SSC GK Questions 2026

The Hada ruler Rao Ratan Singh of Bundi had served the Mughals well, and in 1631 Shah Jahan recognised his son Madho Singh as the ruler of a separate state at Kota, splitting Hadauti into two.

Aurangzeb sent him to the Deccan against Shivaji; he besieged Purandar, and the treaty signed there in 1665 made Shivaji give up a long list of forts and send his son Shambhuji into imperial service.

The Bhati Rajputs held the western desert, first at Lodurva, and Rawal Jaisal shifted to the Trikuta hill in 1156 to found Jaisalmer, where his successors built the yellow sandstone Sonar Quila that is still inhabited.

Rai Singh of Bikaner was a leading general of Akbar, served in Gujarat and the Deccan, and used the wealth and prestige of that service to raise the Junagarh fort in 1589 on the plain beside his capital.

In 1562 Bharmal of Amer, pressed by rivals and by imperial officers in the region, offered his submission to Akbar and sealed it with a marriage alliance; his daughter, known as Mariam-uz-Zamani, became the mother of Jahangir.

He decided that the cramped hill capital of Amer could not hold a growing state, and in 1727 he laid out Jaipur on level ground as a planned city of straight streets and rectangular blocks, with Vidyadhar Bhattacharya as its planner.

Rao Bika was a son of Rao Jodha of Marwar, and he moved north into the Jangladesh tract with his uncle Kandhal and carved out a new state there, naming his capital after himself in 1488.

Bhimbetka, in Raisen district, was inscribed in 2003 for its prehistoric paintings, which cover a span from the Upper Palaeolithic to the historical period in a single group of shelters.

The fort on the long sandstone hill at Gwalior holds the Teli ka Mandir of the Pratihara period, the Sas-Bahu temples, the Gujari Mahal built by Man Singh Tomar for Mrignayani and the Man Mandir palace of the same ruler, with its tiled decoration.

The Udayagiri caves lie on a hill near Vidisha, not far from Sanchi, and belong to the Gupta period; the great relief of Vishnu as Varaha lifting the earth goddess is carved there, and an inscription of the reign of Chandragupta II records the visit of one of his officers.

The temple at Bhojpur in Raisen district, with its single enormous linga cut from one stone, is attributed to the eleventh-century Paramara ruler Bhoj of Dhar, the same king remembered for his learning and for the lake he is said to have built at Bhopal.

Mandu, in Dhar district, was the hill capital of the Malwa sultans, and its buildings include the Jahaz Mahal, set between two tanks so that it seems to float like a ship, the sloping-walled Hindola Mahal or swinging palace, the Jama Masjid, the pavilion of Rani Roopmati and the marble…

The relic caskets of Sariputta and Mahamoggallana, the two chief disciples of the Buddha, were recovered from Stupa 3 at Sanchi, which stands north-east of the Great Stupa and has a single torana.

The Khajuraho temples are classic north Indian Nagara temples: they stand on a high platform without a boundary wall or gateway, they have a curving shikhara over the sanctum with smaller shikharas clustered around it, and their halls run in a line from the entrance to the garbhagriha.

The archaeologist Vishnu Shridhar Wakankar noticed the shelters in the Vindhyan foothills of Raisen district in 1957 and began the study of their paintings, made in red and white ochre and showing hunters, dancers, animals and later riders with weapons.

The core of Stupa 1 at Sanchi, in Raisen district, was raised in the third century BCE in Ashoka's reign, with the Ashokan pillar carrying the schism edict beside it.

Built in the reign of Vidyadhara, it is the tallest and most fully worked out of the Khajuraho temples, with the complete sequence of ardhamandapa, mandapa, antarala and garbhagriha, a cluster of subsidiary shikharas rising towards the main one, and bands of sculpture over its walls.

The Chandelas of Jejakabhukti built the Khajuraho group in Chhatarpur district between about 950 and 1050 CE, and the names of their rulers are tied to individual temples: Yashovarman to the Lakshmana temple and Vidyadhara to the Kandariya Mahadeva.

Lajpat Rai started his legal practice at Hisar in 1886, took part in the municipal and Arya Samaj work of the town and in early Congress organisation there, and only later moved to Lahore, from where he became a national figure.

The large cantonment at Ambala, on the road from Delhi to the hills, reported restiveness among its sepoys in May 1857, and some accounts place signs of it even before the outbreak at Meerut on 10 May.