundary wall or gateway, they have a curving shikhara over the sanctum with smaller shikharas clustered around it, and their halls run in a line from the entrance to the garbhagriha.

The relic caskets of Sariputta and Mahamoggallana, the two chief disciples of the Buddha, were recovered from Stupa 3 at Sanchi, which stands north-east of the Great Stupa and has a single torana.

Mandu, in Dhar district, was the hill capital of the Malwa sultans, and its buildings include the Jahaz Mahal, set between two tanks so that it seems to float like a ship, the sloping-walled Hindola Mahal or swinging palace, the Jama Masjid, the pavilion of Rani Roopmati and the marble…

The temple at Bhojpur in Raisen district, with its single enormous linga cut from one stone, is attributed to the eleventh-century Paramara ruler Bhoj of Dhar, the same king remembered for his learning and for the lake he is said to have built at Bhopal.

The Udayagiri caves lie on a hill near Vidisha, not far from Sanchi, and belong to the Gupta period; the great relief of Vishnu as Varaha lifting the earth goddess is carved there, and an inscription of the reign of Chandragupta II records the visit of one of his officers.

The fort on the long sandstone hill at Gwalior holds the Teli ka Mandir of the Pratihara period, the Sas-Bahu temples, the Gujari Mahal built by Man Singh Tomar for Mrignayani and the Man Mandir palace of the same ruler, with its tiled decoration.

Bhimbetka, in Raisen district, was inscribed in 2003 for its prehistoric paintings, which cover a span from the Upper Palaeolithic to the historical period in a single group of shelters.