Art & Culture Test 3

Answer – c

• In the uttara Adhunika (post-modern) era the effort is to be natural, to be Indian, to be near to the common man, to be socially conscious. The third generation of Malayalam writers like N. Prabhakaran, and P. Surendran prefer the term anti-modernism to post-modernism and are content simply to narrate human tales without any explicit social message or philosophical pretensions. The modernist idea that anything simple should not be accepted is now questioned. It is established now that simple texts may present complex extra-textual structures
• The central tension experienced by the vast majority of contemporary Indian novelists is that of transition from the rural and traditional to an urban and post-modern situation, expressed either through a romantic nostalgia for the village left behind, or through fear and hatred of the cruel impersonal city, with all its sex, horror, murder and cruelty. Birendra Kumar Bhattacharya (Assamese), Sunil Gangopadhyay (Bengali), Pannalal patel (Gujarati), Mannu Bhandari (Hindi), Nayantara Sahgal (English), V. Bedekar (Marathi), Samaresh Basu (Bengali) and others, with their rural-urban sensitivity, have portrayed the Indian experience in its totality.
• In the contemporary Indian novels by Jayamohan (Tamil), Debes Ray (Bengali) and Shivprasad Singh (Hindi), dealing with various neglected regions, and the spoken dialect of that area, a composite picture of a total India, pulsating with new experience and struggling to hold on to the old values, and in the process sometimes discarding them, is also easily discernible. These regional novelists have forcefully demolished the myths created by the western Indologists that Indianness is just fatalism

Source – CCRT Literature

GS 1 – Art and culture – Literature

• Modern Indian literature genre and strands can be asked

Answer – d

• The art of bronze-casting was practised on a wide scale by the Harappans. Their bronze statues were made using the ‘lost wax’ technique in which the wax figures were first covered with a coating of clay and allowed to dry. Then the wax was heated and the molten wax was drained out through a tiny hole made in the clay cover. The hollow mould thus created was filled with molten metal which took the original shape of the object. Once the metal cooled, the clay cover was completely removed.
• In bronze we find human as well as animal figures, the best example of the former being the statue of a girl popularly titled ‘Dancing Girl’. Amongst animal figures in bronze the buffalo with its uplifted head, back and sweeping horns and the goat are of artistic merit. Bronze casting was popular at all the major centres of the Indus Valley Civilisation.
• The copper dog and bird of Lothal and the bronze figure of a bull from Kalibangan are in no way inferior to the human figures of copper and bronze from Harappa and Mohenjodar
• The late Harappan and Chalcolithic sites like Daimabad in Maharashtra yielded excellent examples of metal-casting.

Source – Chapter – 2, An Introduction to Indian Art, Class 11^th

GS 1 – Art and Culture – Architecture

• Under the mentioned heading, a question can be asked on the evolution of metal casting through different periods in ancient India (Note that the technique is still used in many parts of the country, particularly tribals). We will be covering other examples in subsequent tests

Answer – a

• From the second century BCE onwards, we get many inscriptional evidences mentioning donors and, at times, their profession.
• The pattern of patronage has been a very collective one and there are very few examples of royal patronage. Patrons range from lay devotees to gahapatis and kings. Donations by the guilds are also mentioned at several sites.
• However, there are very few inscriptions mentioning the names of artisans such as Kanha at Pitalkhora and his disciple Balaka at Kondane caves. Artisans’ categories like stone carvers, goldsmiths, stone-polishers, carpenters, etc. are also mentioned in the inscriptions.

Source – Chapter – 3, An Introduction to Indian Art, Class 11^th

GS 1 – Art and Culture – Architecture

• The fusion of Indian society at that time with the ideas of Buddhism is worth appreciating as the share of the public is increasing with royal patronage decaling.

Answer – a

• In Guntapalle in Eluru district, the caves have been excavated in the hills along with the structured monasteries. Perhaps it is among the very unique sites where the structured stupas, viharas and the caves are excavated at one place.
• The Guntapalle chaitya cave is circular with a stupa in the circular hall and a chaitya arch carved at the entrance. The cave is relatively small when compared to the caves in western India. A number of viharacaves have been excavated.
• Details about other mentioned caves will be covered subsequently

^{Answer – c}

• The earliest examples of caves in Odhisa are the Udaigiri-Khandagiri caves in the vicinity of Bhubaneswar.
• These caves are scattered and have inscriptions of Kharavela kings.
• According to the inscriptions, the caves were meant for Jain monks.
• There are numerous single-cell excavations. Some have been carved in huge independent boulders and given the shape of animals.

Source – Chapter – 4, An Introduction to Indian Art, Class 11^t

GS 1 – Art and Culture – Architecture

• There can be a question on cave tradition in Eastern India. Other prominent sites like Rampaerrampallam, Anakapalli, Guntapalle are also in Western India.

Answer – a

During the sixteenth century, known as the Vijayanagar Period in Andhra Pradesh, the sculptors experimented with portrait sculpture in order to preserve knowledge of the royal patron for posterity. At Tirupati, life-size standing portrait statues were cast in bronze, depicting Krishnadevaraya with his two queens, Tirumalamba and Chinnadevi.
Source – Chapter 6, An Introduction to Indian Art Class 11th

Answer – c

• Gumbad is situated in Bijapur in the Bijapur District of Karnataka. It is the mausoleum of Muhammad Adil Shah (1626–1656) the seventh Sultan of the Adil Shahi Dynasty of Bijapur (1489–1686).
• Built by the ruler himself it is a striking edifice in spite of being unfinished.
• The Gumbad is a monumental square building topped with a circular drum over which rests a majestic dome

Source – Chapter 8, An Introduction to Indian Art Class 11^th

Answer – c

• Kerala painters (during the period from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century) evolved a pictorial language and technique of their own while discriminately adopting certain stylistic elements from Nayaka and Vijayanagara schools.
• The painters evolved a language taking cues from contemporary traditions like Kathakali and kalam ezhuthuusing vibrant and luminous colours, representing human figures in three dimensionality.
• Most of the paintings are seen on the walls of shrines and cloister walls of temples and some inside palaces. Thematically too, paintings from Kerala stand apart. Most of the narrations are based on those episodes from Hindu mythology which were popular in Kerala. The artist seems to have derived sources from oral traditions and local versions of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata for painted narration.

Source – Chapter 5, An Introduction to Indian Art Class 11th

Answer – d

• More than sixty sites from Kerala have been found with mural paintings which include three
  palaces—Dutch palace in Kochi, Krishnapuram palace in Kayamkulam and Padmanabhapuram palace.
• Among the sites where one can see the mature phase of Kerala’s mural painting tradition are Pundareekapuram Krishna temple, Panayanarkavu, Thirukodithanam, Triprayar Sri Rama temple and Trissur Vadakkunathan temple.

Source – Chapter 5, An Introduction to Indian Art Class 11th

Answer – c

• The entrance to the temple which may be a portico or colonnaded hall that incorporates space for a large number of worshippers and is known as a
• From the fifth century CE onwards, freestanding temples tend to have a mountainlike spire, which can take the shape of a curving shikhar in North India and a pyramidal tower, called a vimana, in South India

Source – Chapter 6, An Introduction to Indian Art Class 11th

Answer –

• The temple building activity further gained momentum during the Vijayanagar rule.
• The chief characteristics of the Vijayanagara architecture were the construction of tall Raya Gopurams or gateways and the Kalyanamandapam with carved pillars in the temple premises. The sculptures on the pillars were carved with distinctive features.
• The horse was the most common animal found in these pillars.

Answer – c

Varadharaja and Ekamparanatha temples at Kanchipuram stand as examples for the magnificence of the Vijayanagara style of temple architecture. The Raya Gopurams at Thiruvannamalai and Chidambaram speak the glorious epoch of Vijayanagar. They were continued by the Nayak rulers in the later period.

Answer – b

• We do not really know if Lower Palaeolithic people ever produced any art objects. But by the Upper Palaeolithic times we see a proliferation of artistic activities. In India the earliest paintings have been reported from the Upper Palaeolithic times.
• Remnants of rock paintings have been found on the walls of the caves situated in several districts of Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Bihar. Some
  paintings have been reported from the Kumaon hills in Uttarakhand also

Answer – a

The stone statuaries found at Harappa and Mohenjodaro are excellent examples of handling three dimensional volumes. In stone are two male figures— one is a torso in red sandstone and the other is a bust of a bearded man in steatite—which are extensively discussed.

Answer – c

• The cire-perdu or ‘lost-wax’ process for casting was learnt as long ago as the Indus Valley Culture.
• Along with it was discovered the process of making alloy of metals by mixing copper, zinc and tin which is called bronze

Answer – d

• Chalukya king, Mangalesha, patronised the excavation of the Badami caves.
• The inscription in Cave No.4 mentions the date 578–579 CE, describes the beauty of the cave and includes the dedication of the image of Vishnu. Thus it may be presumed that the cave was excavated in the same era and the patron records his Vaishnava affiliation.
• The sinuously drawn lines, fluid forms and compact composition exemplify the proficiency and maturity the artists had achieved in the sixth century CE. The gracefully drawn faces of the king and the queen remind us of the style of modelling in Ajanta

Answer – d

• The word ‘Veda’ is derived from the root ‘vid’, which means to know. In other words, the term ‘Veda’ signifies ‘superior knowledge’. The Vedic literature consists of the four Vedas – Rig, Yajur, Sama and Atharva.
• The Rig Veda is the earliest of the four Vedas and it consists of 1028 hymns. The hymns were sung in praise of various gods.
• The Yajur Veda consists of various details of rules to be observed at the time of sacrifice.
• The Sama Veda is set to tune for the purpose of chanting during sacrifice. It is called the book of chants and the origins of Indian music are traced in it.
• The Atharva Veda contains details of rituals.

Answer – c

During the Rig Vedic period, the Aryans were mostly confined to the Indus region. The Rig Veda refers to Saptasindhu or the land of seven rivers. This includes the five rivers of Punjab, namely Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Beas and Sutlej along with the Indus and Saraswathi.

Answer – a

The basic unit of political organization was kula or family. Several families joined together on the basis of their kinship to form a village or grama. The leader of grama was known as gramani. A group of villages constituted a larger unit called visu. It was headed by vishayapati. The highest political unit was called jana or tribe. There were several tribal kingdoms during the Rig Vedic period such as Bharatas, Matsyas, Yadus and Purus. The head of the kingdom was called as rajan or king.

Solution: a)

Statement 1: This division became the basis for caste discrimination later. Brahamanas were awarded with the highest occupations whereas the shudras with menial jobs which was socially and economically exploitative.
Statement 2: Kshatriyas were to engage in warfare, protect people and administer justice, study the Vedas, get sacrifices performed, and make gifts.
The Vaishyas were expected to engage in agriculture, pastoralism and trade.