Railway GK Questions 2026

Bhavai is the folk theatre of Gujarat, also seen in parts of Rajasthan. It is played in open ground before a standing audience, its accompanying instrument is the bhungal, a long copper pipe, and its sketches, called veshas, are short and satirical, often aimed at caste and social custom.

Yakshagana is the folk theatre of coastal Karnataka, performed through the night in the open with towering head-dresses, heavy make-up and loud percussion, and its episodes are drawn from the Ramayana, the Mahabharata and the Puranas; the singer who narrates and controls the performance is the Bhagavata.

Pavakathakali, also known as Pavakoothu, is the glove puppet tradition of Kerala, and it borrows its costume, make-up and gesture from Kathakali, so the puppet heads carry the same towering head-dress and painted faces.

Yampuri is the rod puppet tradition of Bihar. Its puppets are carved from wood in one piece, without the joints that rod puppets elsewhere have, which makes them harder to handle and demands greater skill of the puppeteer.

Ravanachhaya is the shadow puppet theatre of Odisha, and it is the most austere of the Indian shadow traditions: the figures are cut from deer skin, have no joints and are left uncoloured, so only a plain black shadow falls on the screen, and they are smaller than the puppets…

Tholu Bommalata is the leather shadow puppet theatre of Andhra Pradesh, and its figures are the largest of all Indian shadow puppets, made of translucent coloured hide so that the colours show on the screen; the stories come from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.

Kathputli is the string puppet, or marionette, tradition of Rajasthan. The figures are carved from wood, painted in bright colours and dressed in long trailing skirts, and they are made without legs; the puppeteer works them from above with strings while a dholak keeps time and a sharp whistling sound…

Amanta is formed from ama, the new moon, and anta, the end, so the month closes on the new moon day and the next month opens with the bright fortnight; Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu and Gujarat follow it.

The word panchang is made of panch, meaning five, and anga, meaning limb, and the five limbs recorded for every day are the tithi or lunar day, the vara or weekday, the nakshatra or lunar mansion, the yoga and the karana.

The Julian calendar then in use counted the year slightly too long, and by the sixteenth century the error had grown to ten days; the Pope's reform of 1582 dropped those days and changed the leap year rule, so that a century year is a leap year only when it…

The astrophysicist, known for the Saha ionisation equation that explains the spectra of stars, headed the committee set up under the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research in 1952; it reported in 1955 and the calendar it recommended came into use on 22 March 1957.

The Gupta era, dated to 319 or 320 CE, is taken to begin with the accession of Chandragupta I, the first great ruler of the dynasty, and most Gupta inscriptions are dated in it.

Its months follow the phases of the moon and no month is ever added to bring the year back into line with the seasons, so twelve lunar months give about 354 days and the Hijri year slips about eleven days earlier against the Gregorian year; that is why Ramzan can…

That journey of 622 CE is called the Hijrat, and the era takes its name from it; the first month of the Hijri year is Muharram.

Vikram Samvat began in 57 BCE, so the Vikrami year is obtained by adding 57 to the Christian year; this is the era printed on wedding invitations and traditional almanacs in northern India and is the official calendar of Nepal.

The Saka reckoning is most often linked with the Kushana ruler Kanishka, and it is the era on which the Indian National Calendar is built, so the Saka year is about 78 less than the Christian year.

The national calendar begins on 1 Chaitra, which corresponds to 22 March in an ordinary year and to 21 March in a leap year, so that the year opens near the spring equinox.

That day was 1 Chaitra 1879 of the Saka era, and the calendar came into use on the recommendation of the Calendar Reform Committee, which had reported in 1955.

The national calendar counts its years in the Saka reckoning, which began in 78 CE, so a Saka year is found roughly by subtracting 78 from the Christian year; it is printed in the Gazette of India and read out in the news bulletins of All India Radio.

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