Ancient Indian Empires Questions and Answers

Answer: A

The monk was Upagupta.

The northern Buddhist tradition, especially the Ashokavadana, names Upagupta of Mathura as the monk who guided Ashoka in the faith and led him on pilgrimage to the places associated with the Buddha's life. The Sri Lankan chronicles instead give a role to the young monk Nigrodha and to Moggaliputta Tissa, but neither is an option.

Upali was the Buddha's own disciple, who recited the Vinaya at the First Council, centuries before Ashoka. Radhagupta was Ashoka's minister, not a monk. Nagasena was the monk of the Milindapanha, in dialogue with the Indo-Greek king Menander in the second century BC.

Answer: D

The king was Ajatasatru.

The First Buddhist Council was held soon after the Buddha's death (traditionally about 483 BC) at the Saptaparni cave near Rajagriha, the Magadhan capital, under the patronage of King Ajatashatru. Presided over by Mahakassapa, it compiled the Buddha's teachings, with Ananda reciting the Sutta and Upali the Vinaya.

Bimbisara, Ajatashatru's father, was a patron of the Buddha but died before him, so he could not have convened a council after the Buddha's death. Ashoka is associated with the Third Council at Pataliputra, and Chandragupta Maurya with no Buddhist council at all.

Answer: A

The king was Gautamiputra Satakarni.

The Jogaltembhi hoard from Nasik district contained thousands of silver coins of the Western Kshatrapa ruler Nahapana, most of them restruck with Gautamiputra Satakarni's name and symbols. This confirms what the Nasik inscription of his mother, Gautami Balashri, claims: that he uprooted the Kshaharata dynasty and restored Satavahana power in the early second century CE.

Vasishthiputra Pulumavi was his son and successor, Yajna Sri Satakarni ruled later in the second century and issued his own silver coinage, and Skanda Sri Satakarni was a later minor king. None of them is linked with the Nahapana restrikes.

Answer: C

The king is Huvishka.

Huvishka's gold coins show the war-gods named in Greek-script legends as Skanda, Kumara, Mahasena and Vishakha, sometimes as separate standing figures on the same coin. Because the names appear on distinct figures, numismatists treat these coins as evidence that these were still regarded as separate deities, before they merged into the single god Skanda-Kartikeya of later Hinduism.

Kanishka I's coins show a different set of Iranian, Greek, Indian and Buddhist deities, and the Vasudeva coins are dominated by Oesho (Shiva) with his bull. Neither shows this group of war-gods as separate figures.

Answer: A

The inscription throws light on the Pashupata sect.

The Mathura pillar inscription of Chandragupta II, dated in the Gupta year 61 (about 380 CE), records the setting up of two Shiva lingas by a teacher named Uditacharya, who traces his spiritual descent from Kushika, one of the disciples of Lakulisha. Lakulisha is the founder of the Pashupata order of Shaivism, so the inscription is early evidence for the sect and its lineage of teachers.

It says nothing about the Kapalikas, the Ajivikas or the Bhagavatas, though Chandragupta II himself was a Bhagavata (a Vaishnava) by personal faith.

Answer: A

The first to issue silver was Chandragupta II.

Chandragupta II conquered the Western Kshatrapas (the Shakas) of Gujarat and Malwa at the end of the fourth century CE. Their territory had used silver coinage for centuries, so he issued silver coins modelled on the Kshatrapa type, with his own name and the Gupta Garuda in place of the Kshatrapa symbols. These are the first Gupta silver issues.

Chandragupta I and Samudragupta struck gold coins only. Kumaragupta I continued and extended the silver series, but after Chandragupta II had begun it.

Answer: A

The inscription mentions a Garudadhvaja.

The Besnagar pillar near Vidisha, of about 113 BC, records that Heliodorus, son of Dion, an envoy from the Indo-Greek king Antialcidas of Taxila to the court of King Bhagabhadra, set up this Garuda-pillar (Garudadhvaja) in honour of Vasudeva, the god of gods. It is one of the earliest records of the Bhagavata cult, and of a Greek who called himself a Bhagavata.

A Simhadhvaja is a lion standard, Vishnupada means the footprint of Vishnu, and an ayagapatta is a Jain votive tablet of the kind found at Mathura. None is what Heliodorus erected.

Answer: A

The Devi-Chandraguptam was written by Vishakhadatta.

Vishakhadatta, author of the political drama Mudrarakshasa, also wrote the Devichandraguptam, which survives only in quotations in later works. It tells how Ramagupta agreed to surrender his queen Dhruvadevi to a Shaka king and how his brother Chandragupta went to the enemy camp disguised as the queen and killed him.

Shudraka wrote the Mrichchhakatika, Bharavi the epic Kiratarjuniya, and Banabhatta the Harshacharita and Kadambari.

Answer: D

The source that does not help is the Allahabad Pillar inscription of Samudragupta.

Ramagupta, said to have ruled briefly between Samudragupta and Chandragupta II, is known from three kinds of evidence. Vishakhadatta's play Devichandraguptam tells his story; the Sanjan copper plate of Amoghavarsha I alludes to a Gupta king who killed his brother and took his kingdom and wife; and the Durjanpur Jain image inscriptions from Vidisha name a Maharajadhiraja Ramagupta, which settled that such a king really existed.

Harishena's Allahabad prashasti praises Samudragupta's conquests and does not mention Ramagupta at all, so it is no help in reconstructing him.

Answer: C

The deity not found on Kanishka I's coins is Mahasen.

Kanishka's coins carry a wide range of deities with Bactrian names: Nana (the goddess Nanaia), Mao (the moon god), Mithro or Miiro (the sun), Athsho (fire), Pharro, and Oesho, usually identified with Shiva, as well as the Buddha.

Mahasena (Mahaseno on the coins) appears with Skanda, Kumara and Vishakha on the coins of Kanishka's successor Huvishka, not on Kanishka's own coinage, so it is the odd one out.