Mahajanapadas to Gupta

• Statements 3 and 4 are correct and statements 1 and 2 are incorrect, so the official answer is (c). Kosala, with its capital at Sravasti and its king Prasenajit, was central to the Buddha's career: he passed the largest number of rain retreats at the Jetavana monastery there, given by the merchant Anathapindika, and he was born at Lumbini in the Sakya republic, which lay within the Kosalan sphere. Magadha, with Rajagriha as its capital under Bimbisara and then Ajatashatru, was the other principal field of his activity; the Bamboo Grove at Rajagriha was among the earliest monastic gifts, the enlightenment took place at Bodh Gaya in Magadhan territory, and the first council met at Rajagriha after the parinirvana.
• Statement 2 is incorrect and is the easiest to reject. Gandhara lay in the far north-west around Taxila and Pushkalavati, well outside the middle Gangetic plain that bounded the Buddha's travels; Buddhism reached it later, under Ashoka and then the Kushanas, and its celebrated Buddhist art belongs to the first centuries of the common era.
• Statement 1 is incorrect for the purposes of this key. Avanti, with its capital Ujjayini under Pradyota, lay in western Malwa outside the region the Buddha traversed, which extended broadly between Kosala, Kasi, Magadha, Vajji, Malla and Anga. The elimination route runs through Gandhara, whose rejection removes (a) and (b) and leaves the item to be decided on Avanti alone, between (c) and (d).

The passage is a close rendering of Ashoka's Major Rock Edict XII, which enjoins restraint of speech, concourse between sects and honour to other sects as the path of dhamma. Hence (a).

• Option (b) is wrong because Samudragupta's principal epigraph, the Allahabad pillar prashasti composed by Harishena, is a catalogue of conquests and royal accomplishments and carries no ethical exhortation to subjects.
• Option (c) is wrong because Harshavardhana is known chiefly through Banabhatta's Harshacharita and the account of Xuanzang rather than through moral edicts addressed to the population.
• Option (d) is wrong because Krishnadeva Raya's Amuktamalyada is a Telugu poem containing counsel on statecraft directed at a ruler, not an inscription instructing subjects on sectarian tolerance.

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).

• Option (b) is correct. The Sangam poets were aware of the varna scheme, which appears in references to brahmanas and their functions and to the ordering of society, even though the working social categories of the Tamil country were organised on a different basis, around the five tinais or ecological regions and the occupational groups associated with each. The point historians draw from this is that varna was known but not yet the dominant organising principle in the far south.
• Option (a) is wrong, since the poems are a principal source for material culture, describing crops, crafts, ports, trade with the Yavanas, ornaments, dwellings and food in considerable detail.
• Option (c) is wrong, and conspicuously so: the puram poetry is largely heroic verse celebrating war, cattle raids, valour and death in battle, with the hero stone commemorating the fallen warrior.
• Option (d) is wrong because magical and supernatural forces appear in the poems as accepted features of the world, and no rationalist critique of them is offered.

Hence (b).

Vattakirutal, also written vadakkiruttal meaning sitting facing north, was the Sangam era practice by which a king who had been defeated, dishonoured or bereaved of a close companion fasted to death seated facing north, a ritual self immolation by starvation that preserved honour. It is recorded of Chera and Pandya rulers in the Purananuru.

• Option (a) refers to a separate courtly practice noted in later sources but not to this term.
• Option (b) describes the scholarly assembly, associated with the Sangam academies themselves.
• Option (c) describes the tinai motif of girls guarding millet fields, a recurrent image in Sangam love poetry but a different practice altogether.

Hence (d).

Fa-hien travelled to India in the early fifth century, roughly 399 to 414 CE, in search of Buddhist texts and monastic disciplinary codes, and his account is preserved as the Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms. This period falls within the reign of Chandragupta II, giving (b). His narrative is notable for describing a prosperous and peaceful Madhyadesha with light administration, and for saying almost nothing about the ruler himself, since his interest was religious rather than political.

• Option (a), Samudragupta, preceded Chandragupta II and is known from the Allahabad pillar inscription of Harisena.
• Option (c), Kumaragupta I, and option (d), Skandagupta, both belong to the period after Fa-hien's departure, with Skandagupta's reign associated with the Huna invasions and the Junagadh inscription recording repair of the Sudarshana lake. A common confusion to guard against is with the later pilgrims: Hiuen Tsang travelled during Harshavardhana's reign and I-tsing later still.

These three officers appear together in the Third Major Rock Edict, which directs them to go out on tour every five years for the propagation of dhamma and for the discharge of ordinary administrative business. They are consistently placed at the district level in the standard reconstruction of Mauryan administration. The Pradeshika was the district head with general charge, the Rajuka exercised revenue and judicial functions and is described in Pillar Edict IV as having been granted independence in judicial matters, and the Yukta was a subordinate officer handling accounts and secretarial work. This gives (b).

• Option (a) is wrong because village level administration rested with the Gramika and the village elders, who are separate.
• Option (c) is wrong because the provinces were headed by Kumaras or princes of royal blood stationed at Taxila, Ujjain, Tosali and Suvarnagiri.
• Option (d) is wrong because the central administration comprised the Mantriparishad and the tirthas or high functionaries such as the Samaharta and Sannidhata, again a distinct tier.

The question asks which pairs are wrongly matched, so the correct answer names the mismatches.

• Pair 1 is correctly matched, since Senguttuvan, celebrated in the Silappadikaram and associated with the Pattini cult, was a Chera.
• Pair 2 is wrongly matched, since Udiyanjeral, also known as Perunjottu Udiyan Cheralatan and remembered for feeding both armies at the Kurukshetra war in bardic tradition, was a Chera and not a Chola, and the very element Cheral in the name carries the dynastic label.
• Pair 3 is correctly matched, since Nedunjeliyan of Madurai, victor of Talaiyalanganam, was a Pandya. Only pair 2 is a mismatch, so (b) is correct. (a) and (c) wrongly treat the Chera identification of Senguttuvan as an error, and (d) wrongly rejects the Pandya identification of Nedunjeliyan.