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Quiz about Mahabharata  Kingship Knows No Kinship
Quiz about Mahabharata  Kingship Knows No Kinship

Mahabharata - Kingship Knows No Kinship! Quiz


Mahabharata is one of the greatest epics of all times. It has been critically analysed, microscopically examined, and narrated again and again by scholars and writers. I have always been fascinated by this tale. Here is my take on it.

A multiple-choice quiz by anubhav1990. Estimated time: 6 mins.
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Author
anubhav1990
Time
6 mins
Type
Multiple Choice
Quiz #
328,402
Updated
Dec 03 21
# Qns
10
Difficulty
Tough
Avg Score
6 / 10
Plays
1559
Awards
Top 20% Quiz
Last 3 plays: Guest 106 (6/10), Guest 104 (10/10), Guest 157 (6/10).
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Question 1 of 10
1. "The foreign reader...is at once struck by two features: in the first place its unity in complexity; and, in the second, its constant efforts to impress on its hearers the idea of a single centralized India, with a heroic tradition of her own as formative and uniting impulse." Who wrote this about the Mahabharata? Hint


Question 2 of 10
2. Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Karl Ferdinand Freiherr von Humboldt, the architect of the Prussian education system, and founder of Humboldt University in Berlin, said this of which part of the Mahabharata: "the most beautiful, perhaps the only true philosophical song existing in any known tongue"? Hint


Question 3 of 10
3. According to Wikipedia, "with about one hundred thousand verses, long prose passages, or about 1.8 million words in total, the Mahabharata" (or the Satasahasri Samhita) "is roughly ten times the length of the Iliad and Odyssey combined, or about four times the length of the Ramayana", and over three times as long as the Bible.

According to the Mahabharata itself, the tale is extended from a shorter version of 24,000 verses, which in turn has been extended from an even shorter version consisting of only 8800 verses and called 'Jaya', or the collection dealing with 'victory'.

What is the middle version, forming the core of the Mahabharata, called?
Hint


Question 4 of 10
4. Webster's New World College Dictionary, Fourth Edition, defines 'bastard' as a person born of parents not married to each other. Which of these characters of the Mahabharata was NOT a bastard according to the story? Hint


Question 5 of 10
5. Who among these had exactly one wife? Hint


Question 6 of 10
6. Which one of these married his first cousin? Hint


Question 7 of 10
7. There are hundreds of characters in Mahabharata, but we hear only about a select few. For instance who knows of all the 29 sons of Duryodhana, or of the various wives of Arjuna?

Which unusual novel, based on the Mahabharata, by Devdutt Pattanaik, and published by Penguins Book India, tells the story of seven characters: Yuvanashva, a childless king, who accidentally drinks a magic potion meant to make his queens pregnant and gives birth to a son; Yuvanashva's mother Shilavati, who cannot be king because she is a woman; young Somvat, who surrenders his genitals to become a wife; Shikhandi, a daughter brought up as a son, who fathers a child with a borrowed penis; Arjuna, the great warrior with many wives, who is forced to masquerade as a woman after being castrated by a nymph; Ileshwara, a god on full-moon days and a goddess on new-moon nights; and Adi-natha, the teacher of teachers, worshipped as a hermit by some and as an enchantress by others?
Hint


Question 8 of 10
8. How did Dhritarashtra, Gandhari and Kunti come to their end? Hint


Question 9 of 10
9. According to the Mahabharata's Adi Parva ('adi' means 'first') or The Book of the Beginning, Bharata was born to King Dushyanta and Shakuntala and was thus a descendant of the Lunar Dynasty (Chandra Vansh) of the Kshatriya caste (kings and warriors).

He was originally named Sarvadamana (subduer of all); it was only later that he came to be known as Bharata ("the cherished").

The love story of King Dushyanta and Shakuntala along with the childhood exploits of Bharata is dramatized in what is considered to be one of the best 100 literary works in the world: 'Abhijnanashakuntalam' or 'The Recognition of Shakuntala'.

Which great poet of the Gupta period wrote this play, originally in Sanskrit?
Hint


Question 10 of 10
10. What was the condition which had to be fulfilled by the suitors at Draupadi's swayamvara (self-choice ceremony) to win her hand in marriage? Hint



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Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts
1. "The foreign reader...is at once struck by two features: in the first place its unity in complexity; and, in the second, its constant efforts to impress on its hearers the idea of a single centralized India, with a heroic tradition of her own as formative and uniting impulse." Who wrote this about the Mahabharata?

Answer: Sister Nivedita (Margaret Elizabeth Noble)

Jawaharlal Nehru (the first Indian Prime Minister) has written in his book 'The Discovery of India': "In the Mahabharata, a very definite attempt has been made to emphasize the fundamental unity of India, or Bharatvarsha (the land of Bharata) as it was called, from Bharata, the legendary founder of the race," (the people were called Bharatasantati or the descendants of Bharata.)
India does indeed show a deep underlying unity in spite of great diversity.

The quotation given in the question has been taken from 'A Source Book in Indian Philosophy' by Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, OM, FBA. He was the first Indian Vice-President and went on to become the second President. It is his birthday which is commemorated by the Indian Teacher's Day celebrated every year on the fifth of September throughout the country since 1962.

Sister Nivedita was an Anglo-Irish disciple of Swami Vivekananda. The word 'nivedita' literally means "dedicated to God" in Hindi.
2. Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Karl Ferdinand Freiherr von Humboldt, the architect of the Prussian education system, and founder of Humboldt University in Berlin, said this of which part of the Mahabharata: "the most beautiful, perhaps the only true philosophical song existing in any known tongue"?

Answer: Bhagavad Gita

The Bhagavad Gita, more simply known as Gita, is a sacred Hindu scripture, just like the Quran is the central religious verbal text of Islam. Ramayana is the other great Indian epic.

The Gita consists of approximately 700 verses. Like the rest of the Mahabharata, it too was authored by Ved Vyas in Sanskrit.

It teaches that a person must carry out the duties assigned to him by his caste and rank under all circumstances without any desire for reward. It propagates the 'karma theory', i.e. Do your best and forget the rest.

As a Sanskrit student, I studied some of the more popular verses of the Gita itself in eighth grade.
Even today in many an Indian court, the eyewitness is made to swear upon the Gita, "Whatever I'll say will be the truth. Apart from the truth, I'll say nothing else."
Interestingly, nowadays, though many Hindu Indian households have a copy of the Gita with them, they don't like to keep the entire Mahabharata because of the belief that it will lead to a fratricidal war in their homes.
3. According to Wikipedia, "with about one hundred thousand verses, long prose passages, or about 1.8 million words in total, the Mahabharata" (or the Satasahasri Samhita) "is roughly ten times the length of the Iliad and Odyssey combined, or about four times the length of the Ramayana", and over three times as long as the Bible. According to the Mahabharata itself, the tale is extended from a shorter version of 24,000 verses, which in turn has been extended from an even shorter version consisting of only 8800 verses and called 'Jaya', or the collection dealing with 'victory'. What is the middle version, forming the core of the Mahabharata, called?

Answer: Bharata

The Bharatas were one of the earliest Vedic tribes.

In the first half of the first millennium B.C., they combined with the other major tribe, that of the Purus, and thus formed the Kuru people.

Gradually they coalesced with a people called the Panchalas.

Both the Kauravas and the Pandavas belonged to the Kuru clan, and the battle between them is the main theme of the Mahabharata.
4. Webster's New World College Dictionary, Fourth Edition, defines 'bastard' as a person born of parents not married to each other. Which of these characters of the Mahabharata was NOT a bastard according to the story?

Answer: Parikshit

Parikshit (the one who has been tested) was born to Abhimanyu (Arjun's son) and his lawfully wedded wife Uttara, the Matsya princess. It is unfortunate that the poor chap was born only after the death of his courageous father.

Ved Vyas (the one who split the vedas), also known as Badarayana, was the offspring of a fisher-woman (Satyavati) seduced by a traveling sage (Parashar). Apart from being the author of the Mahabharata, he is an important character himself.

Pandu was born to Ambalika after the death of her husband Vichitravirya (a name of staggering simplicity, don't you think!). It may be prudent to point out here that at the time of the death, she was not pregnant. Pandu was actually fathered by Rishi Ved Vyas, on the express command of his mother Satyavati, whose daughter-in-law was Ambalika.

Karna was born to Kunti, Pandu's wife, before her marriage. He was the son of Surya (the Sun god).

Theirs is a complicated family tree, no doubt about that!
5. Who among these had exactly one wife?

Answer: Dhritarashtra

Dhritarashtra, Hastinapur's king at the time of the great war, had only one wife, Gandhari, but she bore him a hundred sons and a daughter. Moreover, when his wife was in an advanced state of pregnancy, he conceived another son (Yuyutsu) with his maid servant.

Shantanu, the youngest son of King Pratipa of Hastinapur, had two wives: Ganga (Bhishma's mother) and Satyavati (mother of Chitrangad and Vichitravirya); though, to his credit, only one at a time.

Bhishma (he of the terrible oath) had vowed life-long celibacy and he honoured that vow till his last days (as opposed to Pandu, upon whom celibacy had been enforced by Rishi Kindam's curse and who still couldn't control himself, which ultimately led to his death.) Consequently, Bhishma had no wife, because of which he even succeeded in making Amba (reborn as Shikhandi) his arch-rival.

I hope you didn't answer 'Arjuna' because he was the most 'adventurous' of all. He had more than forty main wives (lucky fellow!).

Apparently, polygamy was a done thing during those times. It was only in the nineteenth century that some Indian reformers like Raja Ram Mohun Roy tried to rid the society of this practise.
6. Which one of these married his first cousin?

Answer: Arjuna

That's right, folks! Arjuna's fourth wife was Subhadra. Arjuna's mother was Kunti. Subhadra was Lord Krishna's sister. Krishna's biological father was Vasudev, who himself was the son of King Shurasena. Vasudev and Kunti were themselves real siblings.

In fact, when Pandu died, Vasudev even invited Kunti along with her sons and those of Madri (who committed sati and was burnt alive with her husband Pandu's dead body) to his palace (by that time Kamsa had been vanquished by Krishna), but they went back to Hastinapur, where they rightfully belonged, or else this war wouldn't have taken place at all.

Krishna used to call Kunti (Pritha) as 'bua' which is the Hindi term for maternal aunt.

That's why Krishna became a charioteer for Parth (Arjuna) during the war; not only was he his first cousin but also his brother-in-law. Another reason was that Indra (Arjuna's actual father) had requested Krishna to look after his child and Krishna had acquiesced.

It is indeed ironic that the Hindu Marriage Act bars marriage for five generations on the father's side and three on the mother's side.
7. There are hundreds of characters in Mahabharata, but we hear only about a select few. For instance who knows of all the 29 sons of Duryodhana, or of the various wives of Arjuna? Which unusual novel, based on the Mahabharata, by Devdutt Pattanaik, and published by Penguins Book India, tells the story of seven characters: Yuvanashva, a childless king, who accidentally drinks a magic potion meant to make his queens pregnant and gives birth to a son; Yuvanashva's mother Shilavati, who cannot be king because she is a woman; young Somvat, who surrenders his genitals to become a wife; Shikhandi, a daughter brought up as a son, who fathers a child with a borrowed penis; Arjuna, the great warrior with many wives, who is forced to masquerade as a woman after being castrated by a nymph; Ileshwara, a god on full-moon days and a goddess on new-moon nights; and Adi-natha, the teacher of teachers, worshipped as a hermit by some and as an enchantress by others?

Answer: The Pregnant King

It is perhaps rightly said about the Mahabharata that "What is found here, may be found elsewhere. What is not found here, will not be found elsewhere."

P.S. - The book review given in the question is referenced from hindu-blog. The book was published in 2008.
8. How did Dhritarashtra, Gandhari and Kunti come to their end?

Answer: They died in a forest fire.

After the end of the battle, the Pandavas ruled Hastinapur for some time with Dhritarashtra as their head. Later, Dhritarashtra, along with his wife Gandhari and his sister-in-law Kunti (mother of the Pandavas) left the kingdom to go live in a hermitage in the mighty Himalayas. It was there that they died in a forest fire, and thus came to a tragic end.

The Mahabharata is divided into 18 books (parvas) concerning an 18-day war among 18 armies. The fifteenth parva, called the Ashramavasika Parva or The Book of the Hermitage, contains an elaborate description of the state of the affairs of Dhritarashtra, Gandhari and Kunti after the end of the great battle at Kurukshetra.
9. According to the Mahabharata's Adi Parva ('adi' means 'first') or The Book of the Beginning, Bharata was born to King Dushyanta and Shakuntala and was thus a descendant of the Lunar Dynasty (Chandra Vansh) of the Kshatriya caste (kings and warriors). He was originally named Sarvadamana (subduer of all); it was only later that he came to be known as Bharata ("the cherished"). The love story of King Dushyanta and Shakuntala along with the childhood exploits of Bharata is dramatized in what is considered to be one of the best 100 literary works in the world: 'Abhijnanashakuntalam' or 'The Recognition of Shakuntala'. Which great poet of the Gupta period wrote this play, originally in Sanskrit?

Answer: Kalidasa

Kalidasa can be said to be the Shakespeare of the Sanskrit literature.

He was one of the Nine Jewels or the Navratna, a group of nine who excelled in literary arts, in the court of Chandragupta II or Vikramaditya (the Sun of Power).

Shakuntala herself was the daughter of the sage Vishwamitra and the apsara Menaka. Thus, Vishwamitra happens to be one of the connecting links between the two great epics - Ramayana and Mahabharata.

The play was the first Indian drama to be translated into a Western language, by Sir William Jones in 1789.
10. What was the condition which had to be fulfilled by the suitors at Draupadi's swayamvara (self-choice ceremony) to win her hand in marriage?

Answer: to pick up the bow, hold it, string it, and then use it to shoot the eye of a rotating artificial fish, just by looking at its reflection in oil below

It was Arjuna who managed to fulfill this condition, and won Draupadi's hand in marriage, but then he had to share her with his brothers, due to some misunderstanding.
Source: Author anubhav1990

This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor CellarDoor before going online.
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