UPSC GK Questions 2026

Kalbeliya is the song and dance tradition of the Kalbeliya community of Rajasthan, who were traditionally snake charmers, and the dancer in a black swirling skirt imitates the movement of a serpent to the been and the khanjari.

In Dollu Kunitha the dancers hang a large drum, the dollu, from the neck and beat it while moving in fast formations, and the dance belongs to the Kuruba shepherd community, who perform it in the service of their deity Beereshwara.

Hojagiri is danced by women of the Reang community of Tripura, who balance on an earthen pitcher while keeping a bottle with a lit lamp on the head, and bend the upper body while the feet stay still.

In Cheraw, men sit facing each other and hold long bamboo staves horizontally, clapping them together in a steady beat, while women in the Mizo puan step in and out of the closing gaps without letting a foot be caught.

Chhau is a martial masked dance of eastern India with three recognised styles, and Seraikella Chhau takes its name from the former princely seat of Seraikella in Jharkhand, where the royal house trained and refined it.

Lavani combines song and dance and is performed mainly by women in a nine-yard saree to the sharp beat of the dholki.

Ghoomar is danced by women in a wide ghagra who move in a circle and turn on the spot, the swirl of the skirt giving the dance its name.

Bihu is danced chiefly at Rongali or Bohag Bihu, the Assamese new year festival that falls in April and opens the sowing season.

During a long famine in Magadha, Bhadrabahu led a body of monks south to Shravanabelagola in Karnataka while Sthulabhadra stayed in the north and convened a council at Pataliputra.

Because early sculptors at Sanchi and Bharhut did not show the Buddha in human form, they used signs, and the wheel stands for the first sermon at Sarnath, which is itself called the turning of the wheel of law.

He presided over the First Buddhist Council, held at Rajgriha soon after the Mahaparinirvana in the reign of Ajatashatru, whose purpose was to settle the teaching before it could be distorted.

Mahavira preached in the spoken tongue of Magadha, and the twelve Angas that preserve his teaching are in Ardhamagadhi. They were finally written down at the second Jain council held at Vallabhi in Gujarat under Devardhi Kshamashramana.

It is the Jain teaching that every object has countless aspects and that no single judgement can capture the whole truth.

The Buddha attained enlightenment seated under a peepal tree at Bodh Gaya, and the tree is therefore called the Bodhi tree; in early Buddhist art, where the Buddha was never shown in human form, the tree itself stands for the enlightenment.

After twelve years of severe austerity Mahavira attained kaivalya at the age of forty-two under a sal tree at Jrimbhikagrama, on the bank of the river Rijupalika, and from that moment was known as Jina and Kevalin.

Held in the reign of Ashoka under the presidency of Moggaliputta Tissa, it purged the order of dissenters, added the Abhidhamma Pitaka, the philosophical third basket, to the canon, and decided to send missionaries to Sri Lanka and other lands.

Parshvanatha had prescribed four restraints, and Mahavira added celibacy to them, so Jain monastic discipline rests on five great vows: ahimsa, satya, asteya, aparigraha and brahmacharya.

He was the twenty-third Tirthankara, a prince of Varanasi and son of King Ashvasena, whose emblem is the serpent. He is placed about two hundred and fifty years before Mahavira and gave his followers four vows: non-violence, truth, non-stealing and non-possession.

The Fourth Buddhist Council met at Kundalvana in Kashmir in the first century CE under the Kushana king Kanishka, with Vasumitra presiding and Ashvaghosha assisting him.

After his enlightenment the Buddha walked to the deer park at Sarnath near Varanasi and taught the Four Noble Truths to the five ascetics who had earlier deserted him.