Indian History Questions and Answers

Answer: C

Bengali was adopted as the court language under Maharaja Birchandra Manikya.

Birchandra Manikya (1862-1896), a poet and musician himself and an admirer of the young Rabindranath Tagore, made Bengali the official language of the court and administration, and the state's later records, including its gazette, were kept in Bengali.

Dhanya Manikya and Ratna Manikya were much earlier rulers, and Bir Bikram Kishore Manikya reigned in the twentieth century.

Answer: B

The Neermahal was built by Maharaja Bir Bikram Kishore Manikya.

The 'water palace' stands in the middle of Rudrasagar Lake at Melaghar, near Sonamura in Sepahijala district. Bir Bikram Kishore Manikya, the last ruling Maharaja of Tripura before the merger, had it built as a summer residence in the 1930s, blending Hindu and Mughal styles.

Bir Chandra Manikya and Radha Kishore Manikya were earlier rulers, remembered chiefly for their patronage of Rabindranath Tagore and Jagadish Chandra Bose. Udai Manikya was a sixteenth-century king whose name survives in the town of Udaipur. None of them built the Neermahal.

Answer: D

The patron was Maharaja Radha Kishore Manikya.

Radha Kishore Manikya, who ruled Tripura from 1896 to 1909, gave Jagadish Chandra Bose financial support for his research at a time when the scientist found it hard to fund his experiments, and the help is recorded in the correspondence between Bose and Rabindranath Tagore, who encouraged it.

The trap is Bir Chandra Manikya, his father, whose famous patronage went to the young Rabindranath Tagore, not to Bose. Krishna Kishore Manikya and Gobinda Manikya were earlier kings with no connection to Bose's work.

Answer: D

The Tripura Merger Agreement was signed on 9th September, 1949.

Maharani Kanchan Prabha Devi, regent for the minor Maharaja Kirit Bikram Kishore Manikya, signed the agreement with the Government of India on 9 September 1949. The merger took effect on 15 October 1949, when Tripura was taken over as a Chief Commissioner's province.

That makes 15th October, 1949 the trap: it is the date the merger came into force, not the date the agreement was signed. 15th August, 1947 is Independence Day, and 15th October, 1947 joins that year to the later month; neither is the signing date.

Answer: C

The Kamala Sagar tank was excavated by Maharaja Dhanya Manikya.

Dhanya Manikya, who ruled Tripura in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, had the large tank dug near the present Bangladesh border and named it after his queen, Kamala Devi. The Kasba Kali temple stands on its bank, and the tank gives the place its name.

Ratna Manikya and Dharma Manikya were other medieval rulers of the dynasty, and Bir Chandra Manikya ruled in the nineteenth century, long after the tank was made, so none of them is credited with it.

Answer: D

Bir Chandra Manikya reigned from 1862 to 1896.

Maharaja Bir Chandra Manikya succeeded his brother Ishan Chandra Manikya in 1862 and ruled until his death in 1896. He is remembered as the ruler who modernised the administration of Tripura, and as a patron of the arts and an early admirer of Rabindranath Tagore.

The period 1849-1862 belongs to Ishan Chandra Manikya, which is the trap since the two were brothers; the earlier periods fall before either brother came to the throne.

Answer: B

The king was Maharaja Ishan Chandra Manikya.

Ishan Chandra Manikya ruled Tripura from 1849 to 1862, so the uprising of 1857 fell in the middle of his reign. Tripura was then a princely state under British paramountcy and stayed outside the revolt.

Krishna Kishore Manikya was his father and predecessor, whose reign ended in 1849. Bir Chandra Manikya, his brother, came to the throne only in 1862. Dhanya Manikya ruled around 1500, centuries earlier.

Answer: A

The famous Kushan ruler was Kanishka.

Kanishka, who ruled in the late first or early second century CE from Purushapura (Peshawar), was the greatest of the Kushan kings. He was a patron of Mahayana Buddhism, and the Fourth Buddhist Council is said to have been held in Kashmir under his rule.

The other names belong to different dynasties. Pulakeshin (printed Pulukesin) was a Chalukya king of Badami, Pushyamitra (printed Pushyamita) founded the Shunga dynasty after the Mauryas, and Bimbisara was a Haryanka king of Magadha in the Buddha's time.

Answer: A

The Ujjayanta Palace was built in 1901.

The palace in Agartala was built for Maharaja Radha Kishore Manikya of Tripura and completed in 1901. It stands on the bank of a lake amid Mughal-style gardens and was the royal residence until Tripura merged with India in 1949. It later housed the Tripura Legislative Assembly and is now the Tripura State Museum.

The years 1910, 1915 and 1920 all fall after the palace was finished, so they are wrong.

Answer: B

The answer is Pilak.

Pilak, near Belonia in South Tripura, is an archaeological site of roughly the eighth to twelfth centuries CE. It has yielded stone images of the Buddha and of Avalokiteshvara, a brick stupa and terracotta plaques, the clearest evidence of Buddhist culture in the state, alongside Hindu images.

Unakoti in North Tripura is famous for huge rock-cut carvings of Shiva and other Hindu deities. Jampui hill is a hill range in North Tripura known for its orange orchards and views, and Kamalasagar is a lake near the Bangladesh border with a temple of Kali. None of them is known as a Buddhist site.