Ancient Indian History Mixed Practice — MCQs with Answers (Set 9)

Kashi’s capital was Varanasi. Tradition, recorded in the Matsya Purana, says the name comes from two rivers, the Varuna and the Asi.

Madho Sarup Vats carried on the excavation of Harappa from 1926 to 1934, following Daya Ram Sahni’s initial 1920–21 seasons that first established the site’s antiquity.

Cemetery H, dated to roughly 1900–1300 BCE, shows different pottery and burial customs from the earlier Cemetery R-37. This points to a gradual cultural shift after urban decline, not a sudden, violent end.

Mound F held the Great Granary: two parallel rows of six brick platforms, thought to have stored grain collected as tax or tribute, positioned near the river for easy unloading.

British engineers building the Lahore–Multan railway used thousands of fire-baked bricks from Harappa’s mounds as track ballast, destroying much of the original site before any proper excavation.

The answer is Alexander Cunningham. He visited Harappa in 1853 and 1856 and made a small excavation in 1872. He found pottery, chert blades and a seal, and called the seal foreign to India. Why the others fail: John Marshall announced the civilisation in 1924. R.D. Banerji worked at Mohenjodaro. Mortimer Wheeler dug at Harappa in the 1940s. Memory hook: Cunningham came first and missed the clue.

Historians divide the civilisation’s history into three broad phases: Early Harappan, Mature Harappan, and Late Harappan.

The Indus Valley Civilisation is credited among the earliest known cultivators of cotton, later one of the region’s most historically significant crops.

The Indus Valley people cultivated wheat and barley as staple grain crops, forming the basis of the civilisation’s agricultural economy.

The Late Harappan phase shows reduced planning and a weakening of the earlier standardisation seen at the civilisation’s peak.

The Mature Harappan phase is when the civilisation reached its peak, fully developing standardised bricks, the Great Bath, and planned cities.

Many terracotta figurines depicting animals and human figures in playful poses are widely interpreted by archaeologists as children’s toys.

Terracotta toy carts with working wheels suggest wheeled transport was already a familiar, everyday part of Indus life.

The Priest-King’s exact identity and role remain unknown, with no confirmed evidence of its actual religious or political significance.

The Dancing Girl bronze statue found at Mohenjodaro was made using the lost-wax casting technique.

The stone pillars’ survival versus the wooden palace’s near-total loss shows how much our historical picture of an empire depends on which materials happened to endure, not necessarily on which structures were originally most significant or grand.

The Didarganj Yakshi shows the same glass-like Mauryan polish seen on Ashoka’s pillars. Its discovery near Patna shows how much Mauryan-era art likely still lies buried or lost, with what survives today representing only a fraction of the original output.

Because Pataliputra’s palace was built mainly of wood, very little of the original structure survives today. Most of what is known about it comes from archaeological remains and from written accounts like Megasthenes’s, rather than from the building itself.

This mirror-smooth finish is a technical skill not fully replicated in later Indian stonework. It is a reminder that craft skill in ancient traditions does not always improve in a straight line — some techniques can be lost even as later periods develop other new skills.

Around thirty such pillars were erected across the Mauryan Empire. Each carried Ashoka’s edicts on morality, governance, and Buddhist teaching, making them among the earliest large-scale public inscriptions in Indian history.

The correct answer is a place-value number system. Aryabhata’s Dasagitika stanzas give his numerical notation. That notation is the part of the Aryabhatiya this question points to.

The correct answer is the tridosha theory (vata, pitta, kapha). A 2020 NTA paper asks about a theory of medicine revolving around tridosha. Ancient Indian physicians built their medicine on this balance idea.

The correct answer is Kayachikitsa (internal medicine). The Samhita treats disease through medicine. Surgery belongs to the Sushruta Samhita.