The national motto of India, Satyameva Jayate, is taken from which text?

The correct answer is B, the Samaveda. Its name comes from saman, a melody, and it arranges hymns, most of them taken from the Rigveda, in the form in which the priest was to sing them at a sacrifice, so the earliest Indian system of musical notes is traced to it. Option A is wrong because the Rigveda is the oldest Veda and a collection of 1,028 hymns of praise, not of melodies. Option C is wrong because the Yajurveda gives the formulae and the procedure for performing sacrifices, in prose as well as verse, and is the handbook of the officiating priest. Option D is wrong because the Atharvaveda is a collection of charms, spells and remedies that reflects popular belief and early medicine. The pairing most often asked is Samaveda with music and Atharvaveda with magic and medicine.

The correct answer is B, James Prinsep. He was an officer of the East India Company mint and secretary of the Asiatic Society, and in 1837 he worked out the values of the Brahmi letters, which made the edicts of the king who called himself Devanampiya Piyadassi legible for the first time. Option A is wrong because Alexander Cunningham was the first Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India and surveyed sites rather than decipher scripts. Option C is wrong because John Marshall led the Archaeological Survey much later and is remembered for announcing the discovery of the Indus civilisation. Option D is wrong because William Jones founded the Asiatic Society in 1784 and worked on Sanskrit and comparative language, before the Brahmi problem was solved. Fix the year 1837 with the name Prinsep.

The correct answer is A, Kharavela of Kalinga. The inscription is cut in a cave of the Udayagiri hills near Bhubaneswar in Odisha, is written in Prakrit in the Brahmi script, and records year by year the campaigns, irrigation works and patronage of Jainism of this ruler of the Mahameghavahana line. Option B is wrong because Rudradaman I, the Shaka ruler of western India, is known from the Junagadh rock inscription. Option C is wrong because Gautamiputra Satakarni of the Satavahana dynasty is known from the Nasik prashasti issued by his mother Gautami Balashri. Option D is wrong because Samudragupta is known from the Prayag or Allahabad pillar prashasti composed by Harisena. The pairing of inscription with ruler is the whole of this question type.

The correct answer is B, Harisena. He was a court poet of Samudragupta, and the prashasti he composed in Sanskrit, partly in prose and partly in verse, lists the kings the emperor uprooted in the north, those he defeated and reinstated in the south, and the rulers who paid him homage, which makes it the main source for his reign. Option A is wrong because Ravikirti composed the Aihole inscription of the Chalukya king Pulakeshin II. Option C is wrong because Vatsabhatti composed the Mandasor inscription about a guild of silk weavers in the time of Kumaragupta. Option D is wrong because Banabhatta was the court writer of Harshavardhana and wrote the Harshacharita and the Kadambari, which are literary works and not inscriptions. The poet and his patron are asked in either direction.

The correct answer is B, Pulakeshin II, the greatest ruler of the Chalukyas of Badami. The inscription at Aihole, composed in Sanskrit by his court poet Ravikirti, praises his achievements and mentions his success against Harshavardhana, which is the only firm evidence that the ruler of Kanauj was checked on the Narmada. Option A is wrong because Harshavardhana is the king defeated in this record, and our knowledge of him comes from the Harshacharita of Banabhatta and the account of Hiuen Tsang. Option C is wrong because Narasimhavarman I was the Pallava ruler who later defeated and killed Pulakeshin II and took the title Vatapikonda. Option D is wrong because Dantidurga founded the Rashtrakuta power in the middle of the eighth century, long after this inscription.