Which old Thai capital takes its name from Ayodhya?

The correct answer is B, Suryavarman II, dedicated to Vishnu. The Khmer king Suryavarman II raised Angkor Wat in the twelfth century in what is now Cambodia as a temple of Vishnu, and its scale makes it the largest Vishnu temple in the world; the building later came to be used as a Buddhist shrine and now appears on the national flag of Cambodia. Option A is wrong because Jayavarman VII, who ruled later, built Angkor Thom with the Bayon at its centre and was a Mahayana Buddhist, which is why the faces on the Bayon are Buddhist. Option C is wrong because Rajendra Chola I was an Indian ruler whose fleet raided Srivijaya; he built the Gangaikonda Cholapuram temple in the Tamil country, not in Cambodia. Option D is wrong because Kaundinya belongs to the founding legend of the earlier kingdom of Funan and built nothing of this kind.

The correct answer is A, the Sailendra dynasty and Buddhism. Borobudur was built in the eighth and ninth centuries by the Sailendra rulers of Java as a Buddhist monument in the form of a stepped pyramid whose galleries carry carved panels of the life and teaching of the Buddha, with seated Buddha images in open stupas on the upper terraces. Option B is wrong because Majapahit was a later Hindu-Buddhist empire of Java and Islam came to the islands centuries after Borobudur was built. Option C is wrong on religion, since Jainism did not travel to South-East Asia in this way, although the dynasty named is correct. Option D is wrong because the Palas ruled in Bengal and Bihar and were patrons of Nalanda and Vikramashila; the Hindu monument of Java is Prambanan, built chiefly for Shiva.

The correct answer is B, Thailand. The Ramakien is the Thai retelling of the Ramayana, painted along the galleries of the Emerald Buddha temple at Bangkok and performed in masked dance; the kings of the present Thai dynasty take the title Rama from it, and the old capital Ayutthaya is named after Ayodhya. Option A is wrong because the Javanese version is the Kakawin Ramayana, which is performed in wayang kulit shadow theatre. Option C is wrong because the Cambodian version is called the Reamker, carved and painted in the Khmer temples. Option D is wrong because the Burmese version is known as the Yama Zatdaw. All four countries have a Ramayana of their own, which is itself the point of such a question, so the names must be matched carefully rather than guessed.

The correct answer is B. Ashoka sent his son Mahendra, known in the Pali chronicles as Mahinda, to Sri Lanka, where the king of the island received the teaching, and afterwards the nun Sanghamitra came with a branch of the Bodhi tree, which was planted at Anuradhapura. The story is told in the Pali chronicles Dipavamsa and Mahavamsa. Option A is wrong because Bodhidharma is linked with China, where his school became Chan and in Japan Zen, and Bodhisena with the Todaiji temple at Nara in Japan. Option C is wrong because Shantarakshita and Padmasambhava established Buddhism in Tibet in the eighth century, a thousand years after Ashoka. Option D is wrong because Faxian and Xuanzang were Chinese pilgrims who came to India to study, not Indian missionaries sent abroad. The mission to Sri Lanka is the one Ashoka sent that is remembered by name, and the Bodhi tree at Anuradhapura is pointed to as its living proof.

The correct answer is B, Afghanistan. The two giant Buddhas were carved into a cliff in the Bamiyan valley, on the branch of the Silk Route that carried Buddhism from Gandhara into Central Asia, and they were destroyed in 2001; the valley remains on the World Heritage list for the surviving caves and paintings. Option A is wrong, and is the usual trap, because Pakistan holds the Gandhara sites of Taxila and Takht-i-Bahi and the museum sculptures of that school, but not the Bamiyan figures. Option C is wrong because Uzbekistan has the Buddhist remains of Termez and the great Islamic monuments of Samarkand and Bukhara. Option D is wrong because Iran lay on the route but is associated with the Zoroastrian and later Islamic tradition rather than with carvings of this kind.