In which year was the Vernacular Press Act enacted in British India?

The correct answer is D, Kapilendra Deva. He founded the Suryavamsi Gajapati dynasty of Odisha in 1435.

Kapilendra Deva was a minister who took the throne when the Eastern Ganga line ended, and he built the largest empire Odisha ever had, stretching from the lower Ganga in the north to the Kaveri in the south. He fought the Bahmani sultanate and the Reddi chiefs of Andhra, and the word Gajapati means lord of elephants. His successors were Purushottama Deva and Prataparudra Deva, in whose reign the saint Chaitanya came to Puri; the dynasty weakened after him and the Bhoi line followed.

Options A, B and C are wrong. Bhanu Deva was a title used by rulers of the earlier Eastern Ganga dynasty, the builders of the Konark temple, while Vasu Deva and Surendra Deva are not rulers of this line at all.

Exam tip: Eastern Gangas - Konark and the Puri temple; Gajapatis from 1435 - Kapilendra Deva.

The correct answer is A, Hicky's Bengal Gazette. It was started in Calcutta in 1780 and was the first printed newspaper in India.

James Augustus Hicky brought it out as a weekly and called it the Bengal Gazette or Calcutta General Advertiser. It carried sharp attacks on Warren Hastings and the officials of the East India Company, so the government stopped its postal circulation and shut the paper down in 1782, jailing Hicky. It remains the starting point of press history in India and of the long fight over press freedom.

Option B, The Madras Courier, appeared in 1785, five years later, as the first paper in Madras. Option C, The Bombay Herald, began in 1789. Option D, Maratha, was an English weekly founded by Bal Gangadhar Tilak in 1881, a century later.

Exam tip: 1780 Bengal Gazette, 1785 Madras Courier, 1789 Bombay Herald; Tilak ran Kesari in Marathi and Maratha in English.

The correct answer is C, Ahsanabad. Gulbarga was renamed Ahsanabad and made the first capital of the Bahmani kingdom.

The Bahmani sultanate was founded in 1347 by Alauddin Hasan Bahman Shah, also called Hasan Gangu, after Deccan nobles revolted against Muhammad bin Tughlaq. He took Gulbarga in present-day Karnataka as his seat and gave it the name Ahsanabad. In 1425 Ahmad Shah Wali shifted the capital to Bidar, which was renamed Muhammadabad. The kingdom's long rivalry was with the Vijayanagara empire across the Tungabhadra, and it broke into five Deccan sultanates by the early sixteenth century.

Option A, Devagiri, was the Yadava capital. Option B, Daulatabad, is the name Muhammad bin Tughlaq gave Devagiri when he moved his own capital there. Option D, Berar, was a province and later one of the five successor sultanates, not the first capital.

Exam tip: Bahmani capitals - Gulbarga (Ahsanabad) 1347, then Bidar 1425.

The correct answer is D, Dantidurga. Dantidurga founded the Rashtrakuta kingdom in the Deccan in about 753 CE.

Dantidurga was a feudatory of the Chalukyas of Badami and overthrew the Chalukya ruler Kirtivarman II to set up independent rule, with Manyakheta, today's Malkhed in Karnataka, becoming the capital. The Rashtrakutas were one of the three powers in the long tripartite struggle for Kannauj, along with the Palas and the Pratiharas. Arab traveller Al-Masudi called their ruler one of the great kings of the world.

A is wrong: Ashoka was a Mauryan emperor of the third century BCE. B is wrong: Amoghavarsha was a later Rashtrakuta king, the author of Kavirajamarga in Kannada. C is wrong: Krishna I was Dantidurga's successor and is remembered for the rock-cut Kailasa temple at Ellora.

Exam tip: Rashtrakutas - founded by Dantidurga about 753 CE, capital Manyakheta, Kailasa temple built by Krishna I.

The correct answer is B, Basavanna. He was a Jaina in his early life and served as a minister in a Chalukya court in the twelfth century.

Basavanna, also called Basaveshwara, led the Virashaiva or Lingayat movement in Karnataka. His followers worship Shiva in the form of a linga, reject caste distinctions, temple ritual and Brahmanical authority, and do not believe in rebirth. He composed his teachings as vachanas, short prose-poems in Kannada, and the movement ran an assembly called the Anubhava Mantapa where men and women debated freely. Allama Prabhu and Akka Mahadevi were among the other leading figures of the movement.

A is wrong: Karaikkal Ammaiyar was a Tamil Nayanar saint of a much earlier period. C is wrong: Eknath was a Marathi Varkari saint of the sixteenth century. D is wrong: Tallapaka Annamacharya was a Telugu composer of devotional songs at Tirupati.

Exam tip: Basavanna - twelfth century, Karnataka, Lingayat or Virashaiva movement, vachanas in Kannada.