SSC CGL GK Questions 2026

Vikramshila stood at Antichak village in Bhagalpur district, on raised ground overlooking the Ganga, and excavation has revealed a great cruciform stupa at the centre with monastic cells arranged in a square around it, a plan very different from the rows of monasteries at Nalanda.

The Pala king Dharmapala founded Vikramshila in the late eighth century at Antichak in what is now Bhagalpur district, on a height above the Ganga, as a rival and a complement to Nalanda.

Hiuen Tsang reached Nalanda in the seventh century during the reign of Harshavardhana and spent several years there studying the Yogachara philosophy under Shilabhadra, who was then the abbot.

The Gupta emperor Kumaragupta the first, who appears in the records with the title Shakraditya, founded the monastic university at Nalanda in the fifth century.

Nalanda was a Buddhist monastic university, a mahavihara, where the main course of study was the Mahayana canon along with logic, grammar, medicine and astronomy.

The long necked terracotta horse of Panchmura village in Bankura district of West Bengal is made in parts on the wheel and by hand, then joined and fired, and it has become a symbol of Indian handicrafts.

Longpi pottery, also called Longpi Hampai, is made in the Longpi villages of Ukhrul district in Manipur by the Tangkhul Naga community.

The black pottery of Nizamabad comes from a town of that name in Azamgarh district of Uttar Pradesh.

Blue Pottery is a Turko Persian technique that reached Rajasthan through Mughal and Kashmiri craftsmen and was encouraged by the rulers of Jaipur.

The Jorwe culture is named after the village of Jorwe in Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra, and its pottery is a matt surfaced, black on red painted ware found in large quantities at Inamgaon, Daimabad, Nevasa and Chandoli.

Rouletted Ware is a wheel turned dish with concentric rows of small impressed dots on the inner surface, made by holding a toothed tool against the turning pot.

Mature Harappan potters used the fast wheel and fired their pots well, producing a sturdy red ware on which they painted in black over a red slip.

Ochre Coloured Pottery, usually abbreviated to OCP, is a worn, ill fired, orange to ochre pottery whose colour rubs off on the fingers because the surface has been damaged by water.

Northern Black Polished Ware, usually shortened to NBPW, is a very fine clay pottery with a glossy, almost mirror like surface in steel grey to jet black.

Painted Grey Ware is a fine, thin, wheel made grey pottery decorated with simple black lines, dots and spirals, dated roughly between 1100 and 600 BCE.

Anathapindika, a wealthy merchant of Shravasti, bought a grove from prince Jeta and built the Jetavana monastery there for the Buddha and the order, and the Buddha is said to have passed more rainy season retreats at Shravasti than anywhere else.

Alamgirpur stands on the bank of the Hindon, a tributary of the Yamuna, in Meerut district, and it is taken as the eastern limit of the Harappan civilisation; pottery, beads and the impression of cloth are among its finds.

Panchala was divided into a northern and a southern half, and Ahichchhatra in Bareilly district was the capital of the north while Kampilya in Farrukhabad was the capital of the south.

Jain tradition holds that Parshvanatha, the twenty third tirthankara and the immediate predecessor of Mahavira, was born at Varanasi as a prince of that city, and he is remembered as the teacher whose followers Mahavira's order absorbed.

Kosala lay in the central and eastern plain of Uttar Pradesh with Shravasti as its capital and Saketa, the Ayodhya of today, as a second centre.