Rajasthan Mixed Quiz: Set 8

Bhadla lies in the dry north of Jodhpur district, where the land is barren, the sky nearly cloudless for most of the year and the solar radiation among the strongest in India, which is why one of the world's largest solar parks was built there.

The Zawar mines lie south of Udaipur city and have been worked since ancient times; archaeologists have found clay retorts there that were used to distil zinc, which makes Zawar the earliest known zinc smelting site anywhere in the world.

Sambhar, the large saline lake west of Jaipur, is the biggest inland source of salt in the country, where brine is drawn into shallow pans and left to evaporate; Didwana in Nagaur and Pachpadra in Barmer are the other salt works of the state, while most Indian salt otherwise comes…

Kishangarh in Ajmer district holds the largest marble market in Asia, where slabs from the quarries of Rajasthan and imported blocks are cut, polished and sold, which is why the town is called the marble city.

Rajasthan returned 6,85,48,437 people at the 2011 census, which placed it eighth among the states, behind Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Bihar, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh as it then was, Madhya Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.

The Chambal rises at Janapav hill in the Vindhyan highlands of Madhya Pradesh and then flows along and through Rajasthan, so the two states built the valley scheme together and share its cost and its benefits equally.

Kalibangan lies in Hanumangarh district on the left bank of the now dry bed of the Ghaggar, the river that many scholars identify with the Saraswati of the Vedic texts.

The Central Arid Zone Research Institute was set up at Jodhpur in 1959 and works on sand dune stabilisation, shelter belts, dry farming, desert pasture and the spread of the desert, which is why it is the institute named in questions on the Thar.

The sex ratio is the number of females per thousand males, and Rajasthan recorded 928 in 2011, below the national figure of that census.

Ranthambore lies in Sawai Madhopur district, where the Aravalli meets the Vindhyan plateau.

In the pre Harappan level at Kalibangan the excavators found a field with furrows running in two directions and crossing at right angles, exactly the pattern of mixed cropping still used in the region, where one crop is sown in the wider spaced furrows and another in the closer ones.

The Jakhrana goat takes its name from the village of Jakhrana in Alwar district of eastern Rajasthan.

Jaisalmer was both the largest district of Rajasthan by area and the smallest by population in 2011, so its density was the lowest in the state, a figure in the teens against the state average of 201.

Sambhar is the largest saline lake of Rajasthan and of India, lying in the inland drainage tract on the eastern edge of the desert, where the Mendha and the Rupangarh end their course.

Ahar lies on the Ayad river within present day Udaipur and was called Tambavati, which means the place of copper, because so much copper was smelted and worked there.

Guru Shikhar stands on Mount Abu in Sirohi district and, at 1,722 metres, is the highest point of the Aravalli Range and of Rajasthan.

The Mina or Meena are the largest Scheduled Tribe of Rajasthan by population, spread across the eastern districts of Jaipur, Dausa, Sawai Madhopur, Karauli and Alwar, and they were traditionally grouped into the Zamindar Mina and the Chaukidar Mina.

Bagor stands on the Kothari river in Bhilwara district and was excavated by V. N. Misra. The site produced thousands of tiny stone tools called microliths, along with human burials and large numbers of animal bones, among them sheep and goat, which are read as evidence for early herding.

Banswara, in the Wagad region of southern Rajasthan, has the largest share of Scheduled Tribes in its population, the great majority of them Bhil, and the whole district lies in the Scheduled Areas notified under the Fifth Schedule of the Constitution.

Bairath, also called Viratnagar, in Jaipur district is the chief Mauryan site of Rajasthan.