Mudrarakshasa, the play dealing with Chanakya and the rise of Chandragupta Maurya, was written by
- A.Kautilya
- B.Vishakhadatta
- C.Banabhatta
- D.Kalhana
Correct answer
Explanation
The correct answer is B, Vishakhadatta. Mudrarakshasa is a political drama whose plot turns on the statecraft of Chanakya as he brings down the Nandas and places Chandragupta Maurya on the throne, and historians use it as a literary source for that change of dynasty. A is wrong, and is the trap the question is built around, because Kautilya, also called Chanakya, is the central character of the play and the author of the Arthashastra, a treatise on polity, not of this drama. C is wrong because Banabhatta was the court poet of Harshavardhana and wrote Harshacharita and the prose romance Kadambari. D is wrong because Kalhana wrote Rajatarangini, a chronicle of the kings of Kashmir, and belongs to the twelfth century. The lesson is to separate the subject of a work from its writer, which this topic tests again and again.
Read the full article: Famous Plays and Dramatists: Exam Notes and Lists
Practice Questions
View allThe Sanskrit play Mrichchhakatika, known in English as The Little Clay Cart, was written by
- A.Kalidasa
- B.Shudraka
- C.Bhasa
- D.Bhavabhuti
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Mrichchhakatika is a ten-act play about the love of a poor Brahmin merchant for a courtesan, set against a palace revolution, and its English title The Little Clay Cart comes from a toy cart that appears in the story.
Read the full explanation →Which of the following is a play written by Kalidasa?
- A.Meghaduta
- B.Vikramorvashiyam
- C.Ratnavali
- D.Uttararamacharita
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It tells the story of King Pururavas and the celestial nymph Urvashi.
Read the full explanation →The Sanskrit play Swapnavasavadattam was composed by
- A.Bhasa
- B.Shudraka
- C.Vishakhadatta
- D.Rajashekhara
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Swapnavasavadattam, the dream of Vasavadatta, turns on King Udayana and his queen and is regarded as his finest work; Urubhanga and Pratima Nataka are also his.
Read the full explanation →The Natyashastra, the oldest Indian treatise on dramaturgy, is ascribed to
- A.Panini
- B.Bharata
- C.Patanjali
- D.Abhinavagupta
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The Natyashastra lays down the rules of the stage, of acting, gesture, music and stagecraft, and gives the theory of rasa, the set of aesthetic moods a performance is meant to create in its audience; it is the foundation of all later Indian dramatic and dance theory.
Read the full explanation →The play Waiting for Godot was written by
- A.Samuel Beckett
- B.Bertolt Brecht
- C.Arthur Miller
- D.Tennessee Williams
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In Waiting for Godot two tramps pass the time by a bare tree waiting for a man who never arrives, and the play became the defining work of the Theatre of the Absurd, the movement that refused ordinary plot and meaning in order to show life as it felt after…
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