Ugadi is celebrated in which of the following states?

The correct answer is C, Sarnath. In the Gupta age a workshop at Sarnath, near Varanasi, carved in cream Chunar sandstone and produced the seated preaching Buddha whose hands form the dharmachakra mudra, the gesture of teaching, and whose robe clings so closely that art historians describe it as wet drapery. This calm, smooth, inward-looking figure became the model for the Buddha image for centuries and spread across Asia. Option A is wrong because Amaravati, in white limestone, is a school of crowded narrative relief and had declined before the Gupta age. Option B is wrong because Gandhara, in grey schist, is marked by heavy folded drapery over both shoulders. Option D is wrong because Bharhut belongs to the earlier aniconic phase, in which the Buddha was shown only through symbols on railings and gateways.

The correct answer is A, Gandhara. Bamiyan, in the highlands of what is now Afghanistan, lay on the trade route through the Hindu Kush and was part of the wide Gandhara cultural region, along with Hadda, Begram, Jalalabad, Swat and Taxila. Its two colossal standing Buddhas, cut into a cliff face and once plastered and painted, were destroyed in 2001. Option B is wrong because Mathura lies far to the east on the Yamuna and worked in spotted red sandstone, not in rock-cut cliffs. Option C is wrong because Amaravati is in the Krishna valley of Andhra Pradesh and worked in limestone relief. Option D is wrong because Sarnath, near Varanasi, is a Gupta period centre in Chunar sandstone. The spread of Gandhara art along this route is how the Buddha image travelled to Central Asia, China and beyond.

The correct answer is B, Mat near Mathura, where the Kushanas built a shrine with a gallery of royal portrait statues, an idea quite new in India and probably borrowed from Central Asian and Iranian practice. The best known of them is the standing figure of Kanishka in spotted red sandstone, broken at the neck, whose inscription names him Maharaja Rajatiraja Devaputra Kanishka, and it is now in the Government Museum at Mathura. Option A is wrong because Taxila, in the Gandhara region, is famous for its monasteries, its university tradition and its Buddhist sculpture, but not for this statue. Option C is wrong because Sarnath is the site of the first sermon, of Ashoka's Lion Capital and of the Gupta period Buddha images. Option D is wrong because Nagarjunakonda belongs to the Amaravati school in the Krishna valley.

The correct answer is C, the wheel, the dharmachakra, which stands for the first sermon delivered in the deer park at Sarnath, an event called the dharmachakra pravartana, the turning of the wheel of law. Option A is wrong because the lotus, often with an elephant, stands for the birth of the Buddha at Lumbini. Option B is wrong because the horse stands for the Great Departure, the night on which Siddhartha left Kapilavastu, and the riderless horse is the usual way of showing it. Option D is wrong because the stupa stands for the mahaparinirvana, the passing away at Kushinagar. One more symbol completes the set: the bodhi tree stands for the enlightenment at Bodh Gaya. This symbolic or aniconic phase belongs to Bharhut and Sanchi and ended when Gandhara and Mathura began carving the Buddha as a man.

The correct answer is B, the Krishna. Amaravati lies in the lower Krishna valley in Andhra Pradesh, and the other sites of the same school, Nagarjunakonda, Jaggayyapeta, Ghantasala and Bhattiprolu, are in the same stretch of country. The stupa itself is called the Mahachaitya, and it was surveyed by Colin Mackenzie in 1816, after which many of its sculptures were removed and are now held chiefly by the British Museum in London and the Government Museum at Chennai. Option A is wrong because the Godavari, though the larger river of the region, is not the valley of this school. Option C is wrong because the Kaveri belongs to Tamil Nadu and Karnataka and to a much later tradition of Chola bronzes and temples. Option D is wrong because the Mahanadi is in Odisha and Chhattisgarh and is associated with sites such as Udayagiri and Khandagiri.