North India: Harsha, the Palas and the Gurjara Pratiharas

The window is roughly the sixth century, between the collapse of imperial Gupta authority and Harsha's accession in 606.

• Item 1 is correct: the Later Guptas of Magadha continued as a regional power.
• Item 3 is correct: the Pushyabhutis of Thanesar are Harsha's own line, so they necessarily precede his rise.
• Item 4 is correct: the Maukharis of Kanauj were the dominant power in the Ganga doab and were linked to the Pushyabhutis by marriage.
• Item 6 is correct: the Maitrakas of Valabhi ruled Saurashtra through this period.
• Item 2 fails on chronology: the Paramaras of Malwa belong to the tenth and eleventh centuries.
• Item 5 fails on both chronology and geography: the Yadavas of Devagiri are a twelfth and thirteenth century Deccan dynasty, not northern India. Hence 1, 3, 4 and 6, giving (b). Eliminating the Yadavas alone removes options (a) and (d), and the Paramaras remove (c).

Mahendravarman I ruled from about 600 to 630 and marks the consolidation of Pallava power at Kanchi, so event 2 is earliest. Gopala was elected founder of the Pala dynasty in Bengal in about 750, so event 4 follows. Mihira Bhoja, the greatest of the Gurjara Pratiharas, ruled from about 836 to 885, so event 1 comes next. Parantaka I ruled from 907 to 955 and carried the imperial Chola expansion begun by Vijayalaya to a new level, so event 3 is last. The sequence is 2, 4, 1, 3, giving (c).

• Options (b) and (d) place the Cholas first, which is impossible since Parantaka is a tenth century ruler.
• Option (a) places the Pratiharas before the Palas, reversing an interval of nearly a century.

• Statement 1 is incorrect, and the word doing the work is completely. Yuan Chwang's account, and the biography by Hwui Li, record that he was himself waylaid more than once, most famously on the Ganga where he was nearly sacrificed to Durga by river pirates. His general observation was that the roads were reasonably safe by the standards of the age under Harsha's administration, not that they were free of robbery. An absolute claim of this kind in a statement drawn from a travel account is almost always the planted falsehood.
• Statement 2 is correct. He describes trial by ordeal, specifically by water, fire, weighing and poison, as the method of establishing guilt where evidence was inconclusive, a practice consistent with the Dharmashastra literature on divya.
• Statement 3 is correct. He records that duties were levied on traders at ferries and barrier stations, and that the rates were light, which is consistent with the Smriti prescriptions on tolls, shulka. The official answer (b), two and three only, follows. The clean elimination route is statement 1: it appears in options (a), (c) and (d), so defeating the word completely disposes of three options at once and leaves (b) standing without needing to adjudicate the other two.