Books and Authors Questions and Answers

Answer: C

Mudrarakshasa was written by Vishakhadutta (Vishakhadatta).

Vishakhadatta's Sanskrit political drama tells how Chanakya won over Rakshasa, the minister of the Nandas, to the side of Chandragupta Maurya. He also wrote the play Devichandraguptam.

Hemachandra was a Jain scholar of Gujarat, Ballala wrote the Bhoja-prabandha about King Bhoja, and Padmagupta wrote the Navasahasankacharita on the Paramaras. None wrote the Mudrarakshasa.

Answer: D

'Mukul' is a work of Subhadra Kumari Chauhan.

Subhadra Kumari Chauhan published her poetry collection Mukul in 1930; it includes her famous poem 'Jhansi ki Rani'. The collection won the Seksaria Award. She was also a freedom fighter, and lived and worked in Jabalpur.

Makhanlal Chaturvedi is known for Him Kiritini and 'Pushp ki Abhilasha', Bhavani Prasad Mishra for 'Geet Farosh' and Buni Hui Rassi, and Mukutdhar Pandey is remembered as a pioneer of Chhayavad poetry; 'Mukul' is not theirs.

Answer: C

'Ramchandrika' is the work of Keshavdas.

Keshavdas, a Hindi poet of the Riti tradition at the court of Orchha in Bundelkhand, wrote Ramchandrika around 1601, retelling the story of Rama with a great variety of metres. He also wrote Rasikpriya and Kavipriya on poetics.

Padmakar and Bhushan were later Riti-era poets (Bhushan is known for his heroic poems on Shivaji), and Bhavabhuti was a Sanskrit dramatist who wrote Uttararamacharita, a different work on Rama.

Answer: A

Balkrishna Sharma 'Naveen' wrote these kavyas on Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi.

Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi, the editor of Pratap in Kanpur, was killed in March 1931 while trying to stop communal rioting. Naveen, his close associate at Pratap and a poet and freedom fighter born in Shajapur district of Madhya Pradesh, commemorated his self-sacrifice in the poems 'Pranarpan' and 'Atmotsarga'.

Jai Shankar Prasad and Makhanlal Chaturvedi were fellow poets of the period, and Prabhakar Machave a later writer; none was the subject of these works.

Answer: C

The Harshacharita and Kadambari are the works of Bana Bhatta.

Banabhatta was the court poet of Harshavardhana in the seventh century. The Harshacharita is his prose biography of Harsha, and Kadambari is a celebrated prose romance, left unfinished and completed by his son.

Kalhana wrote the Rajatarangini, the chronicle of Kashmir. Panini wrote the Ashtadhyayi, the Sanskrit grammar. Patanjali is known for the Yoga Sutras and the Mahabhashya, a commentary on Panini.

Answer: C

Gurdial Singh and Amrita Pritam received the Jnanpith, so the answer is 1 and 2 only.

Amrita Pritam was the first Punjabi writer to win the Jnanpith Award, receiving it for 1981 for her poetry collection Kagaz te Canvas. The novelist Gurdial Singh, author of Marhi da Diva, received it for 1999.

Surjit Patar, the poet, has received the Sahitya Akademi Award and the Padma Shri but not the Jnanpith, and Jaswant Singh Kanwal, the novelist, received the Sahitya Akademi Award. Options including 3 or 4 are therefore wrong.

Answer: B

The verse is from the Zafarnama.

The Zafarnama (Epistle of Victory) is the letter in Persian verse that Guru Gobind Singh wrote to Emperor Aurangzeb in 1705, after the siege of Anandpur and the battle of Chamkaur. It reproaches the emperor for the broken oaths of his commanders. This couplet is its most quoted line: when all other means have failed, it is righteous to take the sword in hand.

The other works are by the Guru but in other languages and forms: Chandi di Vaar is a Punjabi ballad of the goddess's battles, Bachittar Natak an autobiographical account in Braj, and Jaap Sahib a hymn of praise recited daily. None is written in Persian.

Answer: C

Both statements are correct, so the answer is Both 1 and 2.

Ajj Aakhaan Waris Shah Nu (Today I invoke Waris Shah) is Amrita Pritam's best-known poem, a lament for the violence suffered by the people, and especially the women, of Punjab during the Partition of 1947 (1).

The poem calls on Waris Shah, the eighteenth-century Punjabi Sufi poet who wrote the classic verse romance Heer (Heer Ranjha), to rise from his grave and write of Punjab's new tragedy, as he once wrote of Heer's. Waris Shah's place in Punjabi literature has led to his being called the Shakespeare of Punjabi, which is how statement 2 describes him. With both statements true, the other options are wrong.

Answer: B

'The Naked Triangle' is the autobiography of Balwant Gargi.

Balwant Gargi, the Punjabi playwright and theatre director known for plays such as Loha Kutt, wrote The Naked Triangle as a candid autobiographical account of his life and loves.

Balraj Sahni, the actor and writer, wrote 'Meri Filmi Atmakatha' and other memoirs; Jaswant Singh Kanwal and Kartar Singh Duggal were Punjabi novelists and story writers. None of them wrote The Naked Triangle.

Answer: C

The correct code is A-4, B-3, C-2, D-1.

• Sunehade (Messages) is Amrita Pritam's collection, which won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1956.
• Dil Tarang is a collection of poems by Bhai Vir Singh.
• Loona, the verse drama retelling the legend of Puran Bhagat from Loona's side, is by Shiv Kumar Batalvi.
• Kafian (kafis) are the Sufi lyrics of Bulleh Shah.

The options that give Sunehade to Shiv Kumar Batalvi or Loona to Amrita Pritam swap the two modern poets.