Medieval Indian History Mixed Practice — MCQs with Answers (Set 5)

Majumdar proposes that military prominence helped create Bappa’s founder reputation. The Guhila family already existed.

The key reverses the assumption that founding the family first produced the military reputation. Bappa could become a founding hero within an older lineage.

Majumdar does not reject every connection between Bappa and Arab resistance. Majumdar allows a historical basis for the military tradition.

The argument is a reconstruction. It does not make both the military narrative and founder status equally certain recorded facts.

Read Majumdar’s founder argument and Somani’s coalition reconstruction.

Sources: Majumdar: Ancient India, p. 299 · IGNOU: Arab invasions, Unit 4

This biography comes from the Ekalinga Mahatmya, written centuries after Bappa Rawal’s traditional era, not from any contemporary source.

An honorific is a plausible interpretation, rather than an agreed identification. “Bappa” has been understood as a father-like term.

A respectful label need not identify one personal name. That could help explain conflicting matches within the Guhila lineage.

However, Somani disputes the conclusion that Bappa was merely an appellation. The explanation remains debated.

The other choices do not explain the evidence. The argument concerns one lineage, which contained several rulers.

Names can also recur across generations. Read why the honorific interpretation of Bappa remains uncertain.

Sources: Somani: the name Bappa · Sinha: father figure and legends

The evidence gives different genealogical clues. The Atpur list omits Bappa’s name, while the Eklingji inscription records Bappaka within the Guhila family.

Historians therefore compare Bappa with named kings such as Kalabhoja, Shiladitya and Khumana. The disagreement concerns identification within the lineage.

The claim that every inscription omits Bappa is too broad. The Eklingji record also rules out the suggestion that mentions began only after 1900.

Compare the methods in Bappa Rawal’s competing identities and inscription evidence.

Sources: Bhandarkar: Atpur genealogy · Somani: competing identities

The Guhila dynasty of Mewar is the correct association. Bappaka appears within the Guhila family in the Eklingji inscription.

The Pratihara choice is tempting because Nagabhata I belongs to the wider Arab-resistance setting. Shared military circumstances do not make Bappa a Pratihara ruler.

The Chalukya and Rashtrakuta choices name other dynasties. Neither replaces Bappa’s recorded Guhila association.

Connect the dynasty with its later history through Rana Kumbha and later Sisodia Mewar.

Sources: Bhandarkar: Guhila epigraphy · Somani: dynasty and campaigns

Krishnadevaraya’s Rajaguru is the traditional description of Vyasatirtha’s relationship with the Vijayanagara ruler. Rajaguru means a royal spiritual teacher, rather than a military commander or finance minister.

Vyasatirtha was an influential Madhva religious leader who received royal patronage. His role involved religious authority and teaching rather than one clearly defined modern government office.

The question presents 1525 as certain, but the initiation year should be treated as a traditional date. A dated 1526 land grant establishes a connection involving Purandaradasa’s sons and Vyasatirtha.

That record does not independently establish the exact initiation year. Review Vyasatirtha and the historical evidence.

Read the Krishnadeva Raya lesson for the ruler and his wider cultural setting.

Scholars treat these persecution stories as later legends that voice the perspective of the poor and powerless, not confirmed events. There is no real corroborating evidence, and it is historically unlikely a Muslim Sultan would take orders from Hindu Brahmins, as some versions claim.

Tradition says both Hindu and Muslim followers claimed Kabir’s body for their own funeral rites. When they lifted the shroud, they found only flowers, which the two groups then divided between them.

Historians favour two main ranges for Kabir’s life: roughly 1398 to 1448, or roughly 1440 to 1518. The exact years remain genuinely disputed, not settled fact.

Soldiers from Alauddin’s former bodyguard establishment killed Kafur. His regency collapsed during the struggle surrounding the imprisoned prince Mubarak.

This was a palace crisis, rather than a defeat by a southern army. The Yadava option confuses his earlier campaigns with his later fall.

Barani and Isami give his ascendancy 35 days. Firishta gives 25 days, making “roughly a month” a useful qualified description.

Kafur neither ruled for a decade nor quietly retired. Mubarak became regent after his death and later became sultan.

Review why Kafur’s regency collapsed so quickly.

Sources: Lal: Kafur’s death, pp. 321–322 · Barani: regent’s death, p. 210

Kafur installed Shihabuddin Omar as a child sultan. He governed as regent in the child’s name.

Declaring himself sultan is the confusing alternative. Kafur sought control of government without openly taking the child’s throne.

He had older princes Khizr Khan and Shadi Khan blinded. Mubarak Khan was imprisoned.

Those actions make restoring Khizr Khan inconsistent with the succession he arranged. Fleeing Delhi would also contradict his attempt to control the court.

The distinction is between the formal holder of the throne and the person exercising power.

Follow Shihabuddin, Kafur and the succession crisis of 1316.

Sources: Lal: interregnum, pp. 319–322 · Barani: succession, pp. 208–210

Guru Nanak passed over his own sons for Guru Angad in 1539. Guru Angad did the same in 1552, choosing his disciple Amar Das over his sons Dasu and Datu, establishing merit-based succession as a real pattern, not a one-off.

Mata Khivi, Guru Angad’s wife, ran the langar at Khadur Sahib, serving food to all who came regardless of caste or status.

Gurmukhi did not appear from nothing. Guru Angad standardised the existing Landa merchant shorthand, adding vowel marking and a fixed letter order, making it precise enough for scripture.

Guru Nanak renamed Lehna “Angad” from “Ang,” a limb, signalling that he was now treated as an extension of the Guru himself.

Guru Nanak chose his disciple Lehna over his own sons Sri Chand and Lakhmi Das, an early precedent for merit-based succession in Sikhism.

Nur Jahan built the Tomb of I’timad-ud-Daulah for her parents, between 1622 and 1628. Its white marble and inlay work anticipate the Taj Mahal.

Most of what is known comes from Jonaraja and Shrivara, whom the Sultan supported with land grants and financial backing. Their chronicles are detailed and valuable, but they are court history written by beneficiaries, so a favourable verdict on their patron is exactly what one would expect.

He brought craftsmen and teachers from Central Asia and Iran, especially Samarkand. Rag-based paper-making replaced the older Kashmiri practice of writing on birch bark. These crafts still define Kashmiri artisanal work today.

Jonaraja wrote the Dvitiya Rajatarangini, continuing Kalhana’s chronicle down to his patron’s own reign, and Shrivara carried it further in the Tritiya Rajatarangini (1459-1486). The Katha-Kautuka was real but was Shrivara’s Sanskrit translation of Jami’s Persian poem Yusuf u Zulaikha, not an original epic.

He abolished the jizya on non-Muslims, encouraged Hindus who had fled his father’s reign to return, restored stipends to Brahmins, and permitted temples destroyed under Sikandar to be rebuilt. This record is why he is often called the ‘Akbar of Kashmir’.

Governor Mahabat Khan seized Jahangir’s camp on the Jhelum river. Nur Jahan was captured too, but escaped and rescued them both.

Correct: Budshah, meaning the Great King. Butshikan, the iconoclast, was the title of his father Sikandar.

She could issue farmans under her own seal. Only the khutbah, naming the reigning monarch, was never read in her name.

She married Jahangir in 1611, becoming his twentieth and final wife, and was then given the title Nur Jahan.