Famous Poems and Poets of India: Works and Languages

The correct answer is A, Gitanjali, published in Bengali in 1910 and in Tagore's own English translation as Song Offerings in 1912. The prize of 1913 made him the first Asian to win a Nobel Prize in any field. Option B is wrong because Gora is one of his novels, a long work on nationalism and caste, not a book of poems. Option C is wrong because Chokher Bali is likewise a novel, often translated as A Grain of Sand. Option D is wrong because Sadhana is a set of lectures on philosophy that Tagore delivered in the United States. Students should hold three Tagore facts together: Gitanjali and the 1913 Nobel, Jana Gana Mana adopted as the national anthem on 24 January 1950, and Amar Shonar Bangla as the national anthem of Bangladesh, which makes him the only poet behind two countries' anthems.

The correct answer is B, Anandamath, the Bengali novel published by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee in 1882, in which the song appears as the hymn of the ascetic rebels. Rabindranath Tagore set it to music and sang it at the Calcutta session of the Indian National Congress in 1896, and after independence its first two stanzas were given the status of national song, declared to hold a place of honour equal to the national anthem. Option A is wrong because Durgeshnandini, published in 1865, was Bankim's first novel but carries no such song. Option C is wrong because Kapalkundala is another of his romances. Option D is wrong because Devi Chaudhurani, though also about rebellion, is a later and separate novel. The song itself was written some years before the novel and was fitted into it when Bankim needed a hymn for his characters.

The correct answer is B, Kalidasa. The Meghaduta, or Cloud Messenger, is his short lyric poem in which a yaksha banished from his home asks a passing monsoon cloud to carry a message to his wife in Alaka, and the cloud's route becomes a description of the Indian landscape. Kalidasa also wrote the Ritusamhara, the Raghuvamsha and the Kumarasambhava, besides the play Abhijnanashakuntalam. Option A is wrong because Bhasa is an earlier dramatist, credited with Svapnavasavadattam and a group of short plays. Option C is wrong because Sudraka is credited with the play Mrichchhakatika, the little clay cart, and wrote no such poem. Option D is wrong because Vatsyayana was not a poet at all but the author of the Kamasutra, a prose treatise. The three wrong names are all standard distractors in Kalidasa questions, so fix the list of his works firmly in memory.

The correct answer is A, Jayadeva, who composed the Gita Govinda in the twelfth century, by tradition at the court of Lakshmana Sena, the last important Sena ruler of Bengal. The poem is arranged in songs meant to be sung and danced, and it is the text on which the Odissi repertoire and the Ashtapadi singing of temples rest. Option B is wrong because Chandidas was a Bengali poet of the Vaishnava tradition who wrote in Bengali, not Sanskrit, and a century or more later. Option C is wrong because Vidyapati wrote his padas in Maithili and belongs to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Option D is wrong because Surdas, the blind poet of the Pushtimarg, wrote the Sur Sagar in Braj in the sixteenth century. The question turns on the language: of the four, only Jayadeva wrote in Sanskrit.

The correct answer is B, Jaishankar Prasad. Kamayani takes the flood story of Manu from Indian tradition and turns it into a long allegory in which Manu stands for the mind, Shraddha for faith and Ida for reason. Prasad is one of the four pillars of the Chhayavad school, and his other works include the plays Skandagupta and Chandragupta. Option A is wrong because Nirala, also a Chhayavad poet, is set for Ram ki Shakti Puja and the elegy Saroj Smriti. Option C is wrong because Sumitranandan Pant wrote Pallav and the Jnanpith-winning Chidambara. Option D is wrong because Maithili Sharan Gupt, honoured as Rashtrakavi, wrote Bharat Bharati and Saket and belongs to the Dwivedi era rather than to Chhayavad. The four Chhayavad poets to memorise are Prasad, Nirala, Pant and Mahadevi Verma.

The correct answer is B, Muhammad Iqbal, who wrote this Urdu ghazal in 1904 under the title Tarana-e-Hindi, the anthem of the people of Hind. It became a marching song of the freedom movement and is played by the armed forces at ceremonial parades. Option A is wrong because Mirza Ghalib, the greatest Urdu poet of the nineteenth century, is remembered for the Diwan-e-Ghalib and had died decades before this poem was written. Option C is wrong because Faiz Ahmed Faiz belongs to the twentieth century and is known for Naqsh-e-Faryadi and Dast-e-Saba. Option D is wrong because Mir Taqi Mir, called Khuda-e-Sukhan, belongs to the eighteenth century. Iqbal also wrote the Tarana-e-Milli and the long Persian works Asrar-e-Khudi and Payam-e-Mashriq, and he delivered the Allahabad address to the Muslim League in 1930. Remember the poem by its proper title, since papers often print Tarana-e-Hindi rather than the familiar first line.

The correct answer is C, Sarojini Naidu, whose first collection of English verse, The Golden Threshold, appeared in 1905 and was followed by The Bird of Time and The Broken Wing. Gopal Krishna Gokhale is said to have given her the title Bharat Kokila, the Nightingale of India. She was also the first woman to be president of the Indian National Congress, at the Kanpur session of 1925, and the first woman governor of an Indian state, in the United Provinces. Option A is wrong because Toru Dutt, who died very young, wrote Our Casuarina Tree and A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields. Option B is wrong because Kamala Das belongs to the second half of the twentieth century and wrote Summer in Calcutta and the memoir My Story. Option D is wrong because Mahadevi Verma wrote in Hindi, not English, and is a Chhayavad poet.

The correct answer is B, Awadhi, the speech of the Awadh region around Ayodhya, where Tulsidas began the work in the sixteenth century. He deliberately chose the spoken language over Sanskrit so that the story of Rama could reach ordinary listeners, and the poem is still recited and staged across the Hindi belt. Option A is wrong but is the usual trap, because Braj is the dialect of the Mathura region used by the Krishna poets, above all Surdas in the Sur Sagar and Mirabai in many of her padas. Option C is wrong because Maithili is the language of north Bihar, in which Vidyapati wrote his padavali. Option D is wrong because Sanskrit was the language Tulsidas set aside for this work, though he knew it well. A related question asks for his other works: the Vinaya Patrika, the Kavitavali and the Hanuman Chalisa.

The correct answer is C, G. Sankara Kurup, the Malayalam poet, who received the first Jnanpith Award, for 1965, for his collection Odakkuzhal, the flute of reed. The award was instituted by the Bharatiya Jnanpith in 1961 and is the senior literary honour given for a body of work in any of the languages recognised by the Constitution. Option A is wrong because Kuvempu, whose Sri Ramayana Darshanam brought Kannada its first Jnanpith, won for 1967. Option B is wrong because Umashankar Joshi won for Nishitha and shared that same 1967 award with Kuvempu. Option D is wrong because Sumitranandan Pant won for Chidambara in 1968, which was the first Jnanpith for Hindi. Note the pattern of questions here: the first winner overall, the first winner in a given language, and the book for which each was honoured.

The correct answer is B, Ramdhari Singh Dinkar, whose Urvashi, built on the old story of Pururava and the apsara Urvashi, won the Jnanpith Award for 1972. Dinkar is the poet of Rashmirathi, a retelling of the Mahabharata from Karna's side, and of Kurukshetra and Parashuram ki Pratiksha, and he is often called a poet of rebellion. Option A is wrong because Harivansh Rai Bachchan wrote Madhushala and the four-part autobiography beginning with Kya Bhoolun Kya Yaad Karoon, but did not win the Jnanpith. Option C is wrong because Nirala, who died in 1961, received no Jnanpith; his major poems are Ram ki Shakti Puja and Saroj Smriti. Option D is wrong because Mahadevi Verma won the Jnanpith for Yama, but in 1982, ten years after Dinkar. Match each Hindi poet to the single book that won the award.

The correct answer is C, Uttararamacharitam, which was written not by Kalidasa but by Bhavabhuti, a dramatist of about the eighth century who also wrote the Malatimadhava and the Mahaviracharita. His play takes up the later life of Rama, after the events of the Ramayana. Option A is wrong as a choice because the Meghadutam is Kalidasa's lyric poem of the cloud messenger. Option B is wrong because the Kumarasambhava, on the marriage of Shiva and Parvati and the birth of Kartikeya, is one of his two long narrative poems, the other being the Raghuvamsha. Option D is wrong because the Ritusamhara, a short poem on the six seasons, is usually taken to be his earliest work. Keep Kalidasa's list separate from Bhavabhuti's, since this is the exact distinction the question tests.

The correct answer is C, Kanishka. Ashvaghosha, a Sanskrit poet and Buddhist thinker, is placed at the court of the Kushana ruler Kanishka in the first and second centuries of the common era, and he also wrote the Saundarananda and is associated with the fourth Buddhist council held in Kashmir under Kanishka. Option A is wrong because Gautamiputra Satakarni was the greatest of the Satavahana rulers of the Deccan, remembered from the Nasik inscription of his mother Gautami Balashri, not as Ashvaghosha's patron. Option B is wrong because Bindusara, the Mauryan who ruled between Chandragupta and Ashoka, belongs to the fourth and third centuries before the common era, long before this poet. Option D is wrong for the same reason of date, since Ashoka's reign ended more than two centuries before Kanishka's. Kanishka's court is also linked with the physician Charaka and the scholar Nagarjuna.