BPSC 70th CCE Prelims General Studies · Question 146 of 143

Correct — D, More than one of the above. This is the rare occasion on this paper where the fourth option is not a trap but the honest answer, and the reasoning has to be done in two stages rather than one. Stage one is the Sanskrit. All four pairings in the stem are correct against the Amarakosha's twelve-fold classification of land in its Bhumi-varga: urvara is fertile land; maru is desert; shadvala is land covered with young green grass; and devamatrika is land whose water comes from rain — literally land that has the rain-god for its foster-mother — as distinct from nadimatrika, land watered by a river. Stage two is the arithmetic of the options, which is where the question is actually won. If a, b, c and d are all true, then option (a) 'a and b both' is a true statement; option (b) 'c and d both' is a true statement; and option (c) 'b, c and d' is also a true statement. Three of the listed options are simultaneously correct, and no option says 'all four pairings are correct'. The only choice that accommodates the situation is 'More than one of the above'. That is precisely the test to apply whenever this option appears: it is right when, and only when, you can name at least two of the other options that are true at the same time. Here you can name three, and the reasoning is airtight rather than a fallback for uncertainty.

• (a)a and b both — Not wrong in what it asserts — urvara really is fertile land and maru really is desert — but incomplete as an answer, because c and d are equally correct. An option that states a true but partial fact is not the answer when another option accounts for the whole situation.
• (b)c and d both — Again true as far as it goes: shadvala is grassy land and devamatrika is rain-watered land. It fails for the same reason as option (a) — it leaves out two pairings that are just as accurate, so it cannot be the best answer available.
• (c)b, c and d — The most tempting of the three, because it covers three of the four and a candidate reads it as 'nearly everything'. But it silently excludes urvara-fertile, which is the least disputable pairing in the entire list — urvara is the standard Sanskrit word for fertile soil.

The Amarakosha, properly the Namalingaanushasana, is the best-known Sanskrit thesaurus, composed by Amarasimha, and it is organised as three kandas — one on the heavens and divine matters, one on the earth and its contents, and one of general and miscellaneous words. Within the second sits the Bhumi-varga, the section on land, which distinguishes twelve kinds of ground: urvara (fertile), ushara (barren or saline), maru (desert), aprahata (fallow), shadvala (grassy), pankila (muddy), jalaprayah (watery), kachchha (marshy, near water), sharkara and sharkaravati (stony and pebbly), nadimatrika (watered by a river) and devamatrika (watered by rain). The last pair is the one historians make most use of, because the distinction between river-irrigated and rain-fed land is the basic fact of Indian agriculture and of the revenue systems built on it. A lexicon of this kind is a historical source in its own right: the vocabulary a society finds worth listing tells you what it needed to distinguish, and twelve named categories of soil imply a settled agrarian order that assessed land carefully.

A question of this shape is decided by reading the options as claims about each other, not only as claims about the world. Verify the four statements first — and here all four survive, because each of urvara, maru, shadvala and devamatrika has a standard, unambiguous meaning. Then count. Because every pairing is correct, more than one of the three specific options becomes true at once, and the only way to express that within the given choices is the fourth. Two habits follow. First, always check whether any option covers all the listed items; if none does and all the items are true, the composite option is being invited. Second, treat 'More than one of the above' as a proposition to be tested, never as a hedge — the honest procedure is to name the two or more options you believe are simultaneously true before selecting it, and if you cannot name two, it is not the answer. On this paper that discipline matters more than usual, because the option appears on twenty of the hundred and fifty questions and is sometimes right, as here, and sometimes a decoy.

• The Amarakosha, also called Namalingaanushasana, is a Sanskrit thesaurus by Amarasimha, arranged in three kandas covering the heavens, the earth, and general vocabulary
• Its Bhumi-varga, the section on land within the earth kanda, distinguishes twelve types of land
• The twelve are urvara (fertile), ushara (barren), maru (desert), aprahata (fallow), shadvala (grassy), pankila (muddy), jalaprayah (watery), kachchha (marshy), sharkara and sharkaravati (stony and pebbly), nadimatrika (river-watered) and devamatrika (rain-watered)
• Devamatrika literally means land having the rain-god as its foster-mother, and is defined by contrast with nadimatrika, land watered by a river
• All four pairings given in this question — urvara-fertile, maru-desert, shadvala-grassy, devamatrika-rain-watered — are correct, which is why three of the four options are simultaneously true
• 'More than one of the above' is correct only when at least two other options are true at the same time; here options (a), (b) and (c) are all true

• Selecting the option that covers the most items rather than the one that fits the whole situation; option (c) covers three of four and is still not the answer
• Treating 'More than one of the above' as a guess when uncertain, instead of naming the two or more options that are actually true
• Confusing devamatrika, rain-watered land, with nadimatrika, land watered by a river — the pair exists precisely to be distinguished

BPSC uses 'More than one of the above' as a standing fourth option on this paper — it appears on twenty of the hundred and fifty questions — so a candidate has to be fluent in evaluating an option that talks about the other options, and must resist both reflexes, choosing it out of doubt and rejecting it out of suspicion. UPSC never offers that option; it puts the same logic into 'Which of the statements given above is/are correct' with codes, where the candidate must decide each item independently and then find the code that matches.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  In the Amarakosha's classification of land, nadimatrika refers to land that is

  • (a)Watered by rain
  • (b)Watered by a river
  • (c)Left fallow
  • (d)Saline and barren

  Answer(b) Watered by a river — devamatrika is the rain-fed counterpart, aprahata is fallow land and ushara is barren or saline land.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Amarakosha, an ancient Sanskrit lexicon, was composed by

  • (a)Amarasimha
  • (b)Kamandaka
  • (c)Vararuchi
  • (d)Bhartrihari

  Answer(a) Amarasimha — the work is also known as the Namalingaanushasana and is arranged in three kandas, the second of which contains the Bhumi-varga on land.