Which of the following was the first language conferred with the status of Classical Language in India?

The correct answer is D, Mopin. Mopin is the harvest and agricultural festival of the Galo people of Arunachal Pradesh, held in early April. It is a prayer to the goddess Mopin Ane for a good crop, for health and for prosperity, and for the driving away of evil and illness. People dress in white, smear rice flour on one another as a mark of blessing, perform the gentle Popir dance and share rice beer called apong and local delicacies. Option A is wrong because Losar is the new year of Buddhist communities, kept by the Monpas of Arunachal Pradesh and by Tibetans and Ladakhis. Option B is wrong because Ugadi is the new year of Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. Option C is wrong because Karma is a tribal festival of Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Odisha that honours the karam tree. Exam tip: Arunachal festivals pair with tribes as Mopin with Galo, Solung with Adi, Nyokum with Nyishi, Dree with Apatani and Losar with Monpa.

The correct answer is A, Shah Jahan. The Sheesh Mahal, or palace of mirrors, inside the Agra Fort was built in Shah Jahan's reign as a bath and dressing chamber for the royal household. Thousands of tiny pieces of mirror glass are set into its walls and vaulted ceiling, so that one lamp fills the whole room with points of light. Shah Jahan rebuilt much of Akbar's red sandstone fort in white marble and added the Diwan-i-Khas, Khas Mahal, Musamman Burj and Moti Masjid; he spent his last years confined in this fort. Option B is wrong because Humayun built little that survives, and the Purana Qila at Delhi is linked with him. Option C is wrong because Babur ruled only from 1526 to 1530 and is remembered at Agra for laying out a riverside garden, the Aram Bagh. Option D is wrong because Akbar raised the Agra Fort itself from 1565 but not this chamber. Exam tip: Agra Fort begun by Akbar, marble palaces added by Shah Jahan.

The correct answer is B, the harmika. A stupa rises as a hemispherical dome, the anda, above which sits the harmika, a small railed square that holds the mast or yashti carrying the tiers of stone umbrellas, the chhatras. Option A is wrong because the medhi is the drum or raised terrace on which the dome stands. Option C is wrong because the vedika is the railing that encloses the circumambulatory path, the pradakshina patha, around the stupa. Option D is wrong because a torana is the carved gateway in that railing, of which Sanchi has four. Stupas are also classified by what they hold: shariric when they contain bodily relics, paribhogika when they hold objects used by the Buddha, and uddeshika when they merely commemorate an event, and these terms are asked as often as the parts.

The correct answer is B, Mamallapuram. Also called Mahabalipuram, the site on the Coromandel coast of Tamil Nadu was developed by the Pallavas, and its five rathas, named after the Pandavas and Draupadi, are each cut from a single boulder in a different temple form, which makes them a stone catalogue of early southern architecture. Option A is wrong because Badami in Karnataka has rock-cut cave temples of the Chalukyas in red sandstone, not monolithic shrines. Option C is wrong because Aihole is a field of experimental structural temples. Option D is wrong because Pattadakal holds the mature structural temples of the Chalukyas. Mamallapuram also has the Shore Temple, which is structural rather than rock-cut, and the huge open-air relief usually called Arjuna's Penance or the Descent of the Ganges.

The correct answer is A, Kharavela. The Hathigumpha or Elephant Cave inscription, cut in the Udayagiri hill near Bhubaneswar in Odisha, is a Prakrit record in the Brahmi script listing the campaigns and public works of Kharavela, the Chedi or Cheti king of Kalinga in the first century BCE, who was a patron of Jainism; the twin hills of Udayagiri and Khandagiri hold Jain caves of his time, the largest of them the Rani Gumpha. Option B is wrong because Rudradaman is known from the Junagadh rock inscription, the first long record in Sanskrit. Option C is wrong because the Pallava Mahendravarman I is linked with the cave temples of Mandagapattu. Option D is wrong because Pulakeshin II of Badami is known from the Aihole inscription of Ravikirti.