South India: Pallavas, Pandyas and the imperial Cholas

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.

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. 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.

• Pairs 1 and 3 are correctly matched and pair 2 is not, so the official answer is (c).
• Pair 1 is correct: Cave 26 at Ajanta, a chaitya hall of the Vakataka phase, carries on its left wall the great reclining Mahaparinirvana image of the Buddha, some seven metres long, with celestial beings rendered in the space above the figure and the grieving disciples below, the contrast between serene detachment above and human grief below being the point of the composition.
• Pair 3 is correct: the vast open-air relief at Mamallapuram, carved on two adjoining granite boulders under the Pallavas in the seventh century, is variously read as Arjuna's penance for the Pasupata weapon or as the descent of the Ganga, the natural cleft between the boulders serving as the course of the river.
• Pair 2 is incorrect: the celebrated Varaha panel showing the boar incarnation raising Bhudevi from the waters is at Udayagiri near Vidisha in Madhya Pradesh, a Gupta period rock-cut site of about the early fifth century, and is read as an allegory of Chandragupta II's conquests. Mount Abu is famous for something else entirely, the Dilwara Jain temples with their marble ceilings and pillars, which belong to the eleventh to thirteenth centuries and are architecture rather than narrative relief. The item is decided on pair 2, and rejecting it removes (a) and (d).