Who wrote 'Nyaya Sutra'?

The correct answer is B, Gurjar-Pratihara. Both temples belong to the Gurjara-Pratihara style, the western Indian form of the Nagara tradition that grew under Pratihara rule between the eighth and the eleventh centuries. The Someshwar temple at Kiradu in Barmer district is the finest of a group of five temples, so richly carved that Kiradu is called the Khajuraho of Rajasthan. The Harshat Mata temple at Abhaneri in Dausa district stands on a high platform beside the famous Chand Baori stepwell and shows the same curved shikhara, carved pillars and sculptured panels. A is wrong because Gupta temples, like the Dashavatara temple at Deogarh, are earlier and plainer. C is wrong because Mauryan work survives as pillars, stupas and rock-cut caves, not temples. D is wrong because the Dravida style of the south has a pyramidal vimana and a gopuram. Exam tip: Kiradu in Barmer and Abhaneri in Dausa, both Gurjara-Pratihara, Nagara family.

The correct answer is B, Andhra Pradesh. Ugadi is the new year festival of Andhra Pradesh, and it is also kept in Telangana and Karnataka. The name comes from yuga and adi, meaning the beginning of an age, and it falls on the first day of the month of Chaitra, in March or April. Houses are cleaned and decorated with mango leaves and rangoli, and the special dish is Ugadi pachadi, which mixes six tastes, jaggery, raw mango, neem flowers, tamarind, salt and chilli, to stand for the mixed joys and sorrows of the year ahead. The panchanga sravanam, the reading of the new almanac, is also held. A is wrong because Madhya Pradesh does not keep Ugadi as its new year. C is wrong because Himachal Pradesh observes its new year as Bishu. D is wrong because Kerala celebrates Vishu as its new year in mid-April. Exam tip: group the new years - Ugadi in Andhra, Gudi Padwa in Maharashtra, Baisakhi in Punjab, Vishu in Kerala and Puthandu in Tamil Nadu.

The correct answer is C, Sarnath. In the Gupta age a workshop at Sarnath, near Varanasi, carved in cream Chunar sandstone and produced the seated preaching Buddha whose hands form the dharmachakra mudra, the gesture of teaching, and whose robe clings so closely that art historians describe it as wet drapery. This calm, smooth, inward-looking figure became the model for the Buddha image for centuries and spread across Asia. Option A is wrong because Amaravati, in white limestone, is a school of crowded narrative relief and had declined before the Gupta age. Option B is wrong because Gandhara, in grey schist, is marked by heavy folded drapery over both shoulders. Option D is wrong because Bharhut belongs to the earlier aniconic phase, in which the Buddha was shown only through symbols on railings and gateways.

The correct answer is A, Gandhara. Bamiyan, in the highlands of what is now Afghanistan, lay on the trade route through the Hindu Kush and was part of the wide Gandhara cultural region, along with Hadda, Begram, Jalalabad, Swat and Taxila. Its two colossal standing Buddhas, cut into a cliff face and once plastered and painted, were destroyed in 2001. Option B is wrong because Mathura lies far to the east on the Yamuna and worked in spotted red sandstone, not in rock-cut cliffs. Option C is wrong because Amaravati is in the Krishna valley of Andhra Pradesh and worked in limestone relief. Option D is wrong because Sarnath, near Varanasi, is a Gupta period centre in Chunar sandstone. The spread of Gandhara art along this route is how the Buddha image travelled to Central Asia, China and beyond.

The correct answer is B, Mat near Mathura, where the Kushanas built a shrine with a gallery of royal portrait statues, an idea quite new in India and probably borrowed from Central Asian and Iranian practice. The best known of them is the standing figure of Kanishka in spotted red sandstone, broken at the neck, whose inscription names him Maharaja Rajatiraja Devaputra Kanishka, and it is now in the Government Museum at Mathura. Option A is wrong because Taxila, in the Gandhara region, is famous for its monasteries, its university tradition and its Buddhist sculpture, but not for this statue. Option C is wrong because Sarnath is the site of the first sermon, of Ashoka's Lion Capital and of the Gupta period Buddha images. Option D is wrong because Nagarjunakonda belongs to the Amaravati school in the Krishna valley.