The Sunga dynasty was founded after the killing of which of the following Mauryan rulers?

The correct answer is D, Mathura. The main Kushana capital was Purushapura, the modern Peshawar, which Kanishka I developed as his seat of power. As the empire spread into the Ganga-Yamuna plain, Mathura on the Yamuna became its second capital and the southern headquarters of the family. Mathura also grew into a great centre of sculpture, and a shrine of Kushana royal portrait statues, including a famous headless figure of Kanishka, was found at Mat near the city.

Option A, Pataliputra, was the Magadhan capital of the Nandas, the Mauryas and later the Guptas, not of the Kushanas. Option B, Delhi, did not exist as a capital in this period and rose only from the twelfth century under the Delhi Sultanate. Option C, Lahore, lay within Kushana territory but was never a Kushana capital and became important much later.

The correct answer is A, Nahapana. Nahapana belonged to the Kshaharata family of the Shakas, the Western Kshatrapas who ruled in western India, and not to the Kushanas at all. He is remembered because the Satavahana king Gautamiputra Satakarni defeated him and restruck his silver coins, a hoard of which was found at Jogalthembi in Maharashtra.

Option B, Vasishka, was a Kushana ruler of the family of Kanishka and is known from inscriptions of the line. Option C, Vasudeva, was the last important Kushana king, whose coins and devotion to Shiva mark the Indianisation of the dynasty; he should not be confused with Vasudeva the founder of the Kanva dynasty. Option D, Huvishka, ruled between Kanishka and Vasudeva and is known from a large coinage and from the Mat shrine near Mathura.

The correct answer is C, Kanishka. Ashvaghosha was a Buddhist monk and Sanskrit poet at the court of the Kushana ruler Kanishka I. He wrote the Buddhacharita, a life of the Buddha in Sanskrit verse, and the Saundarananda, and he acted as deputy to Vasumitra at the Fourth Buddhist Council held in Kashmir. Kanishka's court also held the physician Charaka and the philosopher Nagarjuna, and the group is a favourite one-line question.

Option A, Ashoka, ruled in the third century BCE, about three hundred years earlier, and is linked with Moggaliputta Tissa and the Third Buddhist Council. Option B, Bindusara, was Ashoka's father and received the Greek ambassador Deimachus, not Ashvaghosha. Option D, Gautamiputra Satakarni, was the Satavahana king praised in the Nasik prashasti and had no connection with the Buddhacharita.

The correct answer is C, Prakrit. The Gathasaptasati, also written as Gatha Saptasati, is an anthology of seven hundred short verses compiled by the Satavahana king Hala. It is written in Maharashtri Prakrit, the spoken language the Satavahanas favoured for their inscriptions and literature, and its verses describe village love and daily life in the Deccan rather than royal deeds. The work matters in an examination because it shows that the Satavahanas, unlike the later Guptas, promoted Prakrit as the language of the court.

Option A, Sanskrit, became the normal language of royal inscriptions later, with the Junagadh record of Rudradaman I as the first long example. Option B, Pali, is the language of the Buddhist Tripitaka and of the Milindapanho, not of Hala's anthology. Option D, Hindi, developed more than a thousand years after Hala and cannot belong to a first or second century text.

The correct answer is B, Amaravati. The panel showing the submission of the mad elephant Nalagiri, sent by Devadatta to kill the Buddha and calmed by him in the street of Rajagriha, is among the best known carvings of the Amaravati stupa on the lower Krishna in Andhra Pradesh. The Amaravati school flourished under Satavahana patronage and worked in white limestone, filling its panels with crowded, slender and flowing figures.

Option A, Bharhut, is a Sunga period stupa in Madhya Pradesh whose railings carry Jataka scenes labelled in Brahmi. Option C, Mathura, is a school of red sandstone sculpture in the north and not the site of this panel. Option D, Sanchi, is famous for its stupa gateways with scenes of the Buddha's life shown through symbols, but the Nalagiri panel belongs to Amaravati.