Indian History Questions and Answers

Answer: A

He was the son of Bimbisara.

Ajatashatru imprisoned his father and took the throne about 492 BCE, then fought Kosala and Vaishali - the latter with the rathamusala and the mahashilakantaka, the earliest siege engines named in Indian sources.

Answer: C

It was overthrown by Mahapadma Nanda.

He displaced the Shishunagas about 345 BCE and founded the Nanda dynasty, described in the Puranas as the destroyer of all Kshatriyas and the first ruler of low birth to hold Magadha.

Answer: D

He was twenty-nine.

The Mahabhinishkramana, the great going forth, came after Siddhartha saw the old man, the sick man, the corpse and the ascetic. He left Kapilavastu on the night his son Rahula was born, and attained enlightenment six years later.

Answer: B

He was the Buddha's charioteer.

Channa drove Siddhartha out of Kapilavastu on the night of the renunciation, and took back his ornaments and the horse Kanthaka. He later became a monk, and the Vinaya records the brahmadanda imposed on him for his arrogance.

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: D

It was at Bodh Gaya.

He attained enlightenment under the pipal tree on the bank of the Niranjana after six years of search. Lumbini is his birthplace, Sarnath the site of the first sermon and Kushinagar of his death.

Answer: B

He was born in 540 BCE.

Mahavira was born at Kundagrama near Vaishali to Siddhartha and Trishala of the Jnatrika clan, renounced the world at thirty, gained kevala after twelve years, and died at Pavapuri in 468 BCE.

Answer: B

It was built by Shah Jahan.

The Lal Qila at Delhi was begun in 1638 and completed in 1648 as the palace-fort of his new capital Shahjahanabad, built in red sandstone by Ustad Ahmad Lahauri. The prime minister addresses the nation from its ramparts each Independence Day.

Answer: C

It was begun by Vinoba Bhave.

He started the Bhoodan movement at Pochampally in 1951, walking from village to village asking landowners for a share of their land for the landless, and it grew into the wider Sarvodaya movement. The word itself is Gandhi's, from his rendering of Ruskin.

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.