Rajasthan GK Questions 2026

The Terah Taali is performed by women of the Kamad community, devotees of the folk deity Ramdevji of Ramdevra, who tie thirteen manjiras to their wrists, elbows, waist and ankles and strike them in rhythm while seated, often balancing pots or holding a sword in the mouth; the men accompany…

The bhapang is a small drum of a hollowed gourd with a skin head, through which a gut string runs; the player plucks the string and tightens or loosens it to slide the pitch, producing the talking tone of the Mewati folk songs.

The algoza is a double flute: the player holds two pipes at once, blowing a drone on one while playing the melody on the other, and a shepherd or a Langa musician can keep this up for long stretches using circular breathing.

The Kalbelia folk songs and dances of Rajasthan were inscribed on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2010.

Maand is the most refined style of Rajasthani singing, close enough to classical music to be treated as a raga in its own right, and Kesariya Balam Aavo Hamare Desh, made famous by Allah Jilai Bai of Bikaner, is its best known composition and effectively the state's signature song.

A Bhopa of Pabuji unrolls the painted scroll called the phad and sings the epic of Pabuji through the night, accompanying himself on the ravanhatta, a bowed instrument of a half coconut or gourd with a bamboo neck, a skin face and a row of jingling bells.

The kamayacha is the signature instrument of the Manganiyar musicians of Jaisalmer and Barmer: a large bowl of mango wood covered with goat skin, with gut and steel strings played with a horsehair bow, giving the deep drone that accompanies Manganiyar singing.

A Kavad is a small shrine made of mango wood, painted a deep red and covered with figures of gods and heroes, and fitted with several hinged panels.

The palace maintained a painting workshop, and Sahibdin was its leading hand.

The Dhundhar school covers the painting of the Amber and Jaipur region and includes Alwar, Shekhawati and Uniara among its sub-styles.

From the eighteenth century the merchant families of Shekhawati, in the Jhunjhunu, Sikar and Churu districts, built large courtyard houses and had their outer and inner walls covered with painted plaster.

Usta art, also called Munawwat or gold manoti work, is a craft in which a raised design is built up and then gilded, traditionally on camel hide but also on leather objects, wood and the walls and ceilings of palaces.

A Phad is a long horizontal cloth on which the whole life story of a folk deity, most often Pabuji or Devnarayan, is laid out in episodes, and it is not simply hung for display: a Bhopa priest-singer carries it from village to village, unrolls it at night and sings…

The Chitrashala is a gallery within the Garh Palace of Bundi, built in the time of Rao Raja Ummed Singh, and its walls and ceilings carry some of the finest murals in Rajasthan, painted in the blue and green that the Bundi style loves.

A Ragamala is a series in which each musical mode is given a visual form, with a season, a time of day and a mood attached to it.

A Pichhwai is a large painting on cloth that is hung behind the image of Shrinathji in the temple, the word itself meaning that which hangs at the back, and it is changed according to the season and the festival being observed.

Kota separated from Bundi in the seventeenth century and, while it inherited Bundi's feeling for dense forest and water, it turned that setting to a subject of its own, the royal hunt.

Nihal Chand developed the elongated, idealised face that defines the Kishangarh style and used it for Radha and Krishna as well as for the single portrait now called Bani Thani, often set against the water of the Gundalao lake.

Bani Thani is the best known single work of the Kishangarh sub-style of the Marwar school, painted in the middle of the eighteenth century, and the art historian Eric Dickinson called it the Indian Mona Lisa.

Osian, about sixty kilometres north of Jodhpur, has a group of more than a dozen Brahmanical and Jain temples built in sandstone between the eighth and the twelfth century, among them the Sachiya Mata temple and the Mahavira temple, and the richness of its sculpture has earned it the name…