Early Medieval Regional Kingdoms Questions and Answers

Answer: B

The key's answer is Customary taxes.

Upakriti and kanika are read here as names of dues, dues of a customary kind charged on villages, which the key treats as taxes. The other options do not fit the vocabulary of such records: queens, a method of testing the purity of metal and a feudal salute are not what an agrarian record lists among the obligations of a village.

I could not find a source that defines these two words, so the keyed meaning is accepted on the strength of the context and the key; the elimination of the other three is sound but the definition itself is unconfirmed.

Answer: A

The key's answer is The Hoysalas.

The phrase means 'punishing the wicked and protecting the good', a formula of royal duty. The key says it recurs constantly in the inscriptions of the Hoysalas.

I could not locate the phrase in the epigraphic texts I could search, so I could not check how often it appears in Chalukya, Rashtrakuta or Yadava records. The key is therefore kept, but the dynasty is accepted on the key's authority rather than on a verified count.

Answer: A

The Chaurapanchasika was composed by Bilhana.

Bilhana, the eleventh-century Kashmiri poet, is credited with the Chaurapanchashika ('Fifty Stanzas of a Thief'), a cycle of love poems by a poet condemned for his secret love of a princess. He also wrote the Vikramankadevacharita about the Chalukya king Vikramaditya VI.

Kalhana, also a Kashmiri, wrote the Rajatarangini; Hemadri was a minister of the Yadavas and wrote the Chaturvargachintamani; and Someshvara III, the Chalukya king, wrote the Manasollasa.

Answer: C

They belonged to the Alvar tradition.

The Alvars were twelve Tamil poet-saints devoted to Vishnu, active between about the sixth and ninth centuries. Periyalvar and Nammalvar are among the most revered; their hymns were collected in the Nalayira Divya Prabandham.

The Nayanars (Nayanmars) were the corresponding Shaiva saints, which makes them the trap. The Mahanubhavas were a Krishna-devotional sect of Maharashtra founded by Chakradhara, and the Ajivikas an ancient ascetic sect.

Answer: B

The key's answer is Bhrtyavargaposanam.

The word is a compound: bhrtya is a servant or dependant, varga a group or class, and posana maintenance or nourishment, so it means 'the maintenance of the class of dependants'. That fits the stem, which describes a share of the fresh paddy set aside for temple servants, brahmanas, rulers and the village's various labourers.

The other options do not carry the sense of providing for a body of servants: sarvabharanam, gramposanam and sarvajivanam are built on 'all', 'village' and 'all life' and do not name the share of the crop. I could not find an inscription or study that uses these words, so the match rests on the meaning of the word and the key.

Answer: D

Their subject is Temple architecture.

The Mayamata and the Manasara are Sanskrit treatises of the Shilpa and Vastu shastra tradition of south India, dealing with the planning of temples, houses and towns, proportions and the making of images. The Kamikagama, a Shaiva agama, also contains long sections on temple building.

They are not works of political philosophy (such as the Arthashastra), nor treatises on varna and jati rites, nor manuals of ritual in central India.

Answer: C

The Tevaram belonged to Shaivism.

The Tevaram is the collection of hymns of the three great Nayanars, Appar, Sambandar and Sundarar, in praise of Shiva, sung in Tamil Shiva temples. It forms the first seven books of the Shaiva canon, the Tirumurai.

The Vaishnava counterpart is the Nalayira Divya Prabandham of the Alvars. The Tevaram has nothing to do with Tantric Buddhism or Tantric Jainism.

Answer: A

The Dandanitiprakaranam was written by Keshav Pandit.

Keshav Pandit, a scholar at the court of Chhatrapati Sambhaji, composed the Dandaniti-prakarana, a Sanskrit work on statecraft and punishment drawn from the dharmashastras, for the Maratha state.

Gagabhatta was the Banaras scholar who performed Shivaji's coronation in 1674. Nischalapuri was a Tantric priest who held a second, Tantric coronation the same year, and Venkatadhvari was a seventeenth-century Sanskrit poet of the Tamil country.

Answer: A

The historian is Richard Eaton.

In A Social History of the Deccan, 1300-1761: Eight Indian Lives (2005), Eaton begins with the Kakatiya king Prataparudra (r. 1289-1323), whose defeat by the Delhi Sultanate he presents as the beginning of two different state systems in the Deccan: the Persianate sultanates descended from Delhi's rule and the regional kingdoms, such as Vijayanagara, that claimed the Kakatiya legacy.

J.F. Richards wrote on the Mughal Empire and Golconda, Kenneth R. Hall on trade and the Cholas and Southeast Asia, and Stewart Gordon on the Marathas; the Prataparudra argument is Eaton's.

Answer: C

The title Varman was adopted by the kings of Kamrupa.

The Varman dynasty ruled Kamarupa (Assam) from the fourth to the seventh century. Its kings, from Pushyavarman to Bhaskaravarman, the ally of Harsha whom Xuanzang visited, all bore the name ending -varman.

The Varman title was used by many dynasties (the Pallavas and Maukharis too), but among the options only Kamarupa had a royal line known as the Varmans. Samatata (printed 'Samatta') and Gauda were kingdoms of Bengal with other dynasties, and Punjab had none of that name.