Early Medieval and South India

• Pair 1 is incorrect. Champaka is the old name of Chamba in the western Himalaya, in present day Himachal Pradesh, founded in the tenth century by Raja Sahil Varman and named for his daughter Champavati; it is not in Central India.
• Pair 2 is correct. Durgara is the early name of the Dogra country around Jammu, the term Dogra deriving from it, and it appears in inscriptions and in Kalhana's Rajatarangini as a hill state on the Chenab.
• Pair 3 is incorrect. Kuluta is the Kullu valley, again in Himachal Pradesh, a name known from the Allahabad pillar inscription of Samudragupta and from Varahamihira; Malabar is the Kerala coast. The official answer (b) follows. Elimination route: recognising either Champaka as Chamba or Kuluta as Kullu removes three options and leaves only (b), and the two names are close enough to their modern forms for a candidate with a feel for Sanskritic place names to make the connection. Without that, the item is unanswerable from standard preparation, which is what places it at the difficult end.

• Option (c) is correct. Harihara I, with his brother Bukka, founded Vijayanagara in 1336 on the south bank of the Tungabhadra, a tributary of the Krishna, and the dynasty ruled in the name of the god Virupaksha of Hampi, the Sangama rulers signing their inscriptions and copper plate grants with the deity's name and describing themselves as ruling on his behalf, the land south of the Krishna being held to belong to him. Their guru Vidyaranya is credited in tradition with directing the enterprise.
• Option (a) is wrong: Amoghavarsha I was the Rashtrakuta ruler who built Manyakheta on the Kagina and wrote the Kavirajamarga, and the Rashtrakuta heartland lay north of the Krishna.
• Option (b) is wrong: Ballala II was a Hoysala of Dwarasamudra, modern Halebidu, in the twelfth century, and founded no such city.
• Option (d) is wrong: Prataparudra II was the last major Kakatiya of Warangal, defeated by the Delhi Sultanate in the 1320s, whose fall is part of the background to the rise of Vijayanagara rather than its cause. The elimination route is the phrase south bank of a tributary of the Krishna together with a deity's agency, which together identify Vijayanagara and Virupaksha uniquely.

• Statement 1 is correct. Vijayanagara land revenue was assessed on classified land, the rate varying with the quality and productivity of the soil and with whether the land was wet, dry or under orchard and plantation. Krishna Deva Raya's own Amuktamalyada advises the ruler on graded assessment, and the surviving revenue records show differential rates rather than a flat levy.
• Statement 2 is also correct. Vijayanagara drew revenue from a wide range of professional and commercial imposts beyond land revenue, including levies on artisans, traders, and the owners of workshops, the last of these described in the sources as an industries tax. The empire's fiscal base was notably broad, encompassing land revenue, tributes from feudatories, customs at ports and inland, professional taxes and judicial fines. Both statements being correct, the answer is (c).
• Options (a), (b) and (d) each require rejecting at least one true proposition. There is no elimination route: the two statements are independent, neither is intuitively false, and neither can be inferred from the other, so the candidate must know both. That is why the item is difficult despite concerning a much-taught reign.

• Pair 1 is correctly matched. Eripatti, literally tank land, was land whose revenue was set apart for the maintenance of the village tank, an arrangement of real importance in the Tamil country where irrigation depended on tank storage and where the assembly maintained the works from an earmarked endowment rather than from general funds.
• Pair 2 is incorrectly matched and is the decisive pair. A village or group of villages granted to Brahmanas was a brahmadeya, or an agrahara where the grant was to a body of Brahmanas. A taniyur was something different: a large village, often one that had grown out of a brahmadeya, which was detached from its kurram and constituted a separate revenue and administrative unit in its own right, the word carrying the sense of separate or autonomous.
• Pair 3 is correctly matched: ghatikas were centres of higher learning, generally attached to temples and mathas, teaching Vedic and Sanskritic subjects, Kanchipuram being the best known. Hence 1 and 3, giving (d).
• Options (a) and (c) require accepting the taniyur description, and (b) requires rejecting the eripatti endowment. The item is difficult because all three are specialist Chola administrative terms with no elimination route; the only lever is knowing that brahmadeya, not taniyur, is the word for a Brahmana grant.

• Option (b) is correct. Motupalli, in present day Bapatla district on the Andhra coast, was the principal port of the Kakatiyas of Warangal. Its importance is documented by the Abhaya Shasanam, the charter of safety issued there by Ganapatideva in the thirteenth century, which guaranteed foreign merchants against the customary seizure of shipwrecked goods and fixed the duties payable, and it is one of the earliest Indian instruments of its kind. Marco Polo, who calls the place Mutfili, describes the diamond trade of the kingdom under the regency of Rudramadevi.
• Option (c) is the designed distractor and the one most candidates take. Machilipatnam was indeed a very important port, but its prominence belongs to the Qutb Shahi period and to the seventeenth century European trade, when it served as the chief port of Golconda and hosted Dutch, English and French factories; it is not the Kakatiya port.
• Option (a) is wrong: Kakinada rose as a port under colonial and post colonial development and has no Kakatiya association.
• Option (d) is wrong: Nellore was a territorial and political centre, contested between the Cholas, Kakatiyas and Pandyas, but was not the kingdom's maritime outlet. Governing principle: attach each Andhra port to its own dynastic horizon, Motupalli to the Kakatiyas, Machilipatnam to the Qutb Shahis and the Europeans.

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.

• Pair 1 is correctly matched. Nannuka was the founder of the Chandela line in Jejakabhukti, the Bundelkhand region whose later rulers raised the temples at Khajuraho.
• Pair 2 is incorrectly matched. Jayashakti was himself a Chandela, one of the early rulers of that house whose name, with his brother Vijayashakti, is associated with the consolidation of Chandela power, and he had no connection with the Paramaras of Malwa.
• Pair 3 is correctly matched. Nagabhata II was a Gurjara Pratihara ruler, the son of Vatsaraja, who took Kanauj and made it the Pratihara capital in the course of the tripartite struggle with the Palas and the Rashtrakutas.
• Pair 4 is incorrectly matched. The Bhoja best known to Indian history is the Paramara king of Dhar, celebrated as scholar and patron, and the name also belongs to Mihira Bhoja of the Gurjara Pratiharas; neither line is Rashtrakuta. Exactly two pairs are correct, giving (b). The item is difficult because the question sets the Chandela, Paramara, Pratihara and Rashtrakuta houses against one another and swaps names between them, so nothing short of secure knowledge of each dynasty's rulers will serve.

Krishnadevaraya of the Tuluva dynasty of Vijayanagara, ruling from 1509 to 1529, permitted the Portuguese to build a fort at Bhatkal on the Kanara coast. The alliance served both sides. Vijayanagara needed a secure supply of Arabian war horses, which the Portuguese now controlled by sea after displacing Arab traders, while the Portuguese needed coastal footholds and a counterweight to Bijapur. The treaty with Albuquerque is part of the same arrangement.

• Option (b) is wrong because Narasimha Saluva ruled in the late fifteenth century, before the Portuguese arrival in 1498 and well before they were in a position to seek forts.
• Option (c) is wrong because Muhammad Shah III was a Bahmani sultan of the fifteenth century, again predating Portuguese fort building on this coast.
• Option (d) is wrong because Yusuf Adil Shah of Bijapur was the ruler from whom the Portuguese took Goa by force in 1510, an adversary rather than a grantor of permission.

The Pallava ruler Mahendravarman I bore an unusually large number of birudas or titles, recorded in his cave temple inscriptions, and these three are among the best attested. Mattavilasa, meaning delight of the intoxicated, is also the title of the Sanskrit satirical farce Mattavilasa Prahasana attributed to him, which ridicules Kapalika and Buddhist ascetics. Vichitrachitta, meaning curious minded, reflects his reputation for versatility in music, painting and architecture, and Gunabhara means bearer of virtues. He is credited with initiating rock cut cave architecture in the Pallava realm, giving (a).

• Option (c), Narasimhavarman I, is his son, better known as Mamalla, victor over Pulakesin II and associated with the monolithic rathas at Mamallapuram; his titles are different.
• Option (b), Simhavishnu, was the earlier Pallava ruler who consolidated the dynasty in the sixth century.
• Option (d), Simhavarman, belongs to the earlier Pallava line and is not associated with these titles.

Rajendra I, the Chola ruler, launched the naval expedition against Srivijaya in the early eleventh century, recorded in the Tanjore inscriptions, which name a series of ports and territories in the Malay Peninsula and Sumatra that were raided. The campaign is best understood as an assertion of control over the Strait of Malacca and the maritime route to China, protecting Chola merchant guild interests rather than establishing lasting territorial rule. This gives (c).

• Option (a), Amoghavarsha, was a Rashtrakuta ruler of the ninth century, a patron of Jainism and author of the Kavirajamarga, with no naval expedition of this kind.
• Option (b), Prataparudra of the Kakatiyas, ruled in the Deccan in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries and faced the Delhi Sultanate invasions.
• Option (d), Vishnuvardhana of the Hoysalas, is associated with the Chennakesava temple at Belur and with the shift from Jainism to Vaishnavism under Ramanuja's influence. Only the Cholas among these possessed the naval capacity for a trans-oceanic campaign.