Railway GK Questions 2026

Bismillah Khan played the shehnai, a double reed wind instrument long associated with weddings, temple processions and auspicious beginnings in north India, and he is credited with carrying it from ceremonial use onto the classical concert stage.

Sushira means hollow, and the class covers every instrument in which a column of air inside a tube is set vibrating.

Bade Ghulam Ali Khan is the best known singer of the Patiala gharana, a school marked by fast and intricate taans, a free use of thumri alongside khayal, and a bright open tone.

Tansen was counted among the navratnas, the nine jewels of Akbar's court, and had earlier served the ruler of Rewa.

Bhatkhande travelled across India collecting compositions and then arranged the ragas of Hindustani music under ten parent scales or thaats, among them Bilawal, Kalyan, Khamaj, Bhairav, Kafi, Asavari, Bhairavi and Todi.

Purandara Dasa, a saint composer of the Kannada devotional tradition, is honoured as the Pitamaha of Carnatic music because he organised the way the music is taught.

The pakhawaj is a long barrel drum played horizontally with both hands, deeper and graver in tone than the tabla, and its weight suits the slow and solemn movement of dhrupad.

Dhrupad is austere and devotional, sung in four sections called sthayi, antara, sanchari and abhog, and it opens with a long unmetred alap.

Teentaal runs over sixteen matras divided into four equal vibhags of four beats each. The first beat of the cycle is the sam and carries the stress, the third vibhag opens on a khali, and the cycle returns to the sam at the end.

The melakarta ragas are the parent scales of Carnatic music, each of them using all seven notes in both ascent and descent.

Sarangadeva wrote the Sangeeta Ratnakara in the thirteenth century while attached to the Yadava court at Devagiri in the Deccan.

The Samaveda is the Veda of melody. Most of its verses are taken from the Rigveda, but they are arranged for singing rather than for recitation, and that singing is known as Samagana.

A football side takes the field with eleven players, one of whom is the goalkeeper, the only member of the team permitted to handle the ball, and that only within his own penalty area.

The World Cup is played every four years, so after the 1938 tournament in France the next editions would have fallen in 1942 and 1946.

The Santosh Trophy, started in 1941 and named after the Maharaja of Santosh in undivided Bengal, is the national football championship of India, played between teams representing the state associations and certain institutional units such as the services and the railways.

A hat-trick in football means three goals scored by the same player in a single match. The term travelled to football from cricket, where it originally meant three wickets in three successive balls and the bowler was rewarded with a hat, and it is now used across several games.

India won the Asian Games football gold medal twice, first at the inaugural Games in New Delhi in 1951 and again at Jakarta in 1962, where the team beat South Korea in the final.

The Jules Rimet Trophy, named after the FIFA president who conceived the World Cup, was to be kept permanently by the first nation to win the competition three times.

The Durand Cup was first played at Shimla in 1888 and is the oldest football tournament in India and in Asia, and the third oldest in the world.

The penalty mark in football is twelve yards, about eleven metres, from the midpoint of the goal line, and a penalty kick is taken from that spot with only the goalkeeper defending.