SSC GK Questions 2026

Bihula Bishahari is the snake festival of the old Anga country, the belt around Bhagalpur, in which the goddess is worshipped as Bishahari and the sung story of Bihula, the young wife who is said to have brought her husband Bala Lakhandar back to life, is performed through the nights…

Gaya holds the Pitrapaksha Mela in the dark half of Ashwin, when families come from across the country to offer pind daan at the Vishnupad temple and at the appointed spots along the Falgu river.

Sama Chakeva is a festival of the Mithila region of north Bihar, beginning on Kartik Purnima, when the migratory birds arrive.

Sultanganj in Bhagalpur district is the starting point of the Shravani Mela.

The Harihar Kshetra fair at Sonepur opens on the full moon of Kartik and runs for about a month, with cattle, horses, birds and handicrafts on sale, a theatre ground, and traders from several states.

Sonepur in Saran district lies opposite Patna at the point where the Gandak, coming down from Nepal, joins the Ganga, and the fair is held on that bank from Kartik Purnima.

Thekua is a hard sweet made from wheat flour and jaggery, fried in ghee or oil and pressed in a wooden mould, and it is the offering most closely identified with Chhath.

The festival takes its very name from shashthi, the sixth day of the bright half of Kartik, on which the evening offering to the setting sun is made.

Chhath is kept for the Sun God, Surya, along with Chhathi Maiya, and the whole ritual is built around the sun: the vratis stand in water and offer arghya, that is water and prasad, first to the setting sun on the evening of shashthi and then to the rising sun…

The last Nawab of Awadh was a trained dancer and a prolific writer who composed thumris under the pen name Akhtarpiya, among them the celebrated Babul mora naihar chhuto hi jaye, and who devised the Rahas, a court dance drama on the Krishna theme that drew on Raslila.

Raslila enacts the childhood and the rasa of Krishna in the land of his legend, mixing sung verse, dance and spoken dialogue.

Alha is sung in the Bundelkhandi region of southern Uttar Pradesh and the adjoining districts of Madhya Pradesh, especially around Mahoba, and it narrates the battles of the warrior brothers Alha and Udal of the Chandela court.

Bhatkhande was the musicologist who collected and notated Hindustani compositions and arranged the ragas into the ten thaat system still taught in schools.

Ustad Bismillah Khan of Varanasi took the shehnai, until then an instrument of weddings and temple gateways, on to the concert platform and made it a solo classical instrument.

Nautanki grew into two recognised styles, the Hathras style in which the sung music and the verse metres dominate and the audience comes for the singing, and the Kanpur style in which dialogue, acting and stagecraft carry more of the play.

Ramlila is a living performance tradition rather than a building or a document, so it was inscribed in 2008 on the list that UNESCO maintains for intangible heritage, the same list that carries Kutiyattam, Vedic chanting and Ramman from India.

Charkula is danced in the Braj country around Mathura, where a woman balances a tiered wooden pyramid hung with rows of lighted earthen lamps, traditionally counted as one hundred and eight, on her head and moves to Rasiya songs of Krishna.

Nautanki is played on an open platform to an audience of hundreds, often through the whole night, so it needs an instrument that carries.

The Lucknow gharana of Kathak took shape in the court of Nawab Wajid Ali Shah of Awadh, who was himself a dancer and a composer of thumris under the pen name Akhtarpiya.

The States Reorganisation Act, 1956 ended the hereditary office of Rajpramukh, which had been filled by a former ruler, and replaced it with a Governor appointed by the President in the ordinary way under the Constitution.