BharatNotes Why this page is different
The three chapter practice pages tell you which chapter each question comes from, because the heading above it says so. That inflates scores. Knowing a question is about the prehistoric chapter already halves the option space before you have read a single option, and no real paper gives you that.
Here nothing does. Sixty questions in one undifferentiated run, drawn across all three chapters, deliberately arranged so that adjacent questions come from different ones. Several questions put options from different chapters against each other — Bagor beside Rairh, the Bhabru edict beside the Nagar coins, a republic beside a dynasty — because those are the collisions a real paper can exploit and chapter-siloed revision never exposes.
The source chapter is disclosed inside each answer, so it can feed the diagnostic at the foot of the page without giving anything away first.
How to use it: sit all sixty in one go, without looking anything up, and write your answers down before you open a single card. A mixed test taken with the cards open measures nothing.
| Score | What it means |
|---|---|
| 48–60 | Solid. Work only the specific tags you dropped |
| 36–47 | The facts are there and the discriminations are not. The diagnostic below is for you |
| 24–35 | Revise the three chapters before re-sitting this. The chapter practice pages first |
| Below 24 | Read the chapters properly. Questions will not fix a gap this size |
Take the tag on each question seriously — it is what makes the diagnostic work.
The test (Q1–60)
1. Which of these sites stands on the Kothari? Type B · wrong site
Show answer
(c) Bagor. A tributary of the Banas, about 25 km west of Bhilwara. The dune is called Mahasati.
Why not the others: (a) Rairh is on the Dhil Nadi, itself an affluent of the Banas — so two sites in this list sit on Banas tributaries, which is the difficulty; (b) Sunari is on the Kantli, (d) Noh on the Ruparail.
From chapter 1.1
2. Which site stands above the Dhil Nadi? Type B · wrong site
Show answer
(d) Rairh. That is the excavation report's own spelling, not "Dheel". A large bend of it wraps the mounds on three sides.
Why not the others: (a) Bagor is on the Kothari — the mirror of the previous question, and the pair is worth doing together; (b) Gilund is 11.5 km off the right bank of the Banas; (c) Iswal is 20 km north-west of Udaipur.
From chapter 1.2
3. Tambavati is the well-attested epithet of — Type E · weakly sourced
Show answer
(a) Ahar. "Place of copper", alongside the local name Dhulkot.
Why not the others: (b) is the trap and it is a real one: "Tambavati Nagari" circulates in secondary sources, and it collides directly with Ahar's epithet. If a paper offers both, the well-attested Tambavati is Ahar. (c) Nagar's ancient name is Karkota Nagar.
From chapter 1.1 + 1.2
4. Which of these pairs names two genuinely different things? Type C · two names or two things
Show answer
(b) Nagar and Nagari. The Malava centre in Tonk and the Shivi capital in Chittorgarh.
Why not the others: (a), (c) and (d) are all one thing under two spellings — the Calcutta-Bairat edict, the Marwar official, and the site itself. Telling aliases apart from near-identical names for different things is the single most examinable skill in this unit.
From chapter 1.2 + 1.3
5. Which of these is in Hanumangarh district today? District drift
Show answer
(c) Rangmahal. Pilibanga tehsil, confirmed by point-in-polygon against the state GIS layer. Many sources still say Suratgarh, Sri Ganganagar — an artefact of Hanumangarh having been carved out of Sri Ganganagar only in 1994, compounded by the village sitting on the Suratgarh–Hanumangarh road.
Why not the others: (a) Binjor is in Anupgarh tehsil, Sri Ganganagar, which makes it the genuinely difficult distractor here; (b) Tilwara is in Balotra and (d) Nagar in Tonk.
From chapter 1.1 + 1.2
6. Which district was created in 2023 and then abolished in December 2024? District drift
Show answer
(d) Neem Ka Thana. Which is why Ganeshwar is in Sikar again. Rajasthan went from 33 districts to 50 in 2023 and back to 41 in December 2024, and eight of the 2023 creations survived.
Why not the others: (a), (b) and (c) are three of the eight survivors, and they carry Tilwara, Bahaj and Bairath respectively. A district that existed for about eighteen months is exactly the kind of thing a 2026 paper can use.
From chapter 1.1 + 1.2
7. The earliest ploughed field, the earliest recorded earthquake and the earliest surgical operation are all claimed for — Recall
Show answer
(a) Kalibangan. The field and the earthquake both belong to Period I (Early Harappan); the trephination is Skeleton 3 from KLB-8, the cemetery mound.
Why not the others: (b) Balathal's headline is the world's oldest leprosy skeleton; (c) Bahaj's is depth and the pre-Mauryan Brahmi claim; (d) Ganeshwar's is copper. Every option here carries a superlative — the question is which one carries these.
From chapter 1.1
8. The world's oldest documented case of leprosy comes from — Recall
Show answer
(b) Balathal. A male of about 37, buried c. 2500–2000 BCE in a stone enclosure within burned cow dung, showing rhinomaxillary syndrome (PLoS ONE, 2009).
Why not the others: (a) Kalibangan's skeletal claim is the trephination; (c) Noh's famous find is the Yaksha colossus; (d) Bahaj is a 2024 excavation with no such claim.
From chapter 1.1
9. The deepest excavation in Rajasthan's archaeological history is at — Recall
Show answer
(c) Bahaj. About 23 metres, from January 2024 under Vinay Kumar Gupta, in Deeg district.
Why not the others: (b) Ojiyana's 7.5 m is the deepest deposit of any excavated Ahar-culture site, which is a different and much narrower claim — and this pair of superlatives is exactly the kind that gets swapped.
From chapter 1.2
10. The deepest deposit of any excavated Ahar-culture site is at — Recall
Show answer
(d) Ojiyana. About 7.5 m on the northern slope, single culture, three phases.
Why not the others: The mirror of the previous question. If you got one of the two right and the other wrong, the problem is not the numbers — it is that you are storing superlatives without their qualifying clause.
From chapter 1.1
11. Which site yielded Rajasthan's only Ashokan inscriptions? Type B · wrong site
Show answer
(a) Bairath. Two of them, at the modern village of Viratnagar.
Why not the others: This unit has an unusual number of B-names, and each is famous for something different: (b) Barnala for Sahni's two yupa pillars, (c) Barli for the oldest inscription in the state, (d) Baror for the pre-urban to urban Harappan sequence. Add Bagor, Balathal, Bahaj, Binjor, Bhinmal, Bijolia and Badva and you have the single most productive confusion in the whole unit.
From chapter 1.2
12. Which site gave the oldest inscription found in Rajasthan? Type B · wrong site
Show answer
(b) Barli. In Ajmer district — Prakrit, in Brahmi, obtained by G. H. Ojha in 1912, referring to Vira and carrying Vira-nirvana samvat 84. Its date is genuinely disputed: 443 BCE on Ojha's reading, late 2nd century BCE on palaeography.
Why not the others: The same B-cluster as the previous question, deliberately repeated with a different key. If you can survive two of these in a row you have the cluster.
From chapter 1.3
13. Sahni found two complete yupa pillars in a village tank at — Type B · wrong site
Show answer
(c) Barnala. Making Jaipur State's first. He listed those then known: two from Mathura, two from Nandsa, three from Badva.
Why not the others: (a) Badva has three pillars, dated 238 CE, today in Baran; (b) Nandsa is Krta 282 ≈ 225 CE, today in Bhilwara. Both are real yupa sites — but not the one Sahni personally discovered.
From chapter 1.2 + 1.3
14. Which of these is a Mesolithic site? Recall
Show answer
(d) Bagor. Phase I c. 5000–2800 BC, on the Mahasati dune.
Why not the others: (a) Bahaj is a 2024 excavation reaching PGW and Kushan levels; (b) Baror is Harappan; (c) Bijolia is an inscription of 1170 CE, not a site in this sense at all — which is the sharpest way this B-cluster can be used against you.
From chapter 1.1
15. Daya Ram Sahni excavated all of these except — Attribution
Show answer
(a) Gilund. Gilund was excavated in 1959-60 by B. B. Lal, and again by Shinde and Possehl from 1999 to 2005.
Why not the others: Sahni is behind an extraordinary share of this syllabus: Bairath in 1935-36, Sambhar in 1936-38, Rairh from 1938-39 (continued by K. N. Puri after his death), and Nagar in 1938 with Puri. When a question asks who excavated a Rajasthan site, Sahni is the highest-prior answer — which is exactly why the exception is worth knowing.
From chapter 1.1 + 1.2
16. Which archaeologist worked at Ahar, Noh and Jodhpura? Attribution
Show answer
(b) R. C. Agrawala. Ahar from 1952, Noh in 1963-64 and Jodhpura in 1972-73, all for the Rajasthan State Department.
Why not the others: (a) is the Jaipur State cluster; (c) B. B. Lal is Gilund and Kalibangan; (d) Misra is Bagor and Didwana. Four excavators, four distinct territories — learn them as territories, not as names.
From chapter 1.1 + 1.2
17. The Swedish expedition under Dr Hanna Rydh excavated — Attribution
Show answer
(c) Rangmahal. 1952-54, and it is why the whole ceramic style is called the Rang Mahal culture — a rare instance of a foreign expedition defining an Indian regional culture.
Why not the others: (b) Noh's foreign collaboration was different and is almost never carried: its 1963-64 season ran with the Art Department of the University of California under Professor J. LeRoy Davidson.
From chapter 1.2
18. Noh's 1963-64 season was conducted in collaboration with — Attribution
Show answer
(d) The University of California. Under Professor J. LeRoy Davidson, with R. C. Agrawala directing. Cutting A gave a 13.50 m deposit through five periods.
Why not the others: (a) Deccan College was one of the three institutions at Bagor; (b) the Swedish expedition is Rangmahal. This is a detail almost no aggregator carries, which is precisely why it is worth carrying.
From chapter 1.2
19. Which inscription is connected to G. H. Ojha? Attribution
Show answer
(a) Barli. He obtained it in 1912. The connection is the point: the man who disciplined Rajasthan's historiography, correcting Tod's romance with attention to documents, is the same man who recovered the state's earliest inscription.
Why not the others: (b) Ghosundi was reported by D. R. Bhandarkar in 1904, and the two are constantly swapped because both are early Rajasthan inscriptions recovered by a named scholar in the early twentieth century; (c) and (d) are medieval.
From chapter 1.2 + 1.3
20. Which number belongs to Sambhar? Recall
Show answer
(b) 45 dwellings. On six distinct levels, ranging from the 2nd century BC down to the 8th or 9th century AD, per Sahni's own report.
Why not the others: (a) is Bahaj, (c) is Rairh's chance-found hoard and (d) is Bairath's circular shrine. Numbers migrating between sites is the most productive numeric trap in this unit, and this question and the two after it are built entirely from that pool.
From chapter 1.1 + 1.2
21. Which number belongs to Bairath? Recall
Show answer
(c) 26 octagonal wooden pillars. Set around a small central stupa in a Mauryan circular brick shrine, inside a rectangular enclosure.
Why not the others: (d) 110 is the number of Carlleyle's Nagar coins that reached the Indian Museum, Calcutta. Same pool of numbers, different site.
From chapter 1.2
22. Which number belongs to Bahaj? Recall
Show answer
(d) 39 seals and sealings. Running from the Painted Grey Ware phase through to the Kushan period, out of 800-plus artefacts in total.
Why not the others: (c) about 500 is the recorded site count of the Ganeshwar–Jodhpura culture. Third question from the same pool — if all three went wrong, the fix is to learn numbers with their site rather than as a list.
From chapter 1.2
23. A hoard of 326 silver punch-marked coins was the chance find that led to the excavation of — Recall
Show answer
(a) Rairh. Found by a peasant boy on the edge of the mound. Puri's report calls it one of the largest such finds at any single place in India, and dates its burial to about the 1st century AD from the pottery vessel it lay in.
Why not the others: (b) Nagar's figure is Carlleyle's 6,000-plus surface collection of 1871-72; (d) Gurara in Sikar has a large punch-marked hoard whose total is given differently across sources and could not be pinned down — know the site, not the number.
From chapter 1.2 + 1.3
24. About 500 sites have been recorded of which culture? Recall
Show answer
(b) Ganeshwar–Jodhpura. Against 111 identified Ahar-culture sites and about 165 Sothi-Siswal.
Why not the others: Each wrong option has its own count, which is the whole test: (a) 111 and (c) 165. Getting this right means knowing which number belongs to which culture, not remembering that a number around 500 exists.
From chapter 1.1
25. Which regional culture is named after a site excavated by a foreign expedition? Recall
Show answer
(c) Rang Mahal. Hanna Rydh's Swedish expedition, 1952-54. The first settlement is placed around 250 CE, in the Kushana period.
Why not the others: (a), (b) and (d) are all named after Indian type-sites excavated by Indian archaeologists or state departments. The oddity is the point of the question.
From chapter 1.2
26. White-painted Black-and-Red Ware is the signature ceramic of — Type B · wrong site
Show answer
(d) The Ahar–Banas culture. And the contrast the Review draws repeatedly is that the Black-and-Red Ware at Noh and Sunari is unpainted, and explicitly unlike Ahar's.
Why not the others: (a) is Ganeshwar Reserve Slip Ware, with the carinated basin as its characteristic shape; (c) Baror Period II is bio-chrome with an evanescent white pigment. Every option is a real ware in the wrong place.
From chapter 1.1 + 1.2
27. Which pair correctly gives the humped and the white-painted terracotta bulls? Type B · wrong site
Show answer
(a) Gilund and Ojiyana. Gilund has the humped bull figurines; Ojiyana's are the white-painted ones, which ASI calls unparalleled among contemporary Indian cultures.
Why not the others: (b) is the same pair reversed, and it is the only wrong option worth worrying about — this is the favourite match-the-following of the prehistoric chapter.
From chapter 1.1 + 1.2
28. Which of these was not a republic or janapada? Type A · wrong family or period
Show answer
(b) Guhila. The Guhilas are a dynasty, and their oldest record is the Samoli inscription of 646 CE. The other three are ancient ganas known mainly from their coins.
Why not the others: The gap is not small: the republics belong to roughly the 2nd century BCE to the 4th century CE, and the Guhila record opens some three centuries later. Mixing a republic into a dynasty list, or the reverse, is a clean way to lose a mark.
From chapter 1.2 + 1.3
29. The legend Malavanam jayah comes from — Type B · wrong site
Show answer
(c) Nagar. Along with Malava ganasya jayah and a lead coin reading Malava Janapada. A coin that says victory of the gana rather than naming a king is a republic announcing itself in the one medium everyone handles.
Why not the others: All four options begin with N and three of them are genuine sites in this unit — (a) the Shivi capital, (b) the Bharatpur mound, (d) a yupa site now in Bhilwara. Alphabetical clustering like this is deliberate in real papers.
From chapter 1.2
30. The legend Majhimikaya Sibi Janapadasa comes from — Type B · wrong site
Show answer
(d) Nagari, Chittorgarh. Of the Sibi janapada of Madhyamika — one phrase fixing a people, a capital and a script, and the reason Nagari is identified with Madhyamika at all.
Why not the others: (a) is the Malava legend's site and the mirror of the previous question; (b) Rairh yields Malava coins and a lead seal of the Malava republic, which makes it a genuine near-miss rather than a filler option.
From chapter 1.2
31. The Bhabru edict is held in — Type A · wrong place
Show answer
(a) The Asiatic Society of Bengal, Kolkata. Recorded by Captain T. S. Burt in 1840, an eight-line slab, and the only Ashokan edict anywhere that names Buddhist texts.
Why not the others: (c) is the sharpest distractor in this whole test: the Indian Museum in the same city holds the 110 Nagar coins catalogued by Vincent Smith. Right city, wrong institution, wrong object. (b) is the other Bairath edict, which is still at the site.
From chapter 1.2 + 1.3
32. What is held in the Indian Museum, Calcutta? Type A · wrong place
Show answer
(b) 110 of Carlleyle's Nagar coins. Catalogued by Vincent Smith, who held that all but about 35 were minted at Nagar itself. The rest of the 6,000-plus are unaccounted for; 400 were stolen from Carlleyle's possession.
Why not the others: The mirror of the previous question, and the pair is the point. Two famous objects, one city, two different institutions — get both right in succession and the confusion is fixed.
From chapter 1.2
33. Vikrama Samvat runs ahead of the Common Era by about — Concept
Show answer
(c) 57 years. VS 703 → 646 CE (Samoli). VS 1226 → 1170 (Bijolia). VS 1330 → 1273 (Chirwa). VS 1517 → 1460 (Kumbhalgarh).
Why not the others: (a) 78 is the Saka offset and runs the other way, and it is the only distractor a well-prepared candidate will be tempted by; (b) 84 is the Barli inscription's Vira-nirvana samvat reckoning, which is a third era entirely.
From chapter 1.3
34. Which of these is the earliest? Sequence
Show answer
(d) Bagor Phase I. c. 5000–2800 BC, against Kalibangan Period I at c. 3000–2700 BCE, Ghosundi in the 2nd–1st century BCE and Samoli in 646 CE.
Why not the others: The list spans roughly five and a half thousand years and all three chapters. If ordering across the unit feels hard, that is because each chapter is usually revised in isolation — which is exactly what this page exists to break.
From chapter 1.1 + 1.2 + 1.3
35. Which of these is the latest? Sequence
Show answer
(a) The Raj Prashasti. 1676, at Rajsamand, commemorating Maharana Raj Singh's building of the lake on 25 black stone slabs.
Why not the others: (b) Chirwa is 1273 (VS 1330), (c) Samoli 646, and (d) the Kushan period runs to roughly the third century CE. Three of the four are epigraphic and one is stratigraphic, which is a second thing the question quietly tests.
From chapter 1.1 + 1.2 + 1.3
36. Which of these claims is not supported by the evidence? Type E · weakly sourced
Show answer
(b) Horse domestication at Bagor. The horse claim is the highest-frequency distractor in the whole unit and it recurs. Bagor's domestication evidence is sheep, goat and cattle, among the earliest in the subcontinent.
Why not the others: (a), (c) and (d) are all soundly evidenced — the second by the excavation report, the third by PLoS ONE 2009, the fourth by a bin of 100-plus seal impressions from the 1999–2005 seasons.
From chapter 1.1
37. Which of these superlatives is not found in its source? Type E · weakly sourced
Show answer
(c) Sunari has the oldest iron furnace in India. IAR calls Sunari's two furnaces a "noteworthy feature" and says nothing about primacy. The superlative is added by preparation material, sometimes as "oldest in Rajasthan" and sometimes "in India".
Why not the others: (a), (b) and (d) are all claims their sources actually make. The habit worth building: when an option offers a record, ask whose words those are before ticking it.
From chapter 1.2 + 1.3
38. Which claim did this site publish and then correct? Type A · wrong place
Show answer
(d) That Rangmahal is in Sri Ganganagar. The first version of the ancient chapter followed Wikipedia and similar sources in placing Rangmahal in Suratgarh tehsil, Sri Ganganagar. Point-in-polygon against the state GIS layer put the village inside Pilibanga, Hanumangarh, and it was corrected the same day.
Why not the others: (a), (b) and (c) are all correct as stated and were never withdrawn. The correction is logged in the chapter's Sources & Verification section rather than patched silently, on the principle that anyone who learned the wrong fact from us should be able to find the fix.
From chapter 1.2
39. Which of these is a princely-era citation rather than a current district? District drift
Show answer
(a) "Kotah State" for Badva. And it was not wrong when written. Old citations are dated, not mistaken — a distinction this unit tests directly.
Why not the others: (b) and (c) are the current districts for those two yupa sites, and (d) has not changed. The working rule is to resolve the tehsil first and then look up its present district.
From chapter 1.3
40. Six iron smelting and forging furnaces were exposed at — Recall
Show answer
(b) Iswal. About 20 km north-west of Udaipur, with iron working reported from around the 4th century BCE. Nathara-ki-Pal is studied alongside it.
Why not the others: (a) Sunari has two, from the early PGW phase, and this pair is the likeliest swap in the iron section; (c) Ganeshwar is copper, not iron; (d) Rairh is a working town with numerous smithies rather than a counted set of furnaces.
From chapter 1.2
41. Which pairing of a site with how its settlement ended is correct? Type B · wrong site
Show answer
(c) Ojiyana — a devastating fire. A thick layer of ash, burnt mud plaster and charcoal-capped post-holes.
Why not the others: (a) and (b) swap the two events between the two sites, which is the whole trap: Kalibangan Period I ended in an earthquake, perhaps the earliest archaeologically recorded anywhere, evidenced by faulted strata and subsided walls. (d) no flood is reported for Balathal.
From chapter 1.1 + 1.2
42. Which source family would you use to establish what a place was called? Type A · wrong family or period
Show answer
(d) Epigraphic and numismatic. Names come from inscriptions and coins, not from stratigraphy. Nagari is identified as Madhyamika on the strength of a coin legend.
Why not the others: (a) excavation tells you how people lived and when a settlement began; (b) the archives are silent before roughly the 16th century; (c) literature is good on self-image and treacherous on fact. Matching the claim to the family is the whole of the sources topic.
From chapter 1.3
43. The first evidence of mining in Mewar comes from which inscription? Recall
Show answer
(a) Samoli, 646 CE. It records the opening of a mine at Aranyakupagiri by a community of migrants, and a devakula of the goddess Aranyavasini built at the direction of the mahajanas. It is also the oldest Guhila record.
Why not the others: (b) is the principal Chauhan record; (c) is Guhila but six centuries later and notable for naming its composer, scribe and engraver; (d) is the earliest Vaishnava epigraph. An inscription about miners and merchants rather than kings is rare, and that is why it is asked.
From chapter 1.2 + 1.3
44. Which argument do the Bagor sequence and the religious evidence of ancient Rajasthan share? Concept
Show answer
(b) That change is additive rather than substitutive. At Bagor, microliths continue alongside copper and later iron with no stratigraphic break. In the ancient period, Yaksha worship at Noh, Bhagavata Vaishnavism at Ghosundi and Mauryan Buddhism at Bairath coexist rather than succeed one another. Using the same structure twice in a Mains answer shows a grasp of method rather than of facts.
Why not the others: (a) is what both bodies of evidence refute; (c) is contradicted by an Indo-Greek siege, Mauryan edicts, Kushana coinage and a Chinese pilgrim's notice; (d) overstates a tension that is not there.
From chapter 1.1 + 1.2
45. What did four seasons of Indian Archaeology — A Review actually say about the Noh Yaksha? Type E · weakly sourced
Show answer
(c) Only that a "palm of a life-size Buddha or yaksha figure" was found. IAR 1963-64, 1964-65, 1965-66 and 1966-67 were all read directly, and that single phrase is the only Yaksha reference in the whole run. No measurement appears anywhere in them.
Why not the others: (a) is the widely-circulated figure that could not be sourced. And note what the answer does not say: the colossus is real and is on ASI's own pages. Absence from a particular source is not absence from the world, and an option that makes that leap is wrong however well-researched it sounds.
From chapter 1.2
46. A: Nagar and Nagari have to be learned as two separate sites. R: One is the Malava centre in Tonk and the other the Shivi capital in Chittorgarh. Type B · wrong site
Show answer
(a) R is exactly why A holds. The two carry different coin legends, different peoples and different districts, and the near-identical names are the only thing they share.
From chapter 1.2
47. A: The Bagor sequence shows that microliths were replaced by copper. R: The excavator reports no stratigraphic break across Bagor's three phases. Type C · overgeneralisation
Show answer
(d) R is true and it is what makes A false: microliths continue alongside copper and later iron. Technological change here is additive, not substitutive, and this is the chapter's central Mains argument.
From chapter 1.1
48. A: Indian Archaeology — A Review for 1965-66 heads its Kalibangan entry "District Ganganagar". R: Hanumangarh was carved out of Sri Ganganagar only in 1994. District drift
Show answer
(a) R explains why A is so, and neither statement is a criticism of the source. The most-cited site in the syllabus had already changed district once in the printed record, three decades before the 2023 reorganisation.
From chapter 1.1 + 1.3
49. A: The Bhabru edict and Carlleyle's surviving Nagar coins are both in Calcutta. R: Both are held by the Indian Museum. Type A · wrong place
Show answer
(c) A is true and R is false. The 110 coins are in the Indian Museum; the edict is in the Asiatic Society of Bengal. Same city, two institutions — the most catchable error in this test.
From chapter 1.2
50. A: Rajasthan's Chalcolithic is represented by the Ahar–Banas culture. R: Ganeshwar–Jodhpura is a second, distinct Chalcolithic culture. Type C · overgeneralisation
Show answer
(d) R is true and shows A to be false as stated — not wrong in what it names, but wrong in what it implies is complete. Statements that are false only by omission are the hardest kind to catch, because nothing in them is untrue.
From chapter 1.1
51. A: A coin legend can establish that a republic existed and asserted itself. R: Coins tell you very little about individuals. Concept
Show answer
(b) Both are true and both are worth knowing, but R is a limitation of the family while A is a strength of it. One does not explain the other; they are two entries in the same row of the source table.
From chapter 1.3
52. A: The Barli and Ghosundi inscriptions are both in Brahmi script. R: Both are in Sanskrit. Type B · wrong site
Show answer
(c) A is true; R is false, because Barli is in Prakrit and Ghosundi in Sanskrit. Same script, different languages — and this is the most-swapped pair in the sources chapter.
From chapter 1.3
53. A: The colossal Yaksha at Noh and the Yakshi figurine at Bairath are evidence of the same order. R: Sahni's Bairath monograph records only a small terracotta figurine of a dancing girl or Yakshi, missing its head and feet. Type E · weakly sourced
Show answer
(d) R is true and it is what makes A false: a colossal stone image known locally as Jakha Baba and a small headless terracotta are not comparable evidence. The aggregator claim that Bairath yielded a large stone Yaksha idol is built on precisely this conflation.
From chapter 1.2
54. Superlative with site Recall
List I — A. Earliest ploughed field · B. World's oldest leprosy skeleton · C. Oldest inscription in Rajasthan · D. Deepest excavation in the state
List II — 1. Bahaj · 2. Kalibangan · 3. Barli · 4. Balathal
Show answer
(a) Four superlatives, three chapters, and every one of them a claim its source actually makes. Contrast Sunari's "oldest iron furnace", which no source supports.
From chapter 1.1 + 1.2 + 1.3
55. Site with river Type B · wrong site
List I — A. Bagor · B. Rairh · C. Sunari · D. Noh
List II — 1. Ruparail · 2. Kothari · 3. Kantli · 4. Dhil Nadi
Show answer
(a) Note that A and B both sit on Banas tributaries — the Kothari and the Dhil — so "Banas" would be right basin and wrong river for either. That shape of error recurs across the whole unit.
From chapter 1.1 + 1.2
56. Excavator with site Attribution
List I — A. Hanna Rydh · B. B. B. Lal · C. Vinay Kumar Gupta · D. D. R. Bhandarkar
List II — 1. Gilund · 2. Bahaj · 3. Nagari and Ghosundi · 4. Rangmahal
Show answer
(a) Spanning 1904 to 2024. B. B. Lal is the one to watch: he directed Gilund in 1959-60 and Kalibangan from 1961, so "B. B. Lal" alone does not identify a site.
From chapter 1.1 + 1.2
57. Site with present district District drift
List I — A. Tilwara · B. Bairath · C. Bahaj · D. Nandsa
List II — 1. Kotputli-Behror · 2. Bhilwara · 3. Balotra · 4. Deeg
Show answer
(a) Every one of the four has a different older answer still in print — Barmer, Jaipur, Bharatpur and "Udaipur State" respectively. None of those was wrong when written.
From chapter 1.1 + 1.2 + 1.3
58. Evidence with what it establishes Recall
List I — A. Malavanam jayah · B. The Ghosundi inscription · C. The Samoli inscription · D. The Bhabru edict
List II — 1. Seven Buddhist texts named by Ashoka · 2. The first evidence of mining in Mewar · 3. A republic asserting its own sovereignty · 4. The earliest epigraphic record of Bhagavatism
Show answer
(a) Four objects, four different kinds of history — constitutional, religious, economic and imperial — from a single unit. This is the table to build a Mains answer from.
From chapter 1.2 + 1.3
59. Chronological order Sequence
List I — Arrange from earliest to latest:
A. The Ashokan edicts at Bairath · B. Bagor Phase I · C. The Samoli inscription · D. Kalibangan Period II
Show answer
(a) Bagor Phase I from c. 5000 BC, Kalibangan Period II c. 2600–1900 BCE, Ashoka in the 3rd century BCE and Samoli in 646 CE — about five and a half millennia in four items, and the ordering question this unit is least prepared for.
From chapter 1.1 + 1.2 + 1.3
60. Number with what it counts Recall
List I — A. 26 · B. 45 · C. 326 · D. 39
List II — 1. Punch-marked silver coins at Rairh · 2. Octagonal wooden pillars at Bairath · 3. Seals and sealings at Bahaj · 4. Dwellings at Sambhar
Show answer
(a) If this one went wrong, the numbers are being stored as a list rather than attached to sites. Add 110 (Nagar coins in Calcutta), 500 (Ganeshwar–Jodhpura sites), 111 (Ahar-culture sites) and 165 (Sothi-Siswal) and you have the full pool.
From chapter 1.1 + 1.2
The diagnostic
Do not count your score and stop. Sort your wrong answers by the tag on each question, and read the row you land in most often. That is the instruction.
| If most of your errors were… | The problem is | Do this |
|---|---|---|
| Type B · wrong site | You know the facts and not which place they belong to. The commonest failure in this unit by a distance | Write a site-and-signature table from memory, then check it. Do the confusable pairs together, never apart: Nagar/Nagari, Gilund/Ojiyana, Sunari/Iswal, Bagor/Rairh |
| District drift | You learned the districts once and the map moved | Read section 9 of the prehistoric chapter and section 12 of the ancient one. Resolve tehsil first, then the district. Remember 1994, 2023 and December 2024 |
| Recall on numbers | You are storing numbers as a list rather than attached to sites | Take 26, 39, 45, 110, 111, 165, 326, 500, 800 and 6,000 and write what each counts. Q20–Q24 and the last match question are all from that pool |
| Type E · weakly sourced | You are ticking superlatives without asking whose words they are | Learn the short list of claims that circulate without a source: the Bagor horse, Sunari's "oldest furnace", Rairh's tonnages, the Noh Yaksha's height, Nagar's coin totals |
| Sequence | You revise chapters in isolation, so you have three timelines and not one | Build a single line from Bagor Phase I to the Raj Prashasti. It is the one thing no chapter page can teach you |
| Type A · wrong place / wrong family | You are matching claims to the wrong kind of evidence | Section 1 of the sources chapter, the six-row table. Ask of every fact: what kind of evidence would have to exist for this to be true? |
| Type C · overgeneralisation | "All", "never" and "only" are getting past you | Memorise the exceptions, because that is all these questions are: Ojiyana on its hill slope, Gilund's microliths, the third burial type, Ganeshwar as a second Chalcolithic culture |
| Contested / two authorities | You want one answer where there are two | Learn both positions and which evidence supports which. Barli's date, Kalibangan's excavation span, the fire altars, Sunari's coordinates |
More in This Series
- Practice: Pre-historic Sites of Rajasthan — 68 questions, chapter 1.1
- Practice: Society and Culture of Ancient Rajasthan — 68 questions, chapter 1.2
- Practice: Sources of the History of Rajasthan — 68 questions, chapter 1.3
- Caution for Readers — the claims that are genuinely unsettled
Sources & Verification
Every question here is drawn from the three chapters above and introduces no new fact. Those chapters are sourced to ASI Memoir No. 110, Daya Ram Sahni's Bairat and Sambhar monographs, K. N. Puri's Excavation at Rairh, Indian Archaeology — A Review across nine volumes, D. R. Bhandarkar's 1904 report of the Ghosundi inscription, G. H. Ojha's 1912 report of the Barli inscription, Robbins et al. (PLoS ONE, 2009) and Brahmagupta's own dating statement. Districts are resolved tehsil-first against the Rajasthan state GIS tehsil layer.
No PYQ is cited anywhere on this page. Question numbers are our own, not RPSC's. Q38 asks which claim this site published and then corrected, and the answer is Rangmahal's district — kept in the test deliberately, because an aspirant who learned a wrong fact from us should meet the correction rather than have it quietly disappear.
