Who among the following had written Kitab-ul-Hind that gave an incisive description of early 11th Century India?

The correct answer is C, Kannada. Kavirajamarga, written in the ninth century and attributed to the Rashtrakuta king Amoghavarsha the First, is a treatise on poetics and is the earliest surviving literary work in the Kannada language, which is why it is quoted in every question on the beginnings of regional literature. Amoghavarsha also ruled from Manyakheta and is credited with the Sanskrit work Prashnottara Ratnamalika. A is wrong because the earliest Tamil work of this kind is the Tolkappiyam, a grammar of a far older period. B is wrong because, although the Rashtrakutas patronised Sanskrit, the importance of Kavirajamarga lies precisely in its being in a regional language rather than in Sanskrit. D is wrong because Telugu literature is usually traced to Nannaya's version of the Mahabharata in the eleventh century, well after Amoghavarsha.

The correct answer is C, Hiuen Tsiang. The Chinese Buddhist monk Hiuen Tsang, whose name is also written Xuanzang, travelled in India during the reign of Harshavardhana in the seventh century, studied at Nalanda and recorded what he saw in the Si-yu-ki, the Records of the Western World, which remains the fullest description of India in that century. He is often called the Prince of Pilgrims. A is wrong because Marco Polo was a Venetian merchant of the thirteenth century who touched the south Indian coast on his way back from China and wrote his own book of travels. B is wrong because Fa-Hien came two centuries earlier, in the reign of Chandragupta the Second, and left a record of the Buddhist kingdoms. D is wrong because Abdur Razzaq was a Persian envoy who visited the Vijayanagara empire in the fifteenth century.

The correct answer is D, grammar. The Ashtadhyayi, which means eight chapters, is Panini's grammar of Sanskrit and the oldest surviving grammar of any Indian language; its roughly four thousand rules describe the language with a precision that modern linguists still study. Patanjali's Mahabhashya is the great commentary written on it. Historians also use it as evidence of society, because its examples name peoples, places and trades of its time. A is wrong because the classic texts on medicine are the Charaka Samhita and the Sushruta Samhita. B is wrong because law is the subject of the Dharmashastras, such as the Manusmriti and the later digests Mitakshara and Dayabhaga. C is wrong because the economy and statecraft are dealt with in Kautilya's Arthashastra, which is the option candidates most often confuse with this one.

The correct answer is D, Somadeva. The Kathasaritsagara, whose name means the ocean of the streams of story, was composed in Sanskrit verse in the eleventh century by Somadeva of Kashmir for the queen Suryavati, and it is a vast frame narrative drawing on the lost Brihatkatha of Gunadhya; the Vetala Panchavimshati, known in Hindi as Baital Pachisi, is part of it. A is wrong because Kalidasa wrote Abhijnanashakuntalam, Meghadutam, Raghuvamsham, Kumarasambhavam and Ritusamharam, but not this collection. B is wrong because Bhasa was an earlier dramatist whose plays include Swapnavasavadattam and Charudattam. C is wrong because Jayadeva, of the court of the Sena ruler Lakshmanasena in Bengal, wrote the Gita Govinda, the devotional poem on Radha and Krishna. All four are Sanskrit authors, which is what makes the question difficult.

The correct answer is C, Jaimini. The Mimamsa Sutra, also called the Purva Mimamsa Sutra, was composed by the sage Jaimini and is the founding text of the Mimamsa school, one of the six orthodox schools of Indian philosophy; it is concerned with the correct interpretation of the ritual portions of the Vedas and with the authority of the Vedic word. A is wrong because Badarayana composed the Brahma Sutra, also called the Vedanta Sutra, which belongs to the Uttara Mimamsa or Vedanta school and is the usual distractor here because the two sutras are a pair. B is wrong because Charaka is associated with the Charaka Samhita, the classical text of Ayurvedic medicine. D is wrong because Panini wrote the Ashtadhyayi, a grammar, and his name is offered simply because he is the best known of the ancient sutra writers.