Ancient Indian History MCQs

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Samudragupta granted permission to Buddhist king of Ceylon Meghavarman to build a monastery at Bodh Gaya. Samudragupta was a ruler of the Gupta Empire of Ancient India. As a son of the Gupta emperor Chandragupta I and the Licchavi princess Kumaradevi, he greatly expanded his dynasty’s political power.

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Uttar Mimamsa is the Vedanta, one of the most significant of all Indian philosophies. As compared to other systems, its advent and growth is recent. Still it is the most influential orthodox philosophical systems of India.

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Fire, an element of almost equal importance to water, has also played a major role in Indian religion, as an agent of ritual purification and as a means of transmitting offerings to the gods. While water seems to have had a religious significance throughout the Harappan realms, ritual installations involving fire are at present known only from the southern parts, along the Saraswati and in Gujarat. These fire altars were first uncovered at Kalibangan, where one of the platforms in the southern part of the citadel had a row of seven oblong clay-lined pits containing charcoal, ash, and terra-cotta cakes; such cakes were used in kilns to retain heat and perhaps had a similar function in these fire pits. In each pit there was also a cylindrical or faceted clay stele, perhaps representing the lingam (sacred phallus)

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Samudragupta calls himself Lichchavi- dauhitra the son of the daughter of the Lichchavis. The Licchavis were a clan amongst the Vajji Mahajanapada of ancient India.

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The Gupta civilization took pride in its education system and its mathematics in the ancient world. The number system that they created – which is now known as the ‘Arabic’ numeral system, was based on the number zero. The Gupta civilization was also very advanced in herbal medicine.

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Maski inscription at Raichur doab in Karnataka mentions his personal name, Devanam Priyadasi. Maski derives its name from Mahasangha. The site came into prominence with the discovery of a minor rock edict of Emperor Ashoka by C. Beadon in 1915. It was the first edict of Emperor Ashoka that contained the name Ashoka in it instead of the earlier edicts that referred him as Devanampiye piyadasi.

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Utnur is an important Neolithic site located in Adilabad district of Telangana. Ash-mounds, which mystified archeologists, have been discovered at UtnurNote that Ash mounds are also found in Pallavoy (Andhra Pradesh), Kupgal (Karnataka) and Kodekal (Karnataka)

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In south India some people were buried along with their tools, weapons, pottery and other belongings under big and heavy stones. These graves are known as megalithsThe practice of erecting megaliths began about 3000 years ago, and was prevalent throughout the Deccan, south India, in the north-east and Kashmir.These Megalith burials have yielded the first iron objects from south India. Besides these the use of Black and Red ware pottery was also a distinctive feature of the Megalithic people

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Double burials, the practice of burying one male and one female in the same grave, have been evidenced at the Harappan site of Lothal in Gujarat indicating possible family ties. This is in contrast to the primary method of interring the dead individually. The double burial practice was likely not the norm but shows some variance in funeral customs existed. Lothal’s dockyard, bead factories and large warehouse buildings signify its role as a prominent trade center of the maritime Harappan networks.

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The process used in the manufacture of Harappan seals is cutting. The seals were made from a stone called steatite and decorated with animal motifs and undeciphered script characters. Artisans carefully cut and shaped small tablets averaging 2 x 2 square inches to produce the seal face design in intaglio, such that stamp impressions made readable reliefs. Variances in seal iconography and craftsmanship indicate localized stylistic preferences and production across Indus urban workshops rather than mass produced standardized seals.