Books and Authors Questions and Answers

Answer: C

The answer is Balak.

Balak was a Bengali children's magazine of the Tagore family. Tagore's first piece on Guru Gobind Singh, the life-sketch 'Bir Guru', appeared in its July-August 1885 issue, and he also wrote there on Guru Nanak's Sacha Sauda. His poems on Guru Gobind Singh and Banda Singh came later; the stem's 'stories and poems' is loose, but Balak is the magazine the sources name.

Gitanjali is a verse collection, and Jibansmriti (My Reminiscences) is a memoir that recalls hearing Guru Granth Sahib verses at Amritsar, not a magazine. Sadhana was a different periodical, begun in 1891, six years after the Balak pieces. Note that the stem is wrong that Tagore was a Nobel Peace Prize awardee: his 1913 Nobel was in Literature.

Answer: D

Kagaz te Canvas was written by Amrita Pritam.

It is a collection of her Punjabi poems, and it won her the Jnanpith Award for 1981, the first woman writer in Punjabi to receive it. She is also known for the poem Ajj aakhaan Waris Shah nu on the Partition and the novel Pinjar.

Prof. Mohan Singh and Shiv Kumar Batalvi were Punjabi poets of other well-known works (Batalvi's verse play is Loona), and Khushwant Singh wrote mainly in English, his best-known novel being Train to Pakistan.

Answer: D

The 'Baba Bohar of Punjabi Literature' is Sant Singh Sekhon.

A bohar is a banyan tree, and the title honours Sekhon as the patriarch of modern Punjabi letters, a playwright, fiction writer and critic under whose long shade later writers grew. The title is a mark of the respect in which he was held, not the name of a work.

Gurdial Singh was a novelist and Jnanpith laureate of a later generation, Surjit Patar is a modern Punjabi poet, and Khushwant Singh wrote in English. None of them carries this title.

Answer: D

The Commission's answer is Surjit Gag.

Surjit Gag is a Punjabi poet whose poem on Guru Nanak drew complaints in 2017 that it hurt religious sentiments, after which he was arrested by the Punjab police. That controversy put the poem in the news shortly before this examination.

Amrita Pritam is remembered for poems such as Ajj aakhaan Waris Shah nu, Puran Singh was a poet of the early twentieth century, and Giani Sant Singh Maskeen was a Sikh scholar and preacher; none of them wrote this poem.

Answer: D

The paper's answer is Modji Aashiya Krit, that is, written by Modji Ashiya.

Pabu Prakash is a Rajasthani epic (maha kavya) on the life of Pabuji Rathore, the folk deity of Marwar whose story is also sung by Bhopa priests with the painted phad scroll. Rajasthan general knowledge texts credit this work to the Charan poet Modji Ashiya; the 'Krit' in the option means 'composed by'.

Suryamal Mishran is known for the Vansh Bhaskar and Veer Satsai, not this work. Balinathji and Vitthal Das are not the poets to whom the Pabu Prakash is attributed.

Answer: C

The first prose writer of Rajasthani literature is Shiv Chandra Bhartiya.

Shivchandra Bhartiya (1853-1918) is regarded as the pioneer of modern Rajasthani prose. His Kanak Sundar (1903) is the first novel in Rajasthani, and he also wrote plays, with the introductions to his books counted among the earliest Rajasthani essays.

Vijaydan Detha, Lakshmi Kumari Chundawat and Nathmal Joshi are major Rajasthani writers of the 20th century, well after him.

Answer: D

Vijaydan Detha's famed work is Batan Ri Phulwari.

Vijaydan Detha ('Bijji') collected and retold Rajasthani folk tales in Batan Ri Phulwari ('a garden of tales'), a multi-volume work for which he received the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1974. Several of his stories were adapted into films, such as Paheli.

Dharti Dhoran Ri is by the Rajasthani poet Kanhaiya Lal Sethia, and Agniveena (Agnibeena) is a poetry collection by Kazi Nazrul Islam. Vanphool is not Detha's work either.

Answer: C

The author is Col. James Tod.

James Tod served as the East India Company's Political Agent to the western Rajput states from 1818 and drew on bardic chronicles, inscriptions and his own travels to write Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, published in two volumes in 1829 and 1832. It remains the best known early history of the Rajput states, and the name 'Rajasthan' was popularised by it.

V.A. Smith wrote The Early History of India, and George Thomas was an Irish adventurer who carved out a principality in Haryana around 1800. None of the others wrote the Annals.

Answer: B

The key's answer is Shiv Chandra Bhartiya.

Shiv Chandra Bhartiya (1853-1918) is regarded as the pioneer of modern Rajasthani prose. His Kanak Sundar (1903) is counted as the first novel in Rajasthani, and he also wrote plays and stories, which is why he is called the first prose writer of Rajasthani literature.

Lakshmi Kumari Chundawat and Mal Chand Tiwari are twentieth-century writers who came long after him, so neither can be the first; the key does not credit Tej Singh Jodha with this place either.

Answer: C

It is known as Parchi.

In Rajasthani literature a parchi is a verse account of the life of a saint, introducing (parichay) the saint's life and miracles. Parchis were written about saints such as Kabir, Ramdev and Dadu and are part of the devotional literature of the region.

Prakas are works describing the achievements of a ruler or dynasty, Marasya (marsiya) is an elegy on a hero's death, and Rupak is a poetic composition on a ruler's deeds. None is specifically a saint's life story.