Tansen, credited with the ragas Miyan ki Malhar and Darbari Kanada, was a musician in whose court?

The correct answer is C, Samaveda. The Samaveda is the Veda of melody. Most of its verses are taken from the Rigveda, but they are arranged for singing rather than for recitation, and that singing is known as Samagana. Every later Indian treatise on music traces the tradition back to it, which is why the pairing appears in paper after paper.

Option A, the Rigveda, is the oldest Veda and is a collection of hymns to the gods; it supplies the words the Samaveda sings, but it is not itself the musical Veda. Option B, the Yajurveda, is the Veda of sacrificial formulae, giving the prose mantras a priest uses while performing a ritual. Option D, the Atharvaveda, collects charms, spells and remedies of everyday life along with some philosophical hymns. Of the four, only the Samaveda was organised around melody, so it alone is called the source of Indian classical music.

The correct answer is B, Sarangadeva. Sarangadeva wrote the Sangeeta Ratnakara in the thirteenth century while attached to the Yadava court at Devagiri in the Deccan. Because it has seven chapters it is also called the Saptadhyayi, and because it was written before the northern and southern traditions drew apart, both of them still treat it as authoritative.

Option A, Matanga, wrote the Brihaddeshi, the work remembered for using the word raga in something close to its modern meaning, but not the Sangeeta Ratnakara. Option C, Bharata Muni, is the author of the Natya Shastra, the treatise on drama that contains the earliest systematic description of swaras and shrutis. Option D, Venkatamakhin, belongs to the seventeenth century and to the south; his Chaturdandi Prakashika set out the scheme of seventy-two melakarta ragas that Carnatic music still uses. All four are treatise writers, which is exactly why they are offered together.

The correct answer is D, 72. The melakarta ragas are the parent scales of Carnatic music, each of them using all seven notes in both ascent and descent. The scheme that fixes their number at seventy-two comes from Venkatamakhin's Chaturdandi Prakashika, and every other Carnatic raga is treated as a janya, or derived, raga of one of these parents.

Option A, 10, is the number of thaats into which Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande grouped the ragas of Hindustani music, so it belongs to the other system. Option B, 22, is the number of shrutis or microtones into which the older theory divided the octave. Option C, 32, matches nothing in this classification and is placed there only as a distractor. The examiner's favourite trick here is to swap the number of thaats with the number of melakartas, so remember the pair together: ten thaats in the north, seventy-two melakartas in the south.

The correct answer is C, 16. Teentaal runs over sixteen matras divided into four equal vibhags of four beats each. The first beat of the cycle is the sam and carries the stress, the third vibhag opens on a khali, and the cycle returns to the sam at the end. Its regularity is why most khayal performances and most instrumental gats are set in it.

Option A, 10, is the count of Jhaptaal, which is divided unevenly as two, three, two and three. Option B, 12, belongs to Ektaal and to Chautaal, the latter played on the pakhawaj for dhrupad. Option D, 14, is the count of Dhamar tala, the cycle used for the dhamar form sung at Holi, and also of Deepchandi. Each of the four numbers is a real tala count, so the question rewards a student who has memorised the whole table rather than one entry from it.

The correct answer is C, Dhrupad. Dhrupad is austere and devotional, sung in four sections called sthayi, antara, sanchari and abhog, and it opens with a long unmetred alap. It is accompanied by the pakhawaj rather than the tabla. Raja Man Singh Tomar of Gwalior is remembered for patronising it, and the Dagar family has carried it into modern times.

Option A, khayal, takes its name from the Persian word for imagination, allows far more ornament, and only became the dominant form long after dhrupad; it is sung as a slow bada khayal followed by a fast chhota khayal. Option B, thumri, is semi-classical and romantic, with Lucknow and Benares as its centres and Wajid Ali Shah of Awadh as its best known patron. Option D, tappa, is a quick form full of short runs that grew out of the songs of the camel drivers of Punjab. All four are Hindustani vocal forms, but dhrupad is the oldest of them.