SSC GK Questions 2026

The Hoysalas ruled southern Karnataka from Belur and Dwarasamudra, today's Halebidu, and their temples are unmistakable: a raised star shaped platform called the jagati, shrines on a stellate plan, soft chloritic schist or soapstone that allowed jewellery and hair to be carved in minute detail, lathe turned pillars, and bands…

The Konark Sun Temple in Odisha was raised in the thirteenth century by Narasimhadeva I. The plan is the chariot of Surya: a high platform carrying twelve pairs of carved stone wheels drawn by seven horses.

Pattadakal on the Malaprabha was a coronation city of the Chalukyas of Badami, and its temples stand side by side in both idioms: the Papanatha and Galaganatha temples carry curving Nagara towers, while the Virupaksha temple, built by queen Lokamahadevi to mark Vikramaditya II's victory over the Pallavas, and the…

Cave 16 at Ellora, the Kailasa temple, was cut for the Rashtrakuta king Krishna I in the eighth century.

In the Nagara style of north India the tower over the garbhagriha is the shikhara.

The Brihadeshwara or Rajarajeshwara temple at Thanjavur was completed about 1010 CE by Raja Raja I. Its vimana rises in shrinking storeys to over sixty metres and is crowned by a single huge capstone, the whole structure is of granite, and the courtyard holds one of the largest monolithic Nandi…

The Kanheri caves are cut into a basalt hill inside the Sanjay Gandhi National Park in Mumbai.

The twin hills of Udayagiri and Khandagiri stand near Bhubaneswar and hold Jain rock-cut cells cut for monks in the first century BCE.

Elephanta, on Gharapuri island near Mumbai, is a Shaivite rock-cut group whose panels tell Shiva stories: the Trimurti Sadashiva, Ardhanarishvara, Gangadhara, the marriage of Shiva and Parvati and Shiva as Nataraja.

Hampi on the Tungabhadra in Karnataka was the capital of the Vijayanagara empire, and its Virupaksha, Vittala and Hazara Rama temples are Dravidian work of the most elaborate kind: walled enclosures, towering gopurams, pillared kalyana mandapas, the famous stone chariot and the musical pillars.

The garbhagriha, the womb house, is the small square windowless cell that holds the image of the presiding deity. Every other part of a temple is added around it: the tower rises over it, the hall stands in front of it and the circumambulatory passage runs around it.

The original capital at Sarnath rests on an inverted lotus shaped like a bell, and that part was deliberately omitted from the State Emblem, which begins at the abacus.

He was a freedom fighter from the Machilipatnam region of present day Andhra Pradesh who studied flags for years and presented a design to Mahatma Gandhi at Vijayawada in 1921.

His design won a public competition and the Union Cabinet approved it on 15 July 2010.

The Saka calendar was adopted as the National Calendar with effect from 22 March 1957, which was the first of Chaitra in the Saka year 1879.

Platanista gangetica, the South Asian river dolphin of the Ganga, Brahmaputra and Meghna systems, was notified as the National Aquatic Animal in 2009.

Bankim Chandra Chatterjee composed Vande Mataram in Sanskritised Bengali and later placed it in his novel Anandamath, published in 1882, where the ascetic rebels sing it.

Rabindranath Tagore's Bengali song was sung for the first time at the Calcutta session of the Indian National Congress on 27 December 1911.

Satyameva Jayate, meaning truth alone triumphs, comes from a verse of the Mundaka Upanishad, which belongs to the Atharva Veda.

The Flag Code of India fixes the shape of the National Flag as a rectangle whose width stands to its length as two to three, so a flag six hundred millimetres in length is four hundred millimetres in height.