Rock-Cut Caves and Stupas: Sites, Terms and PYQs

The correct answer is B, Bihar. The Barabar and Nagarjuni hills lie near Gaya in Bihar and hold the oldest surviving rock-cut caves in the country, cut in the Mauryan period in the third century BCE and connected with the Ajivika sect; their polished interiors carry the mirror-like finish known as Mauryan polish. Option A is wrong because Maharashtra has the far more numerous Western Deccan caves at Bhaja, Karle, Ajanta and Ellora, but all of these are later. Option C is wrong because Odisha has the Udayagiri and Khandagiri Jain caves of Kharavela, which belong to the first century BCE. Option D is wrong because Madhya Pradesh is the home of the Sanchi and Bharhut stupas and the Bagh caves, not of the earliest rock-cut excavations. Fix the sequence as Barabar first, then the Deccan chaityas, then Ajanta and Ellora.

The correct answer is B, the Lomas Rishi cave. Its doorway copies in stone the curved wooden arch and lattice of a real chaitya hall, and above it runs a band of elephants moving towards a stupa; this carved arch is the ancestor of the horseshoe-shaped chaitya window, the gavaksha, seen later at Bhaja, Karle and Ajanta. Option A is wrong because the neighbouring Sudama cave, though also Mauryan and highly polished, has a plain entrance. Option C is wrong because the Karan Chaupar cave is a single polished chamber without the decorated facade. Option D is wrong because Vishwakarma is the name of Cave 10 at Ellora, the Carpenter's Cave, and belongs to a much later period. The Lomas Rishi facade is the standard illustration of stone copying timber in Indian art.

The correct answer is A, a carved cow representing the South direction. The abacus of the Sarnath capital carries four animals, not a cow: an elephant, a horse, a bull and a lion, and in the usual reading the horse stands for the south while the bull stands for the west. There is no cow anywhere on the capital, so option A is the component that does not exist. Option B is wrong as a choice because four lions standing back to back are the topmost element of the capital and the reason for its name. Option C is wrong because four twenty-four spoked Dharma Chakras separate the animals on the abacus, and one of them was placed at the centre of the national flag. Option D is wrong because the whole capital rests on an inverted lotus shaped like a bell. The capital was adopted as the State Emblem of India on 26 January 1950.

The correct answer is B, Ashoka. The Great Stupa, Stupa 1 at Sanchi in Madhya Pradesh, began as a brick mound raised in Ashoka's reign in the third century BCE, beside which he also set up a pillar with a lion capital; the Shungas later encased the mound in stone and added the railings, and the four carved gateways, the toranas, were put up in the Satavahana period. Option A is wrong because Chandragupta Maurya, Ashoka's grandfather, is not associated with stupa building. Option C is wrong because the Kushana ruler Kanishka is linked with Gandhara art and with a great stupa at Peshawar, not with Sanchi. Option D is wrong because Harshavardhana ruled in the seventh century CE, long after the stupa was finished. Sanchi was noticed by General Henry Taylor in 1818 and became a World Heritage Site in 1989.

The correct answer is B, Karle. The chaitya at Karle, near Lonavala in Maharashtra, is the largest such hall in the country: an apsidal prayer chamber with a high barrel-vaulted roof still carrying its wooden ribs, a screen wall pierced by a great horseshoe window, a rock-cut stupa at the far end and rows of pillars whose capitals show elephants with riders. It was excavated in the Satavahana period beside a trade route through the Western Ghats. Option A is wrong because Bhaja, though older and important as an early chaitya, is much smaller. Option C is wrong because Kanheri near Mumbai is famous for the sheer number of its excavations rather than for the size of any one hall. Option D is wrong because Pitalkhora is an early but modest group. Merchants and guilds paid for these caves, which is why they line the old trade passes.

The correct answer is A, the Waghora. The Ajanta caves in the Aurangabad district of Maharashtra are excavated in the curved cliff of a gorge cut by the small Waghora river, and it was on this cliff that a British hunting party led by John Smith came upon the caves in 1819. Option B is wrong because the Godavari, though the great river of the Deccan, does not flow past Ajanta. Option C is wrong because the Tapi flows further north and west into the Gulf of Khambhat. Option D is wrong because the Wainganga belongs to the Godavari system in eastern Maharashtra. The caves fall into two phases, an early Hinayana group of the Satavahana period and a larger Mahayana group of the Vakataka period under Harisena, and they hold the Padmapani and Vajrapani paintings of Cave 1.

The correct answer is B, Rashtrakuta. Cave 16 at Ellora, the Kailasa temple, was cut out of a single mass of rock from the top downwards in the eighth century during the reign of the Rashtrakuta king Krishna I, and it is the largest monolithic excavation in the world. Option A is wrong because the Chalukyas of Badami made the rock-cut cave temples of Badami and the structural temples of Aihole and Pattadakal. Option C is wrong because the Pallavas carved the rathas and mandapas of Mamallapuram in Tamil Nadu. Option D is wrong because the Vakatakas patronised the later caves of Ajanta, not Ellora. Ellora has thirty-four caves in all, Buddhist in Caves 1 to 12, Hindu in Caves 13 to 29 and Jain in Caves 30 to 34, which makes it the clearest example of three faiths sharing one cliff.

The correct answer is B, the Mahabodhi Temple Complex. It stands at Bodh Gaya in Bihar beside the Bodhi tree under which Gautama Buddha attained enlightenment, and the teaching he then carried to the world is tied to this spot; a shrine was first raised here in Ashoka's time and the tall brick temple that survives belongs to the Gupta period, with the site inscribed as a World Heritage Site in 2002. Option A is wrong because Humayun's Tomb in Delhi is a Mughal garden tomb of the sixteenth century. Option C is wrong because the Qutub Minar was begun by Qutb-ud-din Aibak in the Delhi Sultanate period. Option D is wrong because the Red Fort was built by Shah Jahan. Only one option in the set is Buddhist at all, which is the shortcut in such questions.

The correct answer is B, Shiva. The great three-headed bust in the main cave on Elephanta island in Mumbai harbour shows Shiva in three aspects, the calm, the fierce and the gentle, and the Elephanta group as a whole is Shaiva in character. Option A is wrong because Vishnu's avatars are the subject of Cave 15 at Ellora, the Dashavatara cave, not of Elephanta. Option C is wrong because Brahma is rarely given a temple of his own anywhere in India. Option D is wrong because Surya is the deity of Konark and Modhera. The island was named Elephanta by the Portuguese after a stone elephant found on its shore, and its Indian name is Gharapuri; the caves were inscribed as a World Heritage Site in 1987. Papers often pair Elephanta's Trimurti with Ellora's Kailasa temple in the same question.

The correct answer is A, Kharavela. The Hathigumpha or Elephant Cave inscription, cut in the Udayagiri hill near Bhubaneswar in Odisha, is a Prakrit record in the Brahmi script listing the campaigns and public works of Kharavela, the Chedi or Cheti king of Kalinga in the first century BCE, who was a patron of Jainism; the twin hills of Udayagiri and Khandagiri hold Jain caves of his time, the largest of them the Rani Gumpha. Option B is wrong because Rudradaman is known from the Junagadh rock inscription, the first long record in Sanskrit. Option C is wrong because the Pallava Mahendravarman I is linked with the cave temples of Mandagapattu. Option D is wrong because Pulakeshin II of Badami is known from the Aihole inscription of Ravikirti.

The correct answer is B, Mamallapuram. Also called Mahabalipuram, the site on the Coromandel coast of Tamil Nadu was developed by the Pallavas, and its five rathas, named after the Pandavas and Draupadi, are each cut from a single boulder in a different temple form, which makes them a stone catalogue of early southern architecture. Option A is wrong because Badami in Karnataka has rock-cut cave temples of the Chalukyas in red sandstone, not monolithic shrines. Option C is wrong because Aihole is a field of experimental structural temples. Option D is wrong because Pattadakal holds the mature structural temples of the Chalukyas. Mamallapuram also has the Shore Temple, which is structural rather than rock-cut, and the huge open-air relief usually called Arjuna's Penance or the Descent of the Ganges.

The correct answer is B, the harmika. A stupa rises as a hemispherical dome, the anda, above which sits the harmika, a small railed square that holds the mast or yashti carrying the tiers of stone umbrellas, the chhatras. Option A is wrong because the medhi is the drum or raised terrace on which the dome stands. Option C is wrong because the vedika is the railing that encloses the circumambulatory path, the pradakshina patha, around the stupa. Option D is wrong because a torana is the carved gateway in that railing, of which Sanchi has four. Stupas are also classified by what they hold: shariric when they contain bodily relics, paribhogika when they hold objects used by the Buddha, and uddeshika when they merely commemorate an event, and these terms are asked as often as the parts.