BPSC 70th CCE Prelims General Studies · Question 75 of 143

Correct — A, a – 2, b – 1, c – 4, d – 3. Shivaji formalised his council of eight ministers, the Ashta Pradhan, at his coronation at Raigad on 6 June 1674, and each of the eight held a named department with a Sanskrit title deliberately chosen to replace the Persian vocabulary of the Deccan sultanates. Take the four in the list one by one. The PESHWA, also called Pantpradhan, was the chief minister for general administration and the first of the eight — Moropant Trimbak Pingle held it — so b matches 1, Prime Minister. The AMATYA, whose older title was Mujumdar, kept the accounts of the state and checked all receipts and expenditure, which is the finance portfolio, so d matches 3. The SUMANT, printed here as Samant and also known as the Dabir, handled relations with other sovereign powers, so c matches 4, Foreign Minister. That leaves the SACHIVA, the Shurunavis, whose specific duty was the royal correspondence — he drafted royal letters and grants and scrutinised their wording before they went out — so a matches 2, Incharge of Correspondence. Assembled, that is a – 2, b – 1, c – 4, d – 3, which is option (a). Two of the pairs, b–1 and d–3, are the ones most candidates already know; the mark is decided by whether you can separate the Sachiva's paperwork from the Sumant's diplomacy, and the safest route is to fix the Sumant on foreign affairs first, because the Sachiva is then the only office left for correspondence.

• (b)a – 1, b – 2, c – 3, d – 4 — The positional trap, and the one the question is built for — it simply pairs the lists in the order they are printed, a with 1, b with 2 and so on. It makes the Sachiva prime minister and demotes the Peshwa to clerk of correspondence, which inverts the best-known fact in Maratha administration. Any candidate who matches by position rather than by portfolio lands here.
• (c)a – 3, b – 4, c – 1, d – 2 — A straight scramble: it makes the Sachiva finance minister, the Peshwa foreign minister, the Samant prime minister and the Amatya the correspondence officer. Every one of the four is wrong, and the giveaway is the same as before — the Peshwa is not in the prime-minister slot.
• (d)More than one of the above — Cannot be right here on logic alone, and this is worth seeing clearly because BPSC uses this fourth option twenty times on this paper. Options (a), (b) and (c) are three different one-to-one pairings of the same four officials with the same four departments. Only one arrangement can be the true one, so two of them cannot be simultaneously correct — the option is structurally unavailable, whatever you know about the Marathas.

The Ashta Pradhan — literally 'the eight ministers' — is the administrative core of the Maratha state Shivaji built out of territory taken from Bijapur and contested with the Mughals. Its significance is that it turned a war band into a government: eight fixed offices with named departments, Sanskrit titles displacing Persian ones, and, with the exception of the Nyayadhish and the Panditrao, ministers who also held field commands while deputies ran their departments. The eight, with their alternative titles, are the Peshwa or Pantpradhan (general administration), the Amatya or Mujumdar (finance and accounts), the Sachiv or Shurunavis (royal correspondence), the Mantri or Waqia-navis (the king's daily record and intelligence), the Senapati or Sar-i-Naubat (commander-in-chief), the Sumant or Dabir (foreign affairs), the Nyayadhish (chief justice) and the Panditrao (religious endowments and learning). None of the offices was hereditary under Shivaji. The council did not survive as a working cabinet — Sambhaji curtailed it, and after 1714 the Peshwa's office became hereditary in one Chitpavan family at Pune, leaving the other seven as titles.

Matching questions are won by anchoring, not by reading all four options. Anchor first on the pair you are certain of — Peshwa is prime minister — and eliminate every option that does not contain b–1. That kills (b) and (c) in a single sweep and leaves only (a) and the fourth option. Then dispose of the fourth option on structure: three mutually exclusive permutations cannot include two correct ones. The item is therefore answerable in about fifteen seconds by a candidate who knows one fact and can think about the shape of the options, which is exactly the skill BPSC's matching questions reward. If you want to check the answer rather than infer it, use the Sumant, because 'Dabir' is a Persian word for a secretary of correspondence in other contexts and yet here the Sumant is the foreign minister — an inversion that catches people. Fix the Sumant on diplomacy and the Sachiva, whose alternative name Shurunavis literally concerns the writing of letters, takes correspondence by elimination.

• The Ashta Pradhan was constituted at Shivaji's coronation at Raigad fort on 6 June 1674, at which he also issued his own coinage and proclaimed a new calendar era
• The four in this question: Peshwa (Pantpradhan) = chief minister; Amatya (Mujumdar) = finance and accounts; Sumant (Dabir) = foreign affairs; Sachiv (Shurunavis) = royal correspondence
• The other four offices are the Mantri (Waqia-navis, the king's daily record and intelligence), the Senapati (Sar-i-Naubat, commander-in-chief), the Nyayadhish (chief justice) and the Panditrao (religious endowments)
• Only the Nyayadhish and the Panditrao were exempt from military duty; the remaining six pradhans held field commands, with deputies running their departments in their absence
• Maratha revenue claims outside the home territory were chauth, one-fourth of the assessed revenue, and sardeshmukhi, an additional one-tenth claimed as a hereditary paramount right

• Matching the two lists positionally — a with 1, b with 2 — which produces option (b) and makes the Sachiva prime minister
• Confusing Sumant/Samant (foreign affairs) with Sachiv (correspondence); the Sumant's other name, Dabir, misleads because 'dabir' elsewhere means a writer of letters
• Choosing 'More than one of the above' on a question whose first three options are mutually exclusive permutations — only one can be true

BPSC prefers the four-pair matching grid with 'More than one of the above' bolted on as the fourth option, which means the item is really two tests at once — the portfolios, and whether you notice that mutually exclusive permutations make the fourth option impossible. UPSC has asked the same council in its simplest possible forms: which polity had an Ashtapradhan, and which of the eight looked after foreign affairs — single-fact questions rather than a full grid.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  In Shivaji's Ashta Pradhan, the officer who was the commander-in-chief of the army was the

  • (a)Senapati (Sar-i-Naubat)
  • (b)Mantri (Waqia-navis)
  • (c)Nyayadhish
  • (d)Panditrao

  Answer(a) Senapati (Sar-i-Naubat) — the Mantri kept the king's daily record and intelligence, the Nyayadhish was chief justice and the Panditrao headed religious endowments.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Chauth and sardeshmukhi in the Maratha system refer to

  • (a)two classes of hereditary village servants
  • (b)one-fourth and an additional one-tenth of the assessed revenue claimed from territory outside the swaraj
  • (c)the land and sea wings of Shivaji's forces
  • (d)the two ceremonies of Shivaji's coronation in 1674

  Answer(b) one-fourth and an additional one-tenth of the assessed revenue claimed from territory outside the swaraj — chauth was the quarter share and sardeshmukhi the further tenth claimed as a paramount deshmukh's due.