Which one of the following sculptures found at Sanchi Stupa is NOT directly inspired by Buddhist ideas?

The correct answer is D, Lahore. Vishnu Digambar Paluskar founded the first Gandharva Mahavidyalaya at Lahore on 5 May 1901.

Paluskar, a Hindustani vocalist trained in the Gwalior gharana, wanted to take classical music out of the closed world of court patronage and teach it openly to ordinary students. The Lahore school was among the first to teach music to the public in a planned, institutional way, with fixed courses, fees and examinations. He later moved his main school to Bombay in 1908, and the Akhil Bharatiya Gandharva Mahavidyalaya Mandal, set up in 1931, continues his work. He also set the bhajan 'Raghupati Raghava Raja Ram' to its well-known tune.

A is wrong: the first school was not opened in Delhi.

B is wrong: Gwalior is the gharana Paluskar trained in, not the site of the school.

C is wrong: Ujjain has no link with the founding of the Mahavidyalaya.

Exam tip: Gandharva Mahavidyalaya = V.D. Paluskar, Lahore, 1901; V.N. Bhatkhande = thaat system and Marris College, Lucknow.

The correct answer is A, Sir Mortimer Wheeler, who came as Director-General in 1944 and insisted that a mound be dug layer by layer, each layer recorded in section with its pottery, so that the order of occupation could be read from the earth itself; he applied the method at Harappa, at Arikamedu near Puducherry, where he identified Roman trade pottery, and at Brahmagiri, and he trained a generation of Indian archaeologists in it. Option B is wrong because Daya Ram Sahni belonged to the earlier school of large clearance digging. Option C is wrong because Cunningham worked chiefly by survey, identification and trial trenching rather than by stratigraphy. Option D is wrong because G. R. Sharma, who excavated Kaushambi, came later and worked within the method Wheeler had already introduced.

The correct answer is B, John Marshall. Appointed by Lord Curzon in 1902 and Director-General until 1928, he put Harappa and Mohenjo-daro in the hands of Daya Ram Sahni and R. D. Banerji, saw that the seals and bricks from the two places belonged to one unknown civilisation and announced it in 1924, afterwards publishing the great volumes on Mohenjo-daro and excavating Taxila and Sanchi. Option A is wrong because Cunningham had died in 1893, though he had seen a Harappan seal without knowing what it was. Option C is wrong because Mortimer Wheeler reached India only in 1944 and later re-dug Harappa with better method. Option D is wrong because James Burgess was Director-General in the eighteen eighties and is remembered for the survey of western Indian cave temples.

The correct answer is A, V. S. Wakankar. Travelling by train through Raisen district in Madhya Pradesh in 1957, he noticed the rock formations rising above the forest, returned to examine them and found hundreds of shelters whose walls carry paintings of hunters, dancers and animals running from the Upper Palaeolithic to historical times; Bhimbetka was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2003. Option B is wrong because H. D. Sankalia was the prehistorian associated with Nevasa and the Deccan College. Option C is wrong because J. P. Joshi is remembered for noticing Dholavira and for work at Surkotada. Option D is wrong because Robert Bruce Foote, called the father of Indian prehistory, found the first palaeolithic tool in India at Pallavaram near Chennai in 1863, almost a century earlier.

The correct answer is B, Lothal, by S. R. Rao. Lothal lies in Ahmedabad district of Gujarat on the Bhogava, and the baked brick basin found there, connected to the river by a channel, is generally identified as a dockyard, which makes Lothal the port town of the Harappan world; it also yielded a bead factory, a warehouse and the earliest reported rice husk. Option A is wrong because Kalibangan in Rajasthan is famous for a ploughed field and a row of fire altars. Option C is wrong because Dholavira, on Khadir island in Kachchh, is famous for its chain of water reservoirs and the signboard of ten large signs. Option D is wrong because Rakhigarhi in Haryana is remembered simply as the largest Harappan site within India. Each site must be learnt with its single famous find.