UPSC Civil Services GK Questions 2026

The Yash Bharti Samman was instituted by the Government of Uttar Pradesh in 1994 and is given for distinguished work in art, literature, music, sport, journalism and social service by people connected with the state.

The Tansen Samman is given by the Government of Madhya Pradesh for Hindustani classical music and is announced in connection with the Tansen Samaroh, the music festival held every year at Behat near Gwalior, the birthplace of Tansen, the great singer of Akbar's court and one of the nine jewels…

The Kalidas Samman was instituted by the Government of Madhya Pradesh in 1980 and is given by rotation in four fields of the classical arts: classical music, classical dance, theatre and the plastic arts.

The Government of West Bengal instituted Banga Bibhushan and Banga Bhushan in 2011 to honour people from the state in fields such as literature, music, cinema, sport, science and social service, with Banga Bibhushan ranked above Banga Bhushan.

Kerala instituted three civilian honours in 2021, modelled on the idea of a graded set: Kerala Jyothi at the top, Kerala Prabha next and Kerala Sree third.

The Government of Assam created a three-step set of state honours in 2021: Assam Baibhav at the top for exceptional service to the state, Assam Saurav next, and Assam Gaurav for distinguished work in specific fields.

The Government of Maharashtra instituted the Maharashtra Bhushan in 1996 as the highest civilian award of the state, open to work in literature, art, sport, science, social service, medicine and public administration, and the first award went to the Marathi writer and humorist Purushottam Laxman Deshpande, remembered as Pu La…

The Karnataka Ratna was instituted by the Government of Karnataka in 1992 as the highest civilian honour of the state, and the first person to receive it was Kuppali Venkatappa Puttappa, the Kannada poet known by his pen name Kuvempu, who had also written the state song of Karnataka.

The anda, meaning the egg, is the solid hemispherical dome of a stupa, raised over the relic chamber, and it is the part that gives the stupa its shape.

Sammed Shikharji stands on Parasnath hill in the Giridih district of Jharkhand, the highest hill in the state, and is held to be the place where twenty of the twenty-four tirthankaras attained liberation, which makes it the holiest of all Jain tirthas.

The thirty-four caves at Ellora in Maharashtra are grouped by faith: caves 1 to 12 are Buddhist, caves 13 to 29 are Hindu, and caves 30 to 34 are Jain, the finest of the Jain group being Cave 32, the Indra Sabha, with its carved mandapa and the image of…

The Hathigumpha or elephant cave at Udayagiri near Bhubaneswar carries the long Prakrit inscription of Kharavela, the Chedi or Mahameghavahana king of Kalinga, which records his campaigns and his patronage of Jainism; Udayagiri and the neighbouring Khandagiri form a Jain cave group.

The Dilwara group of five marble temples stands on Mount Abu in the Sirohi district of Rajasthan, in the Aravalli range, and belongs to the Solanki period; the Vimal Vasahi is dedicated to Adinath and the Luna Vasahi to Neminath, and both are famous for ceilings and pillars carved as…

The Gommateshwara image of the Jain saint Bahubali at Shravanabelagola in Karnataka, about fifty-seven feet high and cut from a single block of granite on the Vindhyagiri hill, was raised by Chavundaraya, a minister and general of the Western Ganga kingdom.

The twenty-nine Ajanta caves are cut into a horseshoe-shaped cliff above the Waghora stream in the Aurangabad district of Maharashtra and are a World Heritage Site.

The Gandhara school worked in the north-west, around Taxila and Peshawar, and used the bluish-grey schist of that region; its figures show Greco-Roman influence in the wavy hair, the heavy folds of the drapery and the muscular, realistic modelling.

The core of the Great Stupa at Sanchi in Madhya Pradesh, also called Stupa Number One, was raised in the reign of the Mauryan emperor Ashoka in the third century before the common era; the Shungas later enlarged the dome and added the railing, and the four carved gateways or…

After attaining enlightenment the Buddha walked to the deer park at Sarnath, near Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh, and preached to his first five disciples; the event is called the Dhammachakkappavattana, the turning of the wheel of law.

The molecules of the atmosphere are much smaller than the wavelength of visible light, and such particles scatter short wavelengths far more strongly than long ones.

In hypermetropia the eye lens is too weak or the eyeball is too short, so rays from a nearby object are not converged enough and the image falls behind the retina.