Who was the first recipient of the Jnanpith Award?

The correct answer is A, Gitanjali, published in Bengali in 1910 and in Tagore's own English translation as Song Offerings in 1912. The prize of 1913 made him the first Asian to win a Nobel Prize in any field. Option B is wrong because Gora is one of his novels, a long work on nationalism and caste, not a book of poems. Option C is wrong because Chokher Bali is likewise a novel, often translated as A Grain of Sand. Option D is wrong because Sadhana is a set of lectures on philosophy that Tagore delivered in the United States. Students should hold three Tagore facts together: Gitanjali and the 1913 Nobel, Jana Gana Mana adopted as the national anthem on 24 January 1950, and Amar Shonar Bangla as the national anthem of Bangladesh, which makes him the only poet behind two countries' anthems.

The correct answer is B, Anandamath, the Bengali novel published by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee in 1882, in which the song appears as the hymn of the ascetic rebels. Rabindranath Tagore set it to music and sang it at the Calcutta session of the Indian National Congress in 1896, and after independence its first two stanzas were given the status of national song, declared to hold a place of honour equal to the national anthem. Option A is wrong because Durgeshnandini, published in 1865, was Bankim's first novel but carries no such song. Option C is wrong because Kapalkundala is another of his romances. Option D is wrong because Devi Chaudhurani, though also about rebellion, is a later and separate novel. The song itself was written some years before the novel and was fitted into it when Bankim needed a hymn for his characters.

The correct answer is B, Kalidasa. The Meghaduta, or Cloud Messenger, is his short lyric poem in which a yaksha banished from his home asks a passing monsoon cloud to carry a message to his wife in Alaka, and the cloud's route becomes a description of the Indian landscape. Kalidasa also wrote the Ritusamhara, the Raghuvamsha and the Kumarasambhava, besides the play Abhijnanashakuntalam. Option A is wrong because Bhasa is an earlier dramatist, credited with Svapnavasavadattam and a group of short plays. Option C is wrong because Sudraka is credited with the play Mrichchhakatika, the little clay cart, and wrote no such poem. Option D is wrong because Vatsyayana was not a poet at all but the author of the Kamasutra, a prose treatise. The three wrong names are all standard distractors in Kalidasa questions, so fix the list of his works firmly in memory.

The correct answer is A, Jayadeva, who composed the Gita Govinda in the twelfth century, by tradition at the court of Lakshmana Sena, the last important Sena ruler of Bengal. The poem is arranged in songs meant to be sung and danced, and it is the text on which the Odissi repertoire and the Ashtapadi singing of temples rest. Option B is wrong because Chandidas was a Bengali poet of the Vaishnava tradition who wrote in Bengali, not Sanskrit, and a century or more later. Option C is wrong because Vidyapati wrote his padas in Maithili and belongs to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Option D is wrong because Surdas, the blind poet of the Pushtimarg, wrote the Sur Sagar in Braj in the sixteenth century. The question turns on the language: of the four, only Jayadeva wrote in Sanskrit.

The correct answer is B, Jaishankar Prasad. Kamayani takes the flood story of Manu from Indian tradition and turns it into a long allegory in which Manu stands for the mind, Shraddha for faith and Ida for reason. Prasad is one of the four pillars of the Chhayavad school, and his other works include the plays Skandagupta and Chandragupta. Option A is wrong because Nirala, also a Chhayavad poet, is set for Ram ki Shakti Puja and the elegy Saroj Smriti. Option C is wrong because Sumitranandan Pant wrote Pallav and the Jnanpith-winning Chidambara. Option D is wrong because Maithili Sharan Gupt, honoured as Rashtrakavi, wrote Bharat Bharati and Saket and belongs to the Dwivedi era rather than to Chhayavad. The four Chhayavad poets to memorise are Prasad, Nirala, Pant and Mahadevi Verma.