UPSC Static Quiz – Art and Culture : 12 June 2024

Solution: b)

Statement 3 is incorrect.

Buddhist monks went from place to place throughout the year, teaching people. The only time they stayed in one place was during the rainy season, when it was very difficult to travel. Then, their supporters built temporary shelters for them in gardens, or they lived in natural caves in hilly areas.

As time went on, many supporters of the monks and nuns, and they themselves, felt the need for more permanent shelters and so monasteries were built. These were known as viharas.

There was no Buddhism when the earliest Viharas were made. Buddhism, as an organized religion, came into being after the death of the Buddha. So, the purpose of preaching dhamma was a later purpose, and not the reason for establishing viharas.

S3: Chaityas were prayer halls, whereas viharas were monasteries built for residential purposes. Both the early and the later tradition used chaityas and viharas.

Solution: d)

The Kashmir Shaivism tradition, also called Trika Shaivism, is a non-dualist branch of Shaiva-Shakta Tantra Hinduism that originated in Kashmir after 850 CE.

It later spread beyond Kashmir, with its great scholar Abhinavagupta calling it “Trika” (meaning “the Trinity”). It particularly flourished in the states of Odisha and Maharashtra.

Solution: c)

• The stupas in the fourth and fifth centuries CE have Buddha images attached.
• Junnar has the largest cave excavations— more than two hundred caves around the hills of the town—whereas Kanheri in Mumbai has a hundred and eight excavated caves.
• The most important sites are Ajanta, Pitalkhora, Ellora, Nashik, Bhaja, Junnar, Karla, Kanheri. Ajanta, Ellora, and Kanheri continue to flourish.

Solution: d)

Ashtadiggajas is the collective title given to the eight great Telugu scholars and poets in the court of Emperor Krishnadevaraya.

The Ashtadiggajas Allasani Peddana, Dhurjati, Nandi Thimmana, Madayyagari Mallana and Ayyalaraju Ramabhadrudu were from Rayalaseema. Pandit Ramakrishna hailed from Tenali in the Guntur district of Andhra Pradesh. Ramarajabhushanudu and Pingali Surana were the other two Ashtadiggajas.

Solution: c)

Statement 1: While some of the raw materials that the Harappans used were available locally, many items such as copper, tin, gold, silver and precious stones had to be brought from distant places.

The Harappans probably got copper from present-day Rajasthan, and even from Oman in West Asia. Tin, which was mixed with copper to produce bronze, may have been brought from present-day Afghanistan and Iran. Gold could have come all the way from present-day Karnataka, and precious stones from present-day Gujarat, Iran and Afghanistan.

Statement 2:  The field of metal and metallurgy is among the key technologies mastered by the civilization.

Minor metals like tin, arsenic, lead, antimony etc. were used for alloying.

The earliest evidence of metallurgy in the Indian subcontinent comes forth from the site of Mehrgarh in Baluchistan dated to circa 6500 BCE, a part of early Harappan civilization. It is recovered in the form of a tiny copper bead from grave of a child.

Over the centuries, during the Mature Harappan period, the metal workers perfected the metallurgical skill, so the metallurgical techniques including the alloying technique developed much before. S2 is wrong.