The Gupta empire

• Statement 1 is correct, since the copper plate grant of the Gurjara ruler Dadda III issued from the Sankheda or Mankani area of Gujarat and dated to the Chedi year corresponding to AD 595 to 596 carries a date written in decimal place-value notation and is conventionally cited as the earliest epigraphic instance in India.
• Statement 2 is correct, because from the ninth century onward place-value dating with the decimal figures becomes routine in inscriptions across northern, western and southern India rather than exceptional.
• Statement 3 is correct, since Sanskrit and old Khmer inscriptions from Cambodia, Sumatra and neighbouring regions carry place-value numerals from the later seventh century, the Cambodian inscription of the year corresponding to AD 683 with a symbol for zero being the standard example. All three are therefore correct and (d) follows. (a), (b) and (c) each discard one statement that the epigraphic record supports.

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.

• Pair 1 is incorrect. Devichandraguptam is a Sanskrit play attributed to Vishakhadatta, who also wrote Mudrarakshasa. Bilhana wrote the Vikramankadevacharita in praise of the Chalukya Vikramaditya the Sixth.
• Pair 2 is correct. Hammira Mahakavya was composed by the Jaina scholar Nayachandra Suri in the fifteenth century on Hammira of Ranthambhor.
• Pair 3 is incorrect. Milindapanha is a Pali dialogue between the Indo Greek king Menander and the monk Nagasena, and it is Nagasena rather than Nagarjuna who is the interlocutor. Nagarjuna was the Madhyamaka philosopher of a later period, and the similarity of the two names is the trap.
• Pair 4 is correct. Nitivakyamrita is a work on polity by Somadeva Suri, author also of Yashastilaka. Two pairs match, giving (b).

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).

Both terms are units of land measurement recorded in Gupta period copper plate grants from Bengal, including the Damodarpur plates. They are sowing capacity measures, the area sown by one kulya or one drona of seed respectively, which is why the vapa suffix, meaning sowing, attaches to each. Hence (a).

• Option (b) is wrong because the coin denominations of the period are dinara, rupaka and karshapana.
• Option (c) is wrong on two counts, since these are agrarian measures applied to cultivated rural land, not a classification of urban plots; vastu terms cover the latter.
• Option (d) is wrong because the terms carry no ritual meaning. The wider significance is that seed capacity measurement, rather than area measurement, indicates the agrarian and localised character of the early medieval land grant economy.

All three are coastal sites and all three appear in the record of maritime commerce, giving (a). Ghantasala lies in the Krishna delta of Andhra Pradesh and served the eastern seaboard trade with Southeast Asia, its Buddhist stupa reflecting the association of merchants with the sangha. Kadura is a port of the western Deccan coast named in the classical accounts of Indian Ocean trade. Chaul lies on the Konkan coast south of Mumbai and remained an active port from the early centuries of the common era down to the Portuguese period.

• Option (b) is wrong because none was a dynastic capital, the Gupta and contemporary capitals being Pataliputra, Ujjain, Vatapi and Kanchi.
• Option (c) is wrong because these are commercial rather than monumental sites.
• Option (d) is wrong because, although Ghantasala carries Buddhist remains, that is incidental to the common feature the question asks for, and Chaul and Kadura are not pilgrimage centres.

• Option (a) is correct. Vishti was unpaid labour exacted by the state from the rural population, and in Gupta period sources it is treated as a fiscal claim on the subject alongside bhaga and bhoga, that is, as a form of tax rendered in labour rather than in kind or coin. It was a resource of the state and was frequently transferred to donees along with land grants, which is precisely why it appears in the grant charters.
• Option (b) is incorrect. The epigraphic evidence points the other way. Vishti is attested in central India and in the Kathiawar region, and the Gupta and post Gupta land grants of western and central India are among the principal sources for its existence.
• Option (c) is incorrect and is self contradictory. Labour that carries a wage entitlement is not forced labour; the defining feature of vishti is that it was unremunerated.
• Option (d) is incorrect. There is no evidence of any rule designating the eldest son as the person liable; the obligation fell on the village or the household generally and was levied as required. The elimination route runs through option (c), whose internal contradiction is visible without any Gupta specific knowledge, and then through the implausibility of the absolute claim in (b).