Insights Static Quiz -82, 2018 –Culture

Answer – c

• In the uttara Adhunika (post-modern) era the effort is to be natural, to be Indian, to be near to the common man, to be socially conscious. The third generation of Malayalam writers like N. Prabhakaran, and P. Surendran prefer the term anti-modernism to post-modernism and are content simply to narrate human tales without any explicit social message or philosophical pretensions. The modernist idea that anything simple should not be accepted is now questioned. It is established now that simple texts may present complex extra-textual structures
• The central tension experienced by the vast majority of contemporary Indian novelists is that of transition from the rural and traditional to an urban and post-modern situation, expressed either through a romantic nostalgia for the village left behind, or through fear and hatred of the cruel impersonal city, with all its sex, horror, murder and cruelty. Birendra Kumar Bhattacharya (Assamese), Sunil Gangopadhyay (Bengali), Pannalal patel (Gujarati), Mannu Bhandari (Hindi), Nayantara Sahgal (English), V. Bedekar (Marathi), Samaresh Basu (Bengali) and others, with their rural-urban sensitivity, have portrayed the Indian experience in its totality.
• In the contemporary Indian novels by Jayamohan (Tamil), Debes Ray (Bengali) and Shivprasad Singh (Hindi), dealing with various neglected regions, and the spoken dialect of that area, a composite picture of a total India, pulsating with new experience and struggling to hold on to the old values, and in the process sometimes discarding them, is also easily discernible. These regional novelists have forcefully demolished the myths created by the western Indologists that Indianness is just fatalism

Source – CCRT Literature

GS 1 – Art and culture – Literature

• Modern Indian literature genre and strands can be asked

Answer – d

• The art of bronze-casting was practised on a wide scale by the Harappans. Their bronze statues were made using the ‘lost wax’ technique in which the wax figures were first covered with a coating of clay and allowed to dry. Then the wax was heated and the molten wax was drained out through a tiny hole made in the clay cover. The hollow mould thus created was filled with molten metal which took the original shape of the object. Once the metal cooled, the clay cover was completely removed.
• In bronze we find human as well as animal figures, the best example of the former being the statue of a girl popularly titled ‘Dancing Girl’. Amongst animal figures in bronze the buffalo with its uplifted head, back and sweeping horns and the goat are of artistic merit. Bronze casting was popular at all the major centres of the Indus Valley Civilisation.
• The copper dog and bird of Lothal and the bronze figure of a bull from Kalibangan are in no way inferior to the human figures of copper and bronze from Harappa and Mohenjodar
• The late Harappan and Chalcolithic sites like Daimabad in Maharashtra yielded excellent examples of metal-casting.

Source – Chapter – 2, An Introduction to Indian Art, Class 11^th

GS 1 – Art and Culture – Architecture

• Under the mentioned heading, a question can be asked on the evolution of metal casting through different periods in ancient India (Note that the technique is still used in many parts of the country, particularly tribals). We will be covering other examples in subsequent tests

Answer – a

• From the second century BCE onwards, we get many inscriptional evidences mentioning donors and, at times, their profession.
• The pattern of patronage has been a very collective one and there are very few examples of royal patronage. Patrons range from lay devotees to gahapatis and kings. Donations by the guilds are also mentioned at several sites.
• However, there are very few inscriptions mentioning the names of artisans such as Kanha at Pitalkhora and his disciple Balaka at Kondane caves. Artisans’ categories like stone carvers, goldsmiths, stone-polishers, carpenters, etc. are also mentioned in the inscriptions.

Source – Chapter – 3, An Introduction to Indian Art, Class 11^th

GS 1 – Art and Culture – Architecture

• The fusion of Indian society at that time with the ideas of Buddhism is worth appreciating as the share of the public is increasing with royal patronage decaling.

Answer – a

• In Guntapalle in Eluru district, the caves have been excavated in the hills along with the structured monasteries. Perhaps it is among the very unique sites where the structured stupas, viharas and the caves are excavated at one place.
• The Guntapalle chaitya cave is circular with a stupa in the circular hall and a chaitya arch carved at the entrance. The cave is relatively small when compared to the caves in western India. A number of vihara caves have been excavated.
• Details about other mentioned caves will be covered subsequently

Source – Chapter – 4, An Introduction to Indian Art, Class 11^th

^{Answer – c}

• The earliest examples of caves in Odhisa are the Udaigiri-Khandagiri caves in the vicinity of Bhubaneswar.
• These caves are scattered and have inscriptions of Kharavela kings.
• According to the inscriptions, the caves were meant for Jain monks.
• There are numerous single-cell excavations. Some have been carved in huge independent boulders and given the shape of animals.

Source – Chapter – 4, An Introduction to Indian Art, Class 11^th

GS 1 – Art and Culture – Architecture

• There can be a question on cave tradition in Eastern India. Other prominent sites like Rampaerrampallam, Anakapalli, Guntapalle are also in Western India.

Answer – c

• Ancient temples of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan share many traits. The most visible is that they are made of sandstone. Some of the oldest surviving structural temples from the Gupta Period are in Madhya Pradesh. Keep in mind that Rajasthan is the region of sandstones ( Refer to Class 12^th Indian people and economy)
• The hills had their own tradition of wooden buildings with pitched roofs. At several places in the hills, therefore, you will find that while the main garbhagriha and shikhara are made in a rekha-prasada or latina style, the mandapa is of an older form of wooden architecture. Sometimes, the temple itself takes on a pagoda shape

GS 1 – Art and culture – architecture

• Temple tradition of hills can be asked specifically