Early Medieval Regional Kingdoms Questions and Answers

Answer: D

The temple that is not Pallava is the Koranganatha Temple, Srinivasanallur.

The Koranganatha temple near Tiruchirappalli is an early Chola stone temple of the early tenth century, usually dated to the reign of Parantaka I, and is a standard example of early Chola architecture.

The other three are Pallava. The Kailasanatha temple at Kanchipuram was built by Narasimhavarman II Rajasimha around 700 CE; the Vaikunthaperumal temple at Uttiramerur belongs to the Pallava period of Nandivarman II; and the Virattaneshvara temple at Tiruttani is a late Pallava apsidal shrine of the time of Aparajita.

Answer: C

The work is the Shunyapurana.

The Shunyapurana, a Bengali text attributed to Ramai Pandit and associated with the cult of Dharma Thakur, lists more than fifty varieties of paddy grown in Bengal. Historians of early medieval agriculture, R. S. Sharma among them, use it as evidence for the expansion and diversification of rice cultivation in eastern India.

The Shiva Purana and Matsya Purana are Sanskrit Puranas concerned with mythology, cosmology and ritual, and 'Anupurana' is not a recognised Bengali source, so none of them supplies this agricultural list.

Answer: C

The key gives irrigation systems. I could not find the word nirambam in any source I could read, so this explanation is limited to what can be said with certainty.

Tamil nir means water, and Tamil inscriptions of the Pallava, Pandya and Chola periods record gifts and works connected with tanks, channels and sluices at length, so a term built on nir being read as a water-works term is consistent with the key.

The other options each have well-known Tamil epigraphic terms of their own: land revenue is recorded under words such as irai and kadamai, cultivators appear as ulavar or kudi, and merchant guilds appear as the Manigramam and the Nanadesi. Nothing found shows nirambam to be any of those, but the key's reading itself could not be confirmed from a source, which a reviewer should know.

Answer: A

Sallekhana is the religious practice of voluntarily fasting to death.

In Jainism, sallekhana (also santhara) is a vow to give up food and drink gradually and end life peacefully, taken when death is near through old age, incurable illness or calamity. It is regarded not as suicide but as the final discipline that thins the passions. Jain tradition holds that Chandragupta Maurya died this way at Shravanabelagola.

Formal renunciation is diksha, the start of learning is marked by rites such as upanayana or vidyarambha, and the end of studentship by samavartana; none of these is sallekhana.

Answer: A

The grammarian is Kaiyata.

Kaiyata, a Kashmiri scholar of about the eleventh century, wrote the Pradipa, a commentary on Patanjali's Mahabhashya. In discussing the word nagara, he describes a city as a settlement enclosed by a wall and a moat in which the laws and customs of the guilds of artisans and merchants prevail. Historians of early medieval urbanism cite this definition.

The others were not grammarians. Amalananda was a thirteenth-century Advaita Vedanta writer, and Prabhakara and Kumarila Bhatta were the founders of the two schools of Purva Mimamsa, the philosophy of Vedic ritual interpretation.

Answer: C

The Chhota Kailas cave belongs to Jainism.

The caves of Ellora fall into three groups: Buddhist (caves 1-12), Brahmanical (caves 13-29, including the Kailasa temple, cave 16) and Jain (caves 30-34). Cave 30, the Chhota Kailas, is the first of the Jain group, a monolithic shrine of about the ninth century cut as a smaller version of the great Kailasa temple, which is how it got its name.

The name tempts candidates towards Shaivism, but it refers to the architectural model, not the cult. The Buddhist caves are at the other end of the site, and there is no separate Vaishnava group.

Answer: C

The sabha was the Brahman assembly.

Chola inscriptions, above all the Uttaramerur inscriptions of Parantaka I, describe two kinds of village assembly. The sabha (or mahasabha) was the assembly of a brahmadeya, a village granted to Brahmanas, and managed its lands, tanks and temples through committees (variyams) chosen partly by lot. The ur was the general assembly of ordinary, non-Brahmana villages.

Merchant associations were the nagaram and guilds such as the Ainnurruvar. The village as a unit was the ur, and the basic units of administration above it were the nadu and valanadu.

Answer: C

Among these options, the Virupaksha temple is at Pattadakal.

The Virupaksha temple at Pattadakal, in Bagalkot district of Karnataka, was built about 740 CE by Queen Lokamahadevi to commemorate her husband Vikramaditya II's victory over the Pallavas. It is the largest and finest Dravida-style temple of the Badami Chalukyas and part of the Pattadakal World Heritage group.

Badami is known for its rock-cut cave temples, Aihole for early structural temples such as the Durga and Lad Khan temples, and Alampur for the Nava Brahma temples. (Hampi has a better-known Virupaksha temple, but Hampi is not among the options.)

Answer: C

The ruler was Krishnadevaraya.

Krishnadevaraya of Vijayanagara (1509-1529), himself the author of the Telugu poem Amuktamalyada, was a great patron of letters, and his court poets compared him with the legendary scholar-king Bhoja of Malwa. Titles such as Abhinava-Bhoja ('a new Bhoja') and Sakala-kala-Bhoja (a Bhoja in all the arts) express that comparison.

Raja Bhoja is the eleventh-century Paramara king himself, so he could not be called a new Bhoja. Pravarasena II was a Vakataka king, author of the Prakrit Setubandha, and Kumaragupta I a Gupta emperor; both lived centuries before Bhoja.

Answer: A

The Manasollasa was composed by Someshvara III.

Someshvara III (r. about 1126-1138) of the Chalukyas of Kalyani wrote the Manasollasa, also called the Abhilashitartha Chintamani, in 1129. It is an encyclopaedia of royal life covering polity, the king's pleasures, food, music, painting, games and sports, which makes it a rich socio-cultural source.

The other three were kings of the earlier Chalukyas of Badami in the sixth and seventh centuries: Pulakeshin I founded that dynasty's power, Pulakeshin II defeated Harsha, and Vikramaditya I recovered Badami from the Pallavas. None belongs to the Kalyani line.