Orissa was officially renamed Odisha, and Oriya renamed Odia, with effect from which date?

The correct answer is A, 1 April 1936. Orissa was separated from the Bihar and Orissa Province and made a province in its own right on 1 April 1936, and the day is kept every year as Utkal Divas. It is often described as the first province in British India carved out on a linguistic basis, and the campaign for it is linked above all with Madhusudan Das and Utkalmani Gopabandhu Das. Option B is wrong because 1 November 1956 is the day the States Reorganisation Act came into force and redrew many state boundaries, but Odisha was already a separate unit by then. Option C is wrong because 15 August 1947 is the date of independence, not of the formation of the province. Option D is wrong because 1 November 2000 is the day Chhattisgarh was created out of Madhya Pradesh. Keep the two first of November dates apart, since both appear as distractors in state papers.

The correct answer is B, Chilika Lake. Chilika, spread along the coast of the Puri, Khordha and Ganjam districts, is the largest brackish water lagoon in India, cut off from the Bay of Bengal by a long sandbar. It was one of the first two Indian wetlands listed under the Ramsar Convention, in 1981, it holds the Nalabana Bird Sanctuary on an island of reeds, and the waters near Satapada are known for Irrawaddy dolphins. Option A is wrong because Kolleru, in Andhra Pradesh between the Krishna and the Godavari, is a freshwater lake. Option C is wrong because Pulicat, on the Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu coast, is a brackish lagoon but the second largest, not the largest. Option D is wrong because Anshupa, an oxbow lake near the Mahanadi in Cuttack district, is the largest freshwater lake of Odisha and a much smaller water body.

The correct answer is C, Ashoka. The Mauryan emperor Ashoka invaded Kalinga in about the eighth year of his reign, around 261 BCE, and the slaughter it caused turned him to Buddhism and to the policy of dhamma. His own Rock Edict XIII records his remorse, and his edicts survive in Odisha at Dhauli near Bhubaneswar and at Jaugada, including the two Separate Kalinga Edicts addressed to his officers there. Option A is wrong because Chandragupta Maurya founded the dynasty and campaigned in the north west, not in Kalinga. Option B is wrong because Bindusara, Ashoka father, left Kalinga outside the empire, which is why Ashoka had to conquer it. Option D is wrong because Harshavardhana ruled from Kanauj in the seventh century CE, nearly nine hundred years later. A linked fact worth holding is the Shanti Stupa at Dhauli, built in the twentieth century with Japanese collaboration on the hill above the battlefield.

The correct answer is A, Kharavela. The Hathigumpha or elephant cave inscription, cut into the Udayagiri hill near Bhubaneswar, is the record of Kharavela, the Jain king of the Mahameghavahana line of Kalinga. It is written in the Prakrit language and the Brahmi script, and it lists his conquests, his public works and his patronage of Jainism year by year, which makes it the single most important source for early Odishan history. Option B is wrong because Anantavarman Chodaganga Deva of the Eastern Ganga dynasty began the Jagannath temple at Puri in the twelfth century. Option C is wrong because Narasimhadeva I, of the same dynasty, built the Sun Temple at Konark in the thirteenth century. Option D is wrong because Mahendravarman I was a Pallava ruler of Kanchi in the south. The twin hills of Udayagiri and Khandagiri, with their rock cut Jain cells, go with this question.

The correct answer is B, the Eastern Ganga dynasty. The Sun Temple at Konark was raised in the thirteenth century by Narasimhadeva I of the Eastern Ganga dynasty, conceived as the chariot of the sun god with twenty four carved wheels drawn by seven horses. It is the only UNESCO World Heritage Site in Odisha, inscribed in 1984, and European sailors called it the Black Pagoda. Option A is wrong because the Somavamshi rulers belong to an earlier phase and are remembered for the Lingaraja temple at Bhubaneswar. Option C is wrong because the Gajapatis came later, in the fifteenth century, after the Eastern Gangas. Option D is wrong because the Chalukyas ruled in the Deccan from Badami and Kalyani and built nothing in Odisha. Remember the pair that papers set together: Chodaganga Deva and the Jagannath temple at Puri, Narasimhadeva I and the Sun Temple at Konark.