Indian History Questions and Answers

Answer: C

It was Vishnugupta.

The Arthashastra colophon names its author Vishnugupta; Chanakya is the patronymic, from his father Chanaka, and Kautilya the gotra name. All three refer to the Brahmin of Takshashila who set Chandragupta on the Magadhan throne.

Answer: B

They belong to Buddhism.

The Pali canon, the Tipitaka, is the scripture of Theravada Buddhism, preserved orally and written down in Sri Lanka in the first century BCE.

Answer: B

It denoted pepper.

Yavanapriya means dear to the Greeks, and the Sanskrit texts use it for the black pepper of the Malabar coast, the chief object of Roman trade with India and the commodity Pliny blamed for the drain of Roman gold.

Answer: B

It was 1857.

Universities were set up at Calcutta, Bombay and Madras that year, following Wood's Despatch of 1854. They examined and affiliated colleges on the London model rather than teaching.

Answer: C

Under the Aga Khan.

The All India Muslim League was founded at Dhaka in December 1906 with the Aga Khan as first president. Sir Sayyid had died in 1898, and Jinnah joined only in 1913.

Answer: D

He served Alauddin Khalji.

Malik Kafur, bought as a slave at Khambhat, rose to be Alauddin's commander and led the campaigns into the Deccan against Devagiri, Warangal, Dwarasamudra and Madurai between 1307 and 1311, bringing back enormous treasure.

Answer: C

He ruled Mysore.

Tipu succeeded Haidar Ali in 1782 and ruled from Seringapatam until he was killed defending it in 1799. He fought four wars against the Company and introduced a new calendar, coinage and land revenue system.

Answer: C

It was fought in 261 BCE.

Ashoka's thirteenth major rock edict records the war in the ninth year of his reign: a hundred and fifty thousand deported, a hundred thousand killed and many times that number dead of other causes. The remorse it expresses turned him to dhamma.

Answer: B

It belongs to the second Sangam period.

Tradition places three Sangams at Madurai, and the Tolkappiyam, the oldest surviving Tamil work, is the only text assigned to the second to have come down to us. It treats grammar, phonology and the poetics of akam and puram.

Answer: A

True.

Cotton was first cultivated and woven in the Indus valley - fragments of cotton cloth were found at Mohenjo-daro adhering to a silver vessel. The Greeks called it sindon, from Sindh.